SEO The Definitive Handbook on SEO Siloing - Achieve Dominance on Google in 2020

[AnnaBoss]

In March of year (2017), I wrote a comprehensive guide on creating Amazon review sites. One chapter of the guide was dedicated to siloing, a technique that I had used with some success, but not the level of success that I had hoped for. I felt that something was missing, and although everything I read online confirmed that my method was correct, I wasn't satisfied.

Early this year, I decided to set aside two weeks to research and find out how to properly implement siloing. I began by re-reading Bruce Clay's guide to siloing, but it was highly theoretical and did not provide much practical implementation advice.

After a few days of research, I had a breakthrough and finally cracked the code. It took nine months to properly silo my first site, and the results were remarkable. I am confident that I have perfected the technique and am excited to share it with the world.

While information about siloing is typically shared only within tight inner circles, I believe that sharing this knowledge creates more opportunities for success. My mission in life is to bring success and excitement to the world through business, and this aligns perfectly with that goal.

I am happy to answer questions in the thread, but please keep them public so that everyone can benefit. If necessary, I can provide proof of ownership of the site in the screenshot below. A few of my clients have also seen the results, so I am confident that someone can vouch for their authenticity.

Siloing is a website structuring technique that enables Google bots to easily understand the website's content. The approach involves creating topical relevancy in numerous small areas, which eventually contributes to the larger areas' topical relevancy. For instance, if you sell laptops, you would aim to build topical relevancy in every laptop-related area such as brands, types, processors, screen sizes, repairs, and guides.

Most guides oversimplify or over-complicate siloing. They typically recommend creating parent pages and support articles, with the parent page using the higher volume keyword and the support being long-tails. However, this is not the best way to achieve optimal results.

To silo properly, it is best to use category pages as parent topics instead of the ones with the most search results. For example, for laptops, the category page should be titled "Laptops for Sale," with an H1 like "The Latest Laptops & Buyer Guides." The page should also contain 100-300 words of unique content about laptops and link to 2-3 internal pages, either internal silos or important pages within the silo.

All pages within the laptops category should be listed, with the latest 20 visible to Google and an option for users to display more using Ajax. If the site has numerous products, sub-silos can be used to allow users to narrow down their search.

The crucial point is that Google can see the latest 20 laptops added. If multiple sub-silos are used, the same approach can be applied.

yoursite.com/laptops/hp
yoursite.com/laptops/dell

The setup is the same for each sub-silo, with content at the top, 2-3 links, and all HP/Dell articles inside each silo. Therefore, an HP laptop article or product will appear as yoursite.com/laptops/hp/some-hp-laptop.html, physically siloed inside laptops/hp. However, the article/product will also appear in yoursite.com/laptops and yoursite.com/laptops/hp.

For an ecommerce site with multiple sorting options, it is best to pick one main physical silo and use Ajax to sort by type/size/specs, etc., on the category page. In my opinion, the best way to categorize laptops is by brand.

For an informational-based site, all articles/reviews/content will appear within the category page. For an ecommerce site, two sections can be created, one called Products at the top, and another called Guides/Helpful Articles/Information, where extra content can be added to the silo, which can be further siloed.

Using the laptop example, all laptop guides will appear within yoursite.com/laptops, but additional silos can be created such as:


laptops/repairs
laptops/buyers-guides
laptops/comparisons
laptops/performance-tests
laptops/reviews

Then, include things like

laptops/repairs/how-to-factory-reset-a-dell-laptop, and in this you can even link off to laptops/dell.

laptops/comparisons/dell-vs-hp-whos-best-in-2017

laptops/performance-tests/hp-envy-x360-benchmarked-and-tested

laptops/reviews/hp-envy-x360


In each sub-silo of your website, you should have 100-300 words of unique content, which should be displayed on the category page, which represents your silo. Your homepage should contain links to the silos/sub-silos of your site, such as having a giant silo with 500-1000 words of content at the top and the latest articles displayed on the page. However, for an e-commerce site, you should not display all the latest products, but for an informational site, the latest 20 articles should be displayed. This will ensure that juice flows from the homepage to new articles.

By following this structure, mysite.com/laptops/reviews/hp-envy-x360 will get juice from mysite.com/laptops/reviews, mysite.com/laptops, and mysite.com/. In addition, laptops/reviews will gain relevancy for laptop reviews, laptops/ will gain relevancy for everything related to laptops, and the homepage will gain relevancy for everything on the entire site.

It is also helpful to link out to each sub-silo on each silo. At the bottom of the page on mysite.com, a tree structure should link to all the sub-silo pages. This is useful for the user and for Google. On mysite.com/laptops, a tree structure should link to reviews, comparisons, repairs, performance-tests, and all the brands if it is an e-commerce site.

The more you fill out each silo, the better they will rank. You can then backlink the silos, money pages, product pages, and support articles. When building support articles to rank a money article, make sure to include the keyword in your support article's title. For example, if you want to rank for "best small laptops," you should write some support articles like "Why the Dell Blah is a Great small laptop" or "Top 13 Reasons Why Small Laptops are Amazing."

Then link back with an LSI/long partial anchor, such as "our guide to getting the best small laptop." Siloing properly does not require a mammoth 10,000-word article. It is a very simple concept that does not need to be over-complicated. Now, go and make lots of money on Google! If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the thread.

 

[Bergires]

I recently came across a Facebook note discussing the concept of siloing. I'm thrilled because this approach seems like the perfect route for my on-site SEO strategy!

 

[Taistandb]

So, if I understand correctly, you're asking if the permalink should be set to the category base, such as "xx.com/category/subcategory/post.html"?

 

[Tarasuff]

Should I use categories or pages to implement this on WordPress?

Appreciate you sharing this!

 

[Mountaili]

It seems like you're asking if Bruce Clay practices what he preaches when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). Could you clarify or provide more context so I can help you better?

 

[Proudel]

In March of year (2017), I wrote a comprehensive guide on creating Amazon review sites. One chapter of the guide was dedicated to siloing, a technique that I had used with some success, but not the level of success that I had hoped for. I felt that something was missing, and although everything I read online confirmed that my method was correct, I wasn't satisfied.

Early this year, I decided to set aside two weeks to research and find out how to properly implement siloing. I began by re-reading Bruce Clay's guide to siloing, but it was highly theoretical and did not provide much practical implementation advice.

After a few days of research, I had a breakthrough and finally cracked the code. It took nine months to properly silo my first site, and the results were remarkable. I am confident that I have perfected the technique and am excited to share it with the world.

While information about siloing is typically shared only within tight inner circles, I believe that sharing this knowledge creates more opportunities for success. My mission in life is to bring success and excitement to the world through business, and this aligns perfectly with that goal.

I am happy to answer questions in the thread, but please keep them public so that everyone can benefit. If necessary, I can provide proof of ownership of the site in the screenshot below. A few of my clients have also seen the results, so I am confident that someone can vouch for their authenticity.

Siloing is a website structuring technique that enables Google bots to easily understand the website's content. The approach involves creating topical relevancy in numerous small areas, which eventually contributes to the larger areas' topical relevancy. For instance, if you sell laptops, you would aim to build topical relevancy in every laptop-related area such as brands, types, processors, screen sizes, repairs, and guides.

Most guides oversimplify or over-complicate siloing. They typically recommend creating parent pages and support articles, with the parent page using the higher volume keyword and the support being long-tails. However, this is not the best way to achieve optimal results.

To silo properly, it is best to use category pages as parent topics instead of the ones with the most search results. For example, for laptops, the category page should be titled "Laptops for Sale," with an H1 like "The Latest Laptops & Buyer Guides." The page should also contain 100-300 words of unique content about laptops and link to 2-3 internal pages, either internal silos or important pages within the silo.

All pages within the laptops category should be listed, with the latest 20 visible to Google and an option for users to display more using Ajax. If the site has numerous products, sub-silos can be used to allow users to narrow down their search.

The crucial point is that Google can see the latest 20 laptops added. If multiple sub-silos are used, the same approach can be applied.

yoursite.com/laptops/hp
yoursite.com/laptops/dell

The setup is the same for each sub-silo, with content at the top, 2-3 links, and all HP/Dell articles inside each silo. Therefore, an HP laptop article or product will appear as yoursite.com/laptops/hp/some-hp-laptop.html, physically siloed inside laptops/hp. However, the article/product will also appear in yoursite.com/laptops and yoursite.com/laptops/hp.

For an ecommerce site with multiple sorting options, it is best to pick one main physical silo and use Ajax to sort by type/size/specs, etc., on the category page. In my opinion, the best way to categorize laptops is by brand.

For an informational-based site, all articles/reviews/content will appear within the category page. For an ecommerce site, two sections can be created, one called Products at the top, and another called Guides/Helpful Articles/Information, where extra content can be added to the silo, which can be further siloed.

Using the laptop example, all laptop guides will appear within yoursite.com/laptops, but additional silos can be created such as:


laptops/repairs
laptops/buyers-guides
laptops/comparisons
laptops/performance-tests
laptops/reviews

Then, include things like

laptops/repairs/how-to-factory-reset-a-dell-laptop, and in this you can even link off to laptops/dell.

laptops/comparisons/dell-vs-hp-whos-best-in-2017

laptops/performance-tests/hp-envy-x360-benchmarked-and-tested

laptops/reviews/hp-envy-x360


In each sub-silo of your website, you should have 100-300 words of unique content, which should be displayed on the category page, which represents your silo. Your homepage should contain links to the silos/sub-silos of your site, such as having a giant silo with 500-1000 words of content at the top and the latest articles displayed on the page. However, for an e-commerce site, you should not display all the latest products, but for an informational site, the latest 20 articles should be displayed. This will ensure that juice flows from the homepage to new articles.

By following this structure, mysite.com/laptops/reviews/hp-envy-x360 will get juice from mysite.com/laptops/reviews, mysite.com/laptops, and mysite.com/. In addition, laptops/reviews will gain relevancy for laptop reviews, laptops/ will gain relevancy for everything related to laptops, and the homepage will gain relevancy for everything on the entire site.

It is also helpful to link out to each sub-silo on each silo. At the bottom of the page on mysite.com, a tree structure should link to all the sub-silo pages. This is useful for the user and for Google. On mysite.com/laptops, a tree structure should link to reviews, comparisons, repairs, performance-tests, and all the brands if it is an e-commerce site.

The more you fill out each silo, the better they will rank. You can then backlink the silos, money pages, product pages, and support articles. When building support articles to rank a money article, make sure to include the keyword in your support article's title. For example, if you want to rank for "best small laptops," you should write some support articles like "Why the Dell Blah is a Great small laptop" or "Top 13 Reasons Why Small Laptops are Amazing."

Then link back with an LSI/long partial anchor, such as "our guide to getting the best small laptop." Siloing properly does not require a mammoth 10,000-word article. It is a very simple concept that does not need to be over-complicated. Now, go and make lots of money on Google! If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the thread.

I appreciate the idea, but wouldn't an internal link to another laptop-related page with the same keyword be considered duplicate content? Or is it acceptable because it's a new page with a new article?
What's the LSI percentage in this case?
By the way, all SEO practitioners do this—it's normal. To me, this is like explaining how to configure links and folders properly without creating duplicate content. It's all about SEO-friendly links.
For beginners, this is a fantastic write-up!

 

[Emporing]

Thanks for the straightforward explanation of this technique. I'm in the process of setting up a new website and hope this will be useful!

 

[Discoverol]

Great guide! I'm familiar with the site, and I can confirm that this approach really works for them.

 

[AnnaBoss]

So, if I understand correctly, you're asking if the permalink should be set to the category base, such as "xx.com/category/subcategory/post.html"?

Should I use categories or pages to implement this on WordPress?

Appreciate you sharing this!

You use the category function in WordPress to 'label' each post, but I don't use the default category pages.
Instead, I create custom category pages and use a plugin to manually display posts in the desired categories. Implementing siloing technically requires a bit more WordPress expertise. WordPress won't easily support this out of the box.

I appreciate the idea, but wouldn't an internal link to another laptop-related page with the same keyword be considered duplicate content? Or is it acceptable because it's a new page with a new article?
What's the LSI percentage in this case?
By the way, all SEO practitioners do this—it's normal. To me, this is like explaining how to configure links and folders properly without creating duplicate content. It's all about SEO-friendly links.
For beginners, this is a fantastic write-up!

Duplicate content? No, using a keyword in the title of multiple articles is not considered duplicate content.

I'm not sure what you mean by the % of LSI.

You think my approach to SEO is standard? A beginner write-up? If you believe that, you don't understand this at all.

I review dozens of new sites from members here every day, and I have yet to see even one that implements siloing correctly. This isn't about simply configuring links and "folders" properly or just creating categories and putting posts in them. That is NOT siloing. Re-read the guide and try to understand the proper method—this is an incredibly sophisticated way to set up your site architecture.

 

[Taistandb]

Could you explain more about this part?

"You use the category function within WordPress to 'label' each post, but I don't use the actual category pages.

I create manual category pages and use a plugin to manually display posts in the categories I want."

Does this mean you don't use the default WordPress category pages? What kind of plugin do you use to display the categories? Thanks!

 

[Shmoenevo]

You think my approach to SEO is standard? A beginner write-up? If you believe that, you don't understand this at all.

Ignore his posts. He's spreading misinformation everywhere and adding no value to the forums.

Here, he doesn't understand the difference between "detecting" and "spoofing."

He told me, "your degree of programming knowledge is far less than mine."

He claims to make $20k a month but complains about IM costs, saying his monthly bills are only about $150.

He doesn't want to (or can't) pay for a necessary plugin.

This is a broke guy pretending to be a know-it-all. What a joke.

Great write-up, @splishsplash. I've saved it for later reading.

 

[AnnaBoss]

Could you explain more about this part?

"You use the category function within WordPress to 'label' each post, but I don't use the actual category pages.

I create manual category pages and use a plugin to manually display posts in the categories I want."

Does this mean you don't use the default WordPress category pages? What kind of plugin do you use to display the categories? Thanks!

Yes, so you create pages and then use a plugin like

https://wordpress.org/plugins/list-category-posts/

If you have a post in laptops/hp, you add that post to both the laptops category and the hp category. On your manual category pages for laptops and hp, you use the plugin to display all posts from those categories.

 

[Cellarac]

Great write-up, Tom. Someone asked me the other day for advice on silo structure, and here’s their answer.

 

[Adtecarmp]

Nice guide—I really enjoyed reading it.
I do have one small question: How would you apply this if the site is a niche-specific lead generation site? I don’t have many categories to add because my site is already very specific and can’t be narrowed down further.

 

[Cruistyzx]

I’ve never been disappointed by any of your guides or threads. I’ve set up a special folder on my work PC just for your content and am saving this for later reading.

 

[AnnaBoss]

Nice guide—I really enjoyed reading it.
I do have one small question: How would you apply this if the site is a niche-specific lead generation site? I don’t have many categories to add because my site is already very specific and can’t be narrowed down further.

In general, smaller sites don’t perform as well, but for lead generation, options are limited.
I’m actually interested in lead generation sites myself, so feel free to PM me your site, and I’ll take a look and offer specific advice.

 

[Felinerone]

This is exactly how I built websites back in 1993, especially the HTML part.

 

[RaeLaugh]

Here’s a breakdown of your main page content and layout:

1. Content Estimate:
   • Main page content: Approximately 300 words.
   • Displaying the last 20 laptop articles with 5-word titles each: Total of 100 words.
     Your main page will have around 400 words of content.
2. SEO and Structure:
   • Title/H1: Use something like "The Latest Laptops & Buyer Guides." Make sure your title/H1 is different from other pages to capture more keywords and avoid over-optimization.
   • Content: Include 100-300 words of unique content about laptops. Within this content, link to 2-3 internal pages, either within your silos or important internal pages within the silo.
   • Page Layout: List all your pages within the "laptops" category. Display the latest 20 items to Google, and use AJAX for users to load more without using /page-2 type pagination. For large sites, AJAX can help users sort and filter laptops, and sub-silos can assist in narrowing down to specific types of laptops.

Feel free to ask any basic questions—I’m here to help!

 

[Opscertag]

Let me simplify it for you: just check out Wikipedia or some old 1998-style Xoom or Geocities sites. You'll get a clear idea of what "siloing" means.

 

[Cellarac]

Let me simplify it for you: just check out Wikipedia or some old 1998-style Xoom or Geocities sites. You'll get a clear idea of what "siloing" means.

Why do you have such an inappropriate image on your homepage?