Imagine a book without an index or table of contents; it is similar to that of websites or blogs that do not implement silo structure. In this article, let me share the importance of implementing the silo structure for SEO and guide you to execute it for your websites or blogs.
How much attention you are paying against choosing the best SEO tool at a greater discount; building a website or blog in an organized structure needs much scrutiny.
Similar to the few advanced SEO techniques and tactics like infographics, guest-o-graphics, and more, building or updating any web pages employing silo structure is crucial. With this guide, you can successfully have proper silo structure for SEO or search engines as well as to treat your readers in an organized way.
Table of Page Contents
- What is Silo Structure?
- Types of Silos
- What is Reverse Silo Structure?
- When Should I Use Silo Architecture?
- Benefits of Implementing Silo Structure
- How to Draft an Effective Silo Structure?
- How to Create a Silo Structured Website or Blog?
- How to Build a Silo Structure for Niche Sites?
- Silo Structure for Micro-Niche Blogs
- Implementing Silo structure in WordPress Sites
- Pro-tips:
- How to create a silo structure for the existing site
- Can I have Multiple Silos on a Site?
- How to create a silo when there is a correlation?
- FAQ’s – Silo for SEO Benefits & Great User Experience
- Final Words about Silo Structure for SEO
What is Silo Structure?
Every article we write and publish, we should have some strategy behind. Having Silo structure or siloing is such a one. Now, what is a silo structure or siloing? The silo structure is the profoundly structured architecture of a site organizing the relevant information or pages together. Pages with relevant content will be grouped together and mapped under the primary category.
Types of Silos
Here are the basic types of Siloing:
• Physical Silo – Hierarchically organizing pages by creating layers of directories and sub-directories and mapping with content relevancy
For example https://www.samplesite.com/mobile-accessories/screen-guards/
• Virtual Silo – Organizing a site by creating hyperlinks to connect pages which are relevant to the topic
For example https://www.samplesite.com/best-wireless-earphones/
Further, there are various types of silo structure depending on multiple aspects. I am just mentioning it here for your information.
- Organizational Silo – Organizing a website based on content relevancy
- Link Silo – Organizing a website on how you interlinked your website’s content
- Circle Silo – Refers to creating a circular silo of blog posts with the silo pages
- Flat or horizontal Silo – Organizing multiple secondary silos under a single or very less primary category
- Deep or vertical Silo – Organizing an endless number of silos with a deeper hierarchical structure
What is Reverse Silo Structure?
Reverse silo structure is not another confusing technical term. It is as same as silo structure, the way you are putting in action differs. Reverse silo structure works well in case of blogging or websites that frequently come up with adding new pages. Moreover, reverse silo structure is nothing but having silo structure for an existing site or blog.
When Should I Use Silo Architecture?
It is better to have a silo in place while building or designing a new website. If you have missed out, then update your website silo architecture. In the later section of this post, I will assist you with how to implement silo structure for SEO for the existing sites. Moreover, if you are the one among the below then hit a try implementing silo.
- Building a new website and willing to bring it up with more traffic
- Planning to optimize your website on-page
- Going to rebuild a site as your existing site is not organized correctly Frequently coming up with posts and having a good content strategy
- Have to get ranking for a particular page or target keyword
- Putting all your efforts but no results regarding traffic
- Audience engagement ratio is low on your website
- Want to build more reader base relevant to your niche or micro-niche or service
In all the above cases, you can give implementing silo a spin to achieve what you are looking for from your site, by the way, boosting on-page SEO.
Benefits of Implementing Silo Structure
#1 SEO: The major benefit out of implementing a silo structure is SEO. The content relevancy is a primary factor what Google considers for ranking your website and generating massive traffic. In like manner, organizing your web pages with more content relevancy enables search engines to crawl more pages on your website.
#2 Gain Preference: Search engines can clearly understand what is your page about and the keywords you are targeting. Internal linking between relevant topics and pages adds credit to your website’s core having your content more focused. Search Engines will prefer your website than your competitors in the same domain.
#3 Engagement: Your audience looking for in-depth information on the particular topic can easily navigate among the relevant pages that you are organizing and grouping under appropriate categories.
#4 Internal Link Building: Google never permits irrelevant link placing on any web pages and don’t ever hesitate to penalize such activities. Be away from such Penguin penalties, with silo structure you can have more number of relevant and keyword optimized internal links among your pages.
#5 Link Juice Passing: Distributing more inbound links among your website’s relevant pages ensures high ranking signals. It spreads link juice passing between pages through appropriate anchor texts. For an instant, high ranking pages internally linking boosts your low ranking pages as well.
How to Draft an Effective Silo Structure?
I could come across many experts stating that they still prefer paper and pen to draft an outline or planning for anything before starting any mission. Similarly, before implementing a silo for your website, have an outline or rough draft of your silo structure for SEO. Take action as per the plan for successful implementation and long run.
I am using a free mind mapping software called XMind to plan and design silo structures for my blogs and websites.
This cross-platform supports all your devices like iOS iPhone/iPad, and even available for Windows desktop. It offers plenty of templates and has to install XMind app for accessing those templates to craft silo structures.
Crafting a silo structure with XMind is simple, and you can have notes to specify more details about each silo block.
I will have to thank my friend Akshay Hallur from GobloggingTips who helped me out sharing this excellent tool, XMind to create my silo structures far better.
How to Create a Silo Structured Website or Blog?
In the above section, I have been talking about planning and crafting an outline before implementing silo structure for SEO of your blog or website. Here, let me share the more in-depth guide on how to plan, make ideas and to create silo structured website or blog. Because crafting proper silo structure for SEO is not a mere job to play around. Perfect planning and scheduling are necessary for getting benefits out of it instead it will go dissipating your valuable time.
If you are about to have a new website, and you would like to bring it up as you wish and dream. The better initiative is the foundation for its success. It is critical to have such structured architecture to have an authority or traffic generating website or blog.
There is no defined set of technical rules or terms to implement silo structure for SEO. You can craft it innovatively as your business nature.
How to Build a Silo Structure for Niche Sites?
Let me here discuss with an example to explain how a silo structure to execute for niche sites.
Virtual silo will perform well for niche sites or blogs. You can have primary silo page base focusing each subcategory for your niches. Come up with multiple content silo posts on various topics relating a niche subcategory and organize your each child post mapping to its related parent silos. Let’s see with an example.
Considering ‘Audio Systems’ as your niche, you can pick your subcategories as below:
- Head Phones
- Home Speakers
- VR Headsets
Have ‘Head Phones’ as a main or primary silo and create a content silo page. You can write multiple posts on below topics and group under parent silo ‘Head Phones.’
1.1. Best wireless Bluetooth headset for iPhone
1.2. Wireless headphones to use while Gym workout
1.3. Best Bluetooth foldable multi-color headsets
You may now interlink between these three child posts and all the three can be linked to its parent silo ‘Head Phones.’ Whereas you should not link ‘Best wireless Bluetooth headset for iPhone’ to another parent silo says ‘Home Speakers’. Depending on your niche wide, you can have multiple silo pages and do interlinking to more relevant link juice to flow.
Silo Structure for Micro-Niche Blogs
Silo for micro-niche is similar to that of having silo structure for niche blogs. Considering your micro-niche as ‘iOS headphones,’ create a silo page and discuss more topics in multiple posts like below:
- Things to check before buying wireless headphones for iOS
- Best in-ear sports headphones for iOS
- How to check the compatibility of headphones with various iOS models
Group all the above posts to its parent silo page and interlink among these three to serve your readers with more in-depth information about iOS headphones. In case, you are extending your wings covering few more micro-niches, then add new silo pages for each micro-niche and publish posts related to that micro-niche. Interlink the relevant posts under the same micro-niche and boost your rankings for all the posts.
Implementing Silo structure in WordPress Sites
I have come across articles talking about silo plug-in for WordPress. However, there is no built-in WordPress silo builder. Using the silo plug-in automatically has control over pages, posts, categories, and permalinks and adds internal links on main silo pages. If you are thinking about to have a plug-in, then have a thorough analysis and go for the plug-in option. Because using a specific silo plugin for WordPress may disrupt your entire website structure and performance.
However, if you have perfect plan and idea upfront, then manually implementing silo becomes simpler. I have not tried any such Silo tools for WordPress sites.
I suggest you to manually plan and build a site with silo structure for SEO following the below steps.
#1. Have a thorough analysis of your Ranking and No-Ranking Keywords
If you have a WordPress niche blog site, gather a few ranking long tail keywords. Make use of the Long Tail PromBlack Friday deals for the premium tool if you have not owned yet. Don’t much rely on keyword competition, choose keywords having the moderate toughness to get ranking. You can also pick some LSI keywords or buyer intent keywords. If you are planning to have a WordPress niche blog, do competitor analysis and come up with the list of medium competition, long tail keywords; it can be buyer intent or LSI keywords.
Choose a set of keywords for multiple sub-niches and what are all the posts getting ranking for those keywords.
#2. Add new WordPress pages to have Content Silo
For each category of your niches, create a WordPress page and have breathtaking content not less than 4 thousand words. So that, linking becomes more comfortable with the long content. Draft your content with great research and claim for quality and informative content.
Whatever keywords you are having handy for each category, fill it up throughout the content naturally. Now, your entire content becomes SEO-friendly boosting on-page ranking, and you can give fierce competition to your competitors for multiple keywords.
You can add images, screenshots, table of contents, comparison tables, wherever necessary to make your content more impressive. Now you will have keyword-based content silo page for as many categories you have, related to your niche.
Either way, you can have silo pages as many as categories you have. But, make sure that both your silo pages and category are having same name or slug. You can also redirect your category page to its respective silo page using redirection plug-ins. If you are building a new WordPress site with a silo structure for SEO, then it is better to have silo pages for each category instead of category pages and redirecting it later.
If you are using Thrive Themes, then it becomes so more uncomplicated. While creating new category itself, it enables you to redirect your category page to your desired landing page. Here landing page may be your silo page.
Note: You can have any number of subtopics or child categories as WordPress does not have a limit in having nested pages.
#3. Create relevant posts grouping together under Main Silo Page
Don’t ever fail to follow to act like what you planned with XMind or any other tools or even manual sketch. Now, you can create multiple posts talking about your sub-niche or category. So that, you can group such relevant posts together and mapped to the corresponding primary silo page.
It is better not to write any posts that not fit your main silo page. Make sure to have at least 3 or 4 posts under each category or silo page. Similarly, have a desired number of posts for each category and map it under appropriate silo pages.
#4. Interlink with relevancy for Perfect Silo Structure Implementation
How to make a silo, a beneficial one? The proper internal linking gives completeness to the silo structure for SEO. You should be more curious about placing internal links correctly. Here, there is no entry or talk about outbound links. Only internal links play the role enabling Google to crawl relevant pages promptly.
In short, you are having a niche ‘Audio Systems’ with three silo pages or category with same slug URL or name, and multiple supporting posts under each silo page. For an instant, here I am taking the above-discussed examples.
Niche – ‘Audio systems’
Silo Pages or Category and its supportive posts for each category are as below:
1. Head Phones
1.1. Best wireless Bluetooth headset for iPhone
1.2. Wireless headphones to use while Gym workout
1.3. Best Bluetooth foldable multi-color headsets
2. Home Speakers
2.1. How to fix Home Speakers for better sound surround?
2.2. What is difference does Sound Bars make than Box Speakers?
2.3. Best Ceiling and In-wall speakers for tiny houses
3. VR Headsets
3.1. Cheap Portable Bluetooth headphones with VR controller
3.2. List of multi-color wireless VR headsets under $800
3.3. How to use VR headphones with no harm to our health
With these materials in hand, follow the below things to interlink appropriately.
Proper Internal Linking Makes Your Silo – A Perfect One
- Create links from all the three supportive posts to their respective parent or main silo. For example, ‘Best wireless Bluetooth headset for iPhone’ links to and from its parent silo ‘Head Phones’
- Have interlinks among all the child posts. That is, creating internal links to and from all the three posts under the same silo page.
- Don’t have interlinked from a ‘Home speakers’ child posts to ‘VR headsets’ child posts.
- Do not create links main silos to the other silo’s child posts. For an instant, ‘VR Headsets’ and ‘Best Bluetooth foldable multi-color headsets.’
- You can have internal links among the main silo pages, if necessary. All your silo pages are the subcategories of your niche.
- Add all your silo pages links to your homepage either through widgets in sidebar or navigation bar.
- Make sure every parent silo page is interlinked with all its child posts, not missing out anything.
By having such a silo linking strategy, maximum link juices pass, resulting in boosting all your pages ranking for your target keywords. It is no obvious saying silo as an internal link juice tool. Silo structure is the best strategy to get top ranking for a specific low traffic driving posts.
Pro-tips:
- Don’t cross-link between different parent silo pages and child posts.
- Don’t write posts that never suit any of your silo pages. Still, if you want to have, then add new silos. Make sure to have at least 3 to 4 posts under the category.
How to create a silo structure for the existing site
Implementing a silo structure for a current site is not that trivial one. However, you have to plan appropriately, invest in time and do it effectively. If you are failing to organize correctly under silo architecture, then you have to face the impact on your site ranking. This is not to threaten you, just information to let you know the importance of organizing as silo structure.
Implementing Silo Structure Boosting SEO of your Existing Blog
- Have in-depth analysis of all the posts you published and the categories you have mapped under. Make sure each post is not mapped to more than one category.
- For a niche site, cleverly pick sub-niches concerning the post topics you have written. So that, grouping would be appropriate.
- Now group all your posts under its related sub-niches (each category carries the name of the sub-niches you have picked). That is, you are relatively distributing your entire niche posts to categorize under each appropriate sub-niche.
- Do comprehensive keyword research and create silo page content optimized for even high competition target keyword. (You can create silo pages as many categories you have)
- In the silo page, place internal links to all the posts you have mapped under that particular silo. Similarly for all the silo pages.
- Add such Sub-niche silo pages to the main (parent) silo. I mean your niche.
I will share you more about placing internal links in the later section about implementing silo structure for SEO in WordPress sites. Keep reading.
Can I have Multiple Silos on a Site?
As I said earlier, there are no standard set of rules or terms regarding silo structure for SEO. You can have multiple numbers of silos in a site. It entirely depends on your niche. If your site or blog into a wider niche, say ‘Gardening’ then you have more than five silos say ‘Gardening tools,’ ‘Soil Testers, ‘Garden Lamps’ and so on.
On the other hand, if your site is into micro-niche ‘Gardening Forks,’ then it is optimal to have 1 or 2 silos. You can have posted about ‘best gardening forks under $100’, ‘multicolor hand feeding forks’ as you child posts under the parent silo ‘Gardening Forks.’
In short, you can have the required number of silos depending on your niche width. For small micro-niche sites, one or two would be enough. If you are extending your hands adding further micro-niche, then add new silos accordingly. For multi-niche sites, multiple silos can be implemented.
How to create a silo when there is a correlation?
Consider you have a local business that deals with event management. In which, you might have parent silos like –
- Staging
- Branding
- Environmental Design
- Floral
- Custom
In this case, you have a post on ‘floral stage decorations’. Which is the suitable parent silo for this content – staging or floral? It correlates.
Let me help you with a suggestion. Between the two parent silos – which one you have planned to promote seriously? For which one, you have lined up more articles? Based on which, tag it. So that, you will get more linking opportunities. If you have only one or two articles in floral silo, you cannot pass more link juice to the target page ‘floral stage decorations’. So, better put it under ‘staging’ parent silo. Hope it is clear now. Build purposeful silo structure for SEO.
FAQ’s – Silo for SEO Benefits & Great User Experience
1. How silo architect in a website boosts SEO?
Having content relevancy targeting long tail and high competition keyword will assist in boosting your on-page SEO. Building internal links among the relevant posts and silo pages improves your site architecture.
2. Which type of Silo suits blogging? Is Physical or Virtual Silo?
I would suggest a virtual siloing for blogs. The physical silo is a traditional one or a directory silo method of SEO. In which, it is complicated to have it for big sites or broader niche sites. Whereas, virtual siloing or links based linking is more beneficial and simple.
3. Is there any recommended number of silos to have on a site?
There are no defined set of rules to have multiple silos in a site. Depending on how big or wide your site is, you can have multiple silos in place. For micro-niche sites, it is enough to start with single silos. Later you can add new silos to your enhanced
4. Is implementing silo a favor for the search engine or readers?
Implementing silo structure or organizing your pages is great to serve both your readers and search engines. Your site visitors could keep feeding up with relevant information through internal links. As well as, search engines find it easy to crawl your pages as you have structured architecture.
5. What often mistake that everyone will do while siloing?
Where people will often make mistakes is while link building. Considering Silo pages A, B and C; don’t interlink between child posts of silo page 1 and child posts of silo page 2. This way of linking creates irrelevancy between the pages.
6. What impact does it have on URL structure?
Having a properly organized silo structure in place, it does not have any effect on the URL structure.
Final Words about Silo Structure for SEO
If you are planning to have a new website, then don’t ever miss out to have silo structure for SEO on your site or blog. In these days, content quality and relevancy are the great deciding factor for the success of a site.
Plan in detail depending on your site nature, create a required number of silo pages and relevant posts, map posts under appropriate silo pages, wisely interlinks between the posts. You can get ranking for all the posts, moreover, if you want you can boost ranking for specific pages.
Google can crawl your pages with more relevancies meanwhile; you can engage your audience in providing in-depth information on which they have landed on your page.
I hope this detailed guide to implementing the silo structure for SEO will be helpful for you to come up with a strategic work-out. Try implementing silo structure on blog or website and let me know your views or clarifications if any in the comments section below.
Hi Sathish Arumugam,
This is a new concept, which I’ve not heard of before. Definitely should give a try especially beginners who are eager to design their site. Silo – the information is worthy with a clear-cut and in-depth, detailed explanation of it.
Kudos to the Silo structure picture – what else you need to know in detail about Silo. I will definitely give a try to my website pages and thanks to Sathish – First Time Right.
Sure, you can improve the user experience of your site with a proper content organization based on Silo architecture.
Hi, Sathish
Its absolutely new to me and hope to few many peoples about the Silo structure. Friendly explained to understand the needs of Silo from your post.
It gives me a chance to attempt a trail with one of my blog and return to you, if any questions.
Karthik,
I have been practicing it for years. And, I loved it. Try it for your blog or site and let us know your feedback.
Hi Sathish,
Thank you for your post on Silo Structure. Frankly speaking, this is the first time I’m hearing about Silo Structure. The time I read this, I started implementing in my blog posts. I’m very hopeful that this will work out and yield a result.
The screenshot you have shared was very informative and lucid enough to get full knowledge about Silo. The interlinking between child posts is the mistake I did in my post, but after reading your post, I rectified my mistake.
Very informative. Thanks a lot.
Ritu,
Internal links are a no-brainer if we do it rightly. Try organizing your content based on silo and interlink relevant articles. Make your users convenient to navigate through your relevant pages. Feel the difference.
Hi Sathish,
Thanks for this detailed article on Silo architecture. Also, I can grab ideas how to optimize my internal linking strategy. You have nicely uncovered everything about silo structure for SEO. Especially separately for niche blogs, micro-niche blogs, typical WordPress blogs. Great job.
Mike,
I thought of offering solutions to all sorts of bloggers like WordPress users, niche bloggers, etc. So, I did categorize it separately.
Hello Sathish,
Thanks for a great article!
You mentioned that we must have at least 4 post on each category
But is there a limit of post? What if I have 20 articles or even more?
I believe That will have many links inside a category
Vale,
You can have any number of posts under a category. But, it is not mandatory to have all the posts interlinked to a single page or post. Place 3 to 4 internal links in a post from the same category.
Hi Satish,
I was just researching on silo structures and came across this fantastic guide of yours, very well written. I really liked the content relevancy part targeting long tail keywords.
Thanks
Sidd.
Hi, great post, please clarify the concept of having outbound links on parent silo page and child silo pages as on one hand we want to keep link juice with in the site but on the other hand external links to other relevant authority sites also helps in SEO so what would be the solution, thanks
Jamshaid,
Thanks for taking time to read and drop your comment here. When it comes to external links or outbound links, make sure it is relevant and fits naturally into the content. That’s the key.
Great Article, Thank you, I’ve been searching for some information surrounding this topic!
I have a quick question, If possible, I was hoping you could assist with, thanks in advance.
If you have silos that crossover, how would you recommend them be set up?
For example, our niche are ‘weddings’ and ‘chair rentals’ in which there are ‘wedding chair rentals’. To keep proper silo structure would you recommend ‘wedding chair rentals’ fall under the ‘wedding’ niche page (‘wedding-rentals-location’) or the “chair rental niche page”(chair-rental-location.com). Currently the child pages for the “Chair Rentals Page” are the individual chairs we offer. There are only services listed under the weddings page.
Thanks!
Chad,
Thanks for stopping by here.
Between ‘weddings’ and ‘chair rentals’ parent silos – which one you have planned to target the most? If you have more content/posts lined up for ‘chair rentals’ silo, then put ‘wedding chairs rental’ under ‘chair rentals’ parent silo. Otherwise, tag it under ‘weddings’ parent silo since it is a wider topic and you will get more internal linking opportunities. Hope you get an idea now.
Hi Sathish,
Thank you for sharing valuable information. Recently I come to know about your blog. Your SEO tips are really helpful for me.
Now I am optimizing my internal linking strategy based on your guidance.
Hi Sathish!
Thank you for this awesome guide! However, I have a question. I am trying to implement this method onto my website which focuses on fashion. So I formed like four silo pages. Should I write an epic/pillar content on these pages and add in a related posts grid too on that page? Above, you have suggested writing more than 4000 words on each of those pages. Wouldn’t it be too long to read after? Hopefully, you could elaborate a little further on this, thank you!!