On-page SEO is more important than ever and structuring your sites correctly can give you a substantial edge on your competition. Siloing is certainly not a new concept, but it is a core component to on-page/on-site SEO that is well worth understanding (and implementing).
There are many different theories surrounding silos and how to do them. The fundamentals are very simple however; Interlink your articles that are relevant to each other. You can get all kinds of technical with it and ensure that certain pages are interlinked, but the strategy that we have found to work is very simple…
- Home page links to main pillar articles
- Pillar article links to related content
- Related content links back to pillar articles and other related articles (we don’t get too scientific with this > just link to content that makes sense to link to!)
Why Silo?
- User experience. From a user perspective, interlinking articles helps direct your visitors through to other related content. Makes sense.
- User metrics. It makes sense that Google would factor in average page views, time on site, bounce rate etc into their ranking algorithm. Littering each page with internal links will increase the likelihood of average page views and time on site increasing and bounce rate decreasing.
- Link juice. Internal linking is HUGE for SEO right now. We’re seeing internal pages rank without any external links, purely due to domain authority and internal linking.
How We Silo Niche Sites
As always, questions and comments are welcome below!
Wouters says:
Gents, one other interesting post, thanks again.
I will for sure implement this to test it for my own Amazon niche sites on top of the current interlinking of articles.
I do have a question about this subject, but than between different sites.
When I have two Amazon sites in the same niche, is it wise to than also link to related content between the two sites?
They are highly relevant to each other (with different hosting, registrar etc.), but also both receiving PBN links, giving Google of course extra information when linked together.
So I wonder if the benefit outweighs the drawback in this case.
GregNunan says:
Nothing wrong with shooting a link across to another site if it is relevant that’s not against and “Google rules”. Just think about user experience. If it makes sense to link them together, go ahead.
Mike says:
HI,
Do you ever make use or sidebar links either through tree menus (which can be siloed) or global navigation? Does your experience show that these types of site links limit ranking potential? I think there are definitely times where global sidebar links make a site more user friendly. What are your thoughts about this?
GregNunan says:
Hey Mike, I don’t use site-wide sidebar links personally. In content links are more powerful, especially when surrounded by relevant text. And I like using Related Links so that I can quickly add only relevant links in a sidebar on a page by page basis. Again, easy to do with smaller sites but probably not recommended for authority sites due to how messy it is to track.
Mike says:
Hi Greg,
Thanks for the reply. I was playing around with moving my global side bar links to the main nav bar incorporating drop down menus with sub pages the way the video describes.
My goal was to avoid the global aspect of the side bar links on the sub pages. I do not want every sub page linking to every other page on the site, in order to funnel the juice.
The problem is when I you look at the page source, all of the links in the drop down menu are still showing. So doesn’t that mean that when Google looks at a sub-page and these drop down menus are showing links going all over the site, it is no different than if they were all in the sidebar? Am I missing something here or are menu links treated differently?
Thanks!
-Mike
GregNunan says:
Yep, any articles in the main nav menu will essentially be site wide. But not all articles will be in the main nav menu. The majority will only be linked to from pages in that main nav. Didn’t actually point that out in the video. Will edit when I get a sec.
Gary Kirwan says:
Good explanation Greg. I have known about the concept of siloing but somehow never quite show how the internal linking should be done as some say don’t link outside of silo to other silos on the website for example. Sounds like you found the internal linking must just be relevant.
My questions are for bigger sites or sites that uses categories and posts instead of pages. I’m guessing it should be where the category is the main key phrase with lots of well written relevant posts in the category silo all internal linking to each other? Is there a way with posts to make a post in the silo the top relevant post by the internal linking structure?
For WordPress page hierarchy management have you checked out plugins like this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/swifty-page-manager/
GregNunan says:
Haven’t seen that plugin thanks.
Re linking outside of the silo, I believe that linking out to related pages on the site and to other sites helps ranking. It’s a sign of the relevance of the article and Google loves resourceful articles that help users (makes sense!).
With posts/categories, the easiest way to do siloing is to set the category in the main nave menu and then treat that category page in the same way that I have outlined the main pillar article should be linked to. And yes, interlink relevant posts with each other.
Dima says:
Hi, Greg!
I didn’t understand completely categories/posts siloing. Categories are usually look like list of the posts excerpts on the page. Am I need to add an article to these categories pages so that I’ll have an article together with posts excerpts? Today I have categories in main nav menu and each category is a list of posts excerpts. But I think it’s not the best for passing link juice. This can be applied to bigger sites too I think?
Thanks.
GregNunan says:
As you have it is fine > category in the nave menu that shows excerpts. But it’s not my specialty as I always work with pages. Might Get Nate Tsang to do an article on authority site siloing.
Dima says:
I’ll be happy to know how to do that. I think many people will want too.
Look forward for this article.
Thanks!
Brett says:
I needed this! I have a niche site that has a sort of makeshift silo, but you made it a lot more clear. But anyways even with my silo, my new content seems to rank in the top 4 pages within a few days without any backlinks.
GregNunan says:
Nice result getting that high up so soon Brett.
Yisroel Reiss says:
Just a small nerdy question. Do I make any changes to maximize the use of this in wordpress, like in the permalink structure, etc. Thanks.
GregNunan says:
We usually set permalinks to /postname
Alan says:
Hi Greg,
Thanks for another great tutorial. Now I know how to get started on building a silo site for optimal link juice to rank internal pages.
What are you thoughts on re-building a recently built site that is not ranking yet due to Google’s sandbox?
I have a 2 month old amazon affiliate site that is not ranking yet for any of the main keywords. The home page has over 3200 words and there are 5 posts. I have a few PBN links pointing to the home page.
Since the site is not ranking yet, could the site get a boost if I re-built it using the silo method? And not receive any Google penalties?
Thanks,
Alan
September PTC student
GregNunan says:
Hey Alan,
Just move the main article onto an inner page and setup a short home page that links to the main article as per my video.
No penalty for this and you should expect to see some movement within the next couple months. 6 months to page 1 is about the mark at the moment for most sites.
Marc says:
Great vid guys. Question: are you saying that your top nav should contain every page of a 50 page site? ie 5 parent links each with 10 child links. wouldnt that dilute the link equity flowing to your more important parent pages?
GregNunan says:
Nope, shallow nav is better. You don’t even have to have sub pages in the nav, can just be linked to from the main article that is in the nav.
MMD says:
So in Marc’s example with the 50 page site, let’s say those top 5 nav pages contained links each to 3 smaller child pages (not part of the nav, just other pages of relevant content). If this is a 50 page site, how would the reader find those other 50 – (3 + 5*3) = 32 pages of content? From a user experience it seems like they would be difficult to find off the main page.
GregNunan says:
Through internal linking in content and in sidebar using Related Links. Just directing people to relevant pages.
Tom Sicada says:
Hello Greg,
As per your video, are your 10 x homepage anchor text that link out to inner pages the same as the ones (3 of them) on the navigation menu pages (which are for more important pages)? Are they essentially linking out to the same pages? If they are the same, perhaps making those links on the nav menu pages as NoFollow would help preserve link juice equity of the site? Just a thot…
– Tom
GregNunan says:
Sure, could no follow them.
Kim says:
Love the video, and the very simple instructions. I’ve always made siloing complicated for myself by using posts and categories instead of just using pages.
I would, however, never recommend nofollowing internal links. As we all know, it doesn’t preserve linkjuice, and I’ve always felt it was kind of a weird signal to send to G, that you don’t fully stand behind links to your own content.
Jirawat is me says:
Silo is really powerful website structure in 2015. Some of my clients use few silo page with some high quality backlinks and can rank 1st page of Google SERP. Thank you for this post.