Search engines place those websites on the top of the results that they find the most relevant on the subject/theme for a given search query. Therefore, the main objective of SEO is to make improvements to a website so that it’s relevant not only to targeted keywords but themes matching those particular keywords.
Usually, a website is a disconnected web of different topics without a central theme. Such websites have to settle with poor search engine rankings for their target keywords.
Creating a silo structure will establish your website’s topical relevance and put in place the building blocks for higher rankings in the search engines. It’s an essential part of search engine optimisation but is often regarded as an advanced topic.
Implementing a silo structure for your business website can be a formidable task, especially for organisations that offer multiple products/services, service a variety of industries, have multiple locations or even blog posts.
When not implemented correctly, search engines won’t be able to understand your website. In the end, SEO authority won’t flow across your pages and the search engines will have a tough time indexing your pages. That’s the last thing you want!
However, when you correctly organise your website’s content, you will benefit from several benefits including:
- Faster indexation of updated and new pages
- Parent pages will have a lot of authority
- Your website will benefit from better user experience and behaviour flow
- Authority will travel to important pages that are difficult to build backlinks to
- Your website would become more relevant to the topic, thereby ranking higher
What is a Silo Structure in SEO?
An SEO silo structure is the best way to organise content on a given topic. Creating a silo structure will ensure search engines and users can navigate your website easily.
A silo structure is essentially a deep website architecture that is locally organised. The site’s hierarchical structure is identified by topics and subtopics. This means that closely related topics are structurally close to each other. In short, silos are a way to categorise your site’s content into different categories.
So related pages are grouped together either through linking or structurally, to create the website’s keyword-based themes. So you can create a silo structure for your website to differentiate the various content themes so that search engines clearly understand what your website is about.
This means search engines will be able to crawl, index and rank your site efficiently. A case study conducted by Moz found that Google gauges the quality of a site’s silo structure to rank pages within that silo.
Creating a silo structure for your website helps improve the relevance of your webpages for your target keywords. The more topically relevant you publish in a silo, the higher are the chances of Google finding your website to be more topically relevant. So if Google has ranked a website at the top of the search results, it means the website has covered all the major search queries.
Instead of letting the website to be considered as a disorganised mix without any focus in terms of keywords or topics, an SEO silo structure divulges what the website is actually about and helps position your site as a leading source on relevant topics.
Internal Linking
Coming back to the idea that a website is split into separate sections of topically relevant pages, internal links are usually not considered in a blog. Typically, blogs link out to service/product pages, but those pages don’t usually link back to the blog.
This practice of one-way linking is not an ideal practice, but nevertheless, it’s a common practice.
When you silo your website, internal linking will become a lot easier to implement. Essentially, each silo will link to same and lower-level pages, as well as upper-level pages, given that the topics are in the same category.
Internal linking across your silo structure will deliver stellar SEO value. Internal linking will extend authority to other pages show the search engines that your website is extremely relevant for this particular topic.
Keyword-Rich Content
Content is at the heart of SEO. However, just about any content won’t cut it. Your content must be written with specific aspects in mind to achieve the standard that Google and other search engines expect today.
It must meet several guidelines before it’s considered useful.
The very first step in the process of content creation is to identify how much content must be written in order to achieve top rankings. This will pave the way for creating keyword-rich content.
Although content alone won’t suffice to improve your search engine rankings, having adequate content is important to take your website to the top of the search engine results.
How to Create an SEO Structure for Your Website?
Here’s a brief look at the process of creating an SEO silo structure for your website.
- Step 1 – Identify the common theme for your website. What content do you already have and plan to publish, and what is the overarching theme?
- Step 2 – Select your silo strategy. It’s time to decide how you’ll implement the website structure that identifies the themes clearly – virtual siloing and physical siloing or virtual siloing only.
- Step 3 – Plan the linking structure. Assess the link structure and identify how to connect the pages. You will need at least 5 supporting pages to build a silo theme.
- Step 4 – Build the silos. Write and publish quality content that’s optimised for your target keywords for each themed silo.
Conclusion
Siloing your website is the perfect way to organise your content. Although creating an SEO silo structure is an uphill task, it can have far-reaching benefits – search engines will be able to crawl, index as well as rank your site better.
Creating a page that’s dedicated to a topic and other pages with other supporting content will establish to the search engines your relevance to the topic and will help improve your search engine rankings.
Internal linking in a silo structure can further improve the SEO juice of your website by spreading authority across the pages.
Need help creating an SEO silo structure for your website? Get in touch with us for a free 30-minute consultation to see how we can create a silo structure for your website.
