One of the more highly effective methods a SEO can use when setting up or updating and existing website is siloing. So what’s siloing anyways?
Siloing is basically organizing your web-site into larger categories, applying internal linking to manage the overall page rank and theme. The term soloing comes from the silos you see on a typical farm. You may have wheat in one and rice in another. Together they represent the farm as a whole.
The same page rank and theme technique can be applied to a website, Initially you will have to determine your top keyword terms. These should consist of category terms using 2-3 keywords.
Our Siloing Example
To explain this we’ll create a fictitious site and use Bend Oregon Vacations as our overall topic. Primary keywords would consist of Hotels, Places, Restaurants and Info for example.
Let’s step back and look at our topic keywords. The word “hotels” is too specific. For us to rank with Hotels is a bit unrealistic. We might reconsider a less competitive keyword phrase such as lodging reviews instead. As an example we could use: Bend Lodging Reviews, Bend Places To See, Bend Restaurants, Bend Calendar.
These keywords are what are know as our top solos. Your header or top navigation bar is the best location for them. The resulting pages for these solos may consist of relevant articles you may have written for each of these phrases.
When organizing your links this way you are essentially telling the search engines you have 4 primary topics on your site and then pointing them to all your posts. In a sense its creating a usable sitemap. By theming them in to distinctive sections you empower your navigation to both the search engines and your visitors.
What Are The Steps To Siloing Again?
- Decide in the overall topic for your site
- From your topic create primary silos try using 2-3 keywords
- Refine keywords if too competitive
- Locate the silos in your header (prominent on the page at top)
Cross-linking to other Silos
Try to minimize cross-linking, or linking from one of your articles or post to another in a different category. If you can need to crosslink, try linking to the top level silo instead. For example, if your post is about “where to stay” and you want to include a link about the “where to eat” to the top page listing all your restaurants.
Linking more to a specific post in your site than linking to a top silo dilutes the importance of the structure. The more you link to them the more higher ranking you will receive to these top level categories.
