If You're Not Using a "SILO" structure in SEO... You Better Start

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1 If You're Not Using a "SILO" structure in SEO... You Better Start I've been doing SEO for well over a year and can tell you if you're not doing this it's a huge disservice. This is how Google creates an idea of what your website is about. When you silo your site you want to structure it so that the Main topic of the site is the home page. Within that main topic there are subtopics and that's how you can rank for long tails and more specific keywords. I would like to share a simple SEO siloing technique for WordPress that you can use to theme and silo your content to achieve higher search engine rankings. Theming implies creating a collective series of posts based on a similar semantic node. How to Theme and Silo Your WordPress Blog Siloing involves creating a process of selective categorization to create a topical website within a site to collectively concentrate ranking factor to a specific page (as the apex of the silo). This apex is the new preferred landing page for the theme / primary keyword. As a preferred page, it should only contain the primary keywords you intend to rank the pages it links to in the anchor text. For example, a typical category page in a properly optimized e- commerce site will have a category and then feature brands of that type of product. Page-1

2 Once you select a brand, then all of the makes and models of products from that mfg. are presented, or should be presented in links to the respective internal faceted pages. By the webmaster mirroring intent and using modifiers buyers use in combination with the brand, make or model in the title, h1 tags, contextual content and internal links (from page to page), a webmaster can create nested pages in that silo that correspond to the most popular searches. When you augment the primary category landing page (theme) with a series of semantically aligned make, model or product pages (using the brand/mfg. name as the primary thread) this layering of pages create a very distinct type of ranking factor. This compound effect resulting from the body of documents is a powerful ranking arsenal against competitors and works like a self-supporting algorithmic daisy chain using the buddy system to catapult keywords and their respective landing pages in to the spotlight in search engines. While the example below is based on a simple theme using 5 siloed posts, you can see how this could be applied on a larger scale (such as Wikipedia or Amazon) by implementing a few simple rules in the site architecture, URL / naming conventions and internal links collectively. How to Easily Implement Siloing Figure 1Example of a Simple 5 x 5 Silo Site STEP 1: Permalinks Set up the permalinks using /%category%/%postname%/ in the permalinks settings page using the custom option. STEP 2: Category Selection Create your categories (which should be keywords you want to rank for that have over 2,000,000 competing pages or more. For example, if you wanted to rank for best affiliate programs, then you would create a category called best affiliate programs (then build nested content in the category as silos) to reinforce the keyword. Page-2

3 Ideally, you would use at least 5 other related or synonymous keywords or keyword variations as part of the semantic cluster such as: best paying affiliate programs top affiliate programs best affiliate networks review affiliate programs best affiliate software The critical thing is that all of the keywords used for posts under the main category are (a) related preferably with the shingles (group of words) based on the target phrase using modifiers and other popular search terms and (b) that each of those pages in the silo all link to the primary preferred landing page (more on that next). STEP 3: Create Landing Page and Links Since WordPress is automatically programmed with pages to take precedence over posts, create a page named the exact same thing as your category i.e. best affiliate programs. This page will now override the category (which would have been a cyclical page with the nested posts on it). Now, as a result of the supporting content in the silo, this new page is a powerful landing page which you can showcase your primary keyword, the value proposition, sales copy or conversion objective to facilitate rankings and sales. Over time, as a result of the internal links from the nested (siloed) pages, the theme (best affiliate programs) a.k.a the category will start to develop authority as a result of the pooling link flow bubbling up from the internal related pages. To create continuity you could (1) build links to the internal siloed pages or (2) build links to the preferred landing page (with the variations of keywords found in the siloed post). Over time, the landing page will rank for its primary more competitive key phrase and any possible variation that is passing on its ranking credit as a result of being linked within the silos. Ideally, on the siloed pages, you can create a custom page that omits the primary navigation, this way it forces the link flow to move a certain way throughout the site (through the contextual links on the page). Your website scales relevance while gaining traction as a semantically themed keyword cluster and using a simple plugin like SEO Ultimate and the Deeplink Juggernaut, you can add autolinks automatically within content based on any occurrence of a keyword on any page within the silo. You can download SEO Ultimate from WordPress. Page-3

4 In this instance, any time the word affiliate program is mentioned, you could have it auto-linked to the preferred landing page. To summarize, rinse and repeat this up to 15 themes per website and ensure that the silos are at least 5 posts deep. Make sure you have a new Page to create a capstone for the category and make sure you are building deep links from other websites to augment the pages in the theme or silo. The Benefits of Siloing By cultivating this process deliberately, you can create powerful sites within sites to function as dynamos that create a specific type of keyword relevance within a website and when connected with other silos (through the navigation) exponentially devour every possible keyword combination in sight. It is important to choose each theme and spoke of the hub (categories and supporting articles) wisely. Each page becomes a hub page capable of ranking itself and the next, and the next another page and so on (per infinitum). Two websites you may be familiar with that share this architecture is (a) Wikipedia and (b) Amazon, and you can see just how appealing and effective this technique is for information retrieval algorithms. This is due to the fact that it mirrors a perfect example of structure and order that search engines reward. This algorithmic continuity based on semantically overlapping shingles i.e. groups of words, functions like a pyramid with a solid base and streamlined apex. A theme is a cluster of siloed (nested) pages all based on a similar semantic structure. For example, instead of mixed marbles, red marbles go in the red column, blue in the blue and yellow in the yellow column. Even if variations exist through various modifiers alternative prefixes and relevant suffixes (such as round, small, solid, swirled, etc.) those modifiers are nested within their respective hierarchy. While this is an analogy, it conveys the purpose of reinforcing natural relationships as they occur to create structure out of chaos and in the process becomes a potent source for SEO ranking power. As you can see, creating siloed WordPress sites can be tedious and time consuming as there are many moving parts to consider. Fortunately, there is a simple and effective way to take advantage of the SEO power of siloing without having to manually create silo architecture structures for all of your WordPress sites. Page-4

5 Peter Garety is launching P1 Traffic Machine WordPress plugin on May 20. Peter is a well respected Internet Marketer, SEO expert and software creator. Watch the video below to learn more about this amazing plugin This is push button simple Page-5

6 That s it. Enjoy the power of nesting topical content in categorized silos and leveraging the power of internal links to funnel link-flow throughout your posts and outrank your competition using the power of on page optimization and site architecture to your advantage. Certainly you can do this without software, but if you re like me and you own multiple blogs, I m sure you ll agree that if there is a way to save time, increase productivity and make monmey online faster using a proven software, it is well worth the investment. Check out P1 Traffic Machine and decide for yourself! To Your Success, Bob Coleman Page-6