Many people make the mistake of believing that once a website is created, visitors will come to view it naturally. Truth be told, It won’t happen on its own.
When your main goal is to generate traffic and profit, you will unlikely achieve this goal if your site is not optimized in search engines. The structure of a website is not only important to visitors but search engines also. This is why you need to consider both the user experience and search engine optimization (SEO) when running a website.
So, if you are serious about optimizing and boosting your website to rank in search engines, never neglect the power of a Silo Structure.
What is Silo Structure on a Website?
A silo structure is all about designing and organizing your website content in a way that will attract humans and search engines. It basically helps to categorize content on the site for SEO while creating an amazing user experience.
For example, your website is about personal injury. You would have links to different categories such as car accidents, motorcycle accidents like here. On these category pages, you would link to more content available for that category. So, if you were to link to the car accident category page, this would have links to pages with all stuff about car accident matters that is extremely important for search engines.
As another example, on Im-a-Puzzle, you can find different jigsaw puzzles by searching through categories of pictures, from places to animals. Each of these is silos for specific types of content.
When creating the silo structure for your website, there are two different principles involved which are:
- Physical content silos
Physical content silos enable users to access various categories by clicking links on the website such as navigation bar, sidebar, or footer.
- Virtual content silos
Virtual content silo harnesses internal links to link pages with matching content together seamlessly.
This makes it easy for your target market to establish a clear connection between your web content and your website’s theme.
The process of having a silo structure on a website will allow you to have a clear subject relevance, while also building the foundation for ranking higher for top searched keywords.
The importance of a silo structure
The lack of structure on a website makes it difficult for search engines to crawl and index your site. So if yours isn’t structured in a way that makes sense to them, you’re hurting your chances of ranking well for your target keywords.
A silo structure is going to benefit your website greatly, and some of them include:
- Great user experience
The slightest problem on your website can drive visitors off. The silo structure helps improve your website’s information architecture and organizes the content on your website for better user engagement.
- Provide a clear message
If you have a lot of content on a single page, there is a high probability that your visitor gets confused when they land on your page. Using a silo structure on your site enables customers to understand each content at a glance and makes it easier to get the information they need.
- Improve organic rankings
Implementing a silo content structure will enable search engines to find it easier to understand what the website is about and also push you to rank in top search results.
How To Build a Silo Structure on Your Website
Implementing a silo structure might take time, but the added authority it brings to your website will be worth all the effort. Here are 6 ways to build a silo structure for your site and make a difference in your search engine ranking:
- Download a list of your blog posts
Creating a list of all the posts present on your website is vital. To make it easier, you can use XML/CSV plugins to export data on your WordPress website, and then download all of your published blog posts as the CSV file.
2. Create a Spreadsheet in Google Sheets
As you start using your web pages, you will see the importance of keeping all information stored neatly in one file.
During silo structuring, it is essential to create a new spreadsheet in Google Sheets and import into that sheet the CSV file you just exported from your website during the download stage. Then add a new column in the sheet which will contain your blog titles and can be named content silo blog titles.
3. Determine your topic cluster
The next thing you need to do is to determine your topic cluster. Topic clusters are pieces of content that branch off the target pages. For example, if your main topic is about Japanese food,
the cluster content could cover subjects like sushi for delivery or Japanese restaurants.
To easily segment keywords, you can use the keyword grouping tool by SE Ranking. It will help you expand your semantics with new variations, check the search volume on the fly, and group keywords for further distribution across your website.
All the pages should be related to one clearly defined theme to appeal to visitors and search engines. The more pages linking to the content silos, the greater the chances of ranking at the top.
4. Create categories for each topic cluster
When a visitor lands on your page, they are most times interested in getting answers to a particular question. Creating categories for each of your topic clusters makes this easier.
Using WordPress, it automatically creates a ‘category’ page for each category. The category page will help link to the individual blog posts and list the blog posts that fall under that category, together with a brief excerpt from the article.
5. Include a target keyword within appropriate silos
Once your overall topic is defined and categorized, it’s time to target keywords within appropriate silos. It would be best if you thought of all the relevant keywords you would need on your site.
So when you are creating pages on your website, you will include these keyword phrases with high demand and low competition, making it easier to rank well in the search engines.
6. Create internal links
When your website is newly set up, providing quality content and linking them internally is integral in establishing your rankings and generating traffic.
Many individuals and marketers put more effort into gaining external links because they are a sign of authority while neglecting internal links. However, internal links do a lot in search engines too. They can help:
- Assist search engine crawlers in establishing how your pages are connected;
- Better define your keywords;
- Give you higher rankings in the search results;
- Play a major role in SEO.
Without considering an internal linking strategy when building your silo structure, Google and other search engines might find it a little challenging to determine relevant content on your site.
Final Words
A silo structure is an excellent way of creating a strong website architecture while improving SEO. Every process will take time, but it only gets better when you start seeing the results.
By organizing your site using silo, your page’s theme density will be upgraded, which is a powerful factor in staying ahead of your competitors in search engines ranking.
