Navigating a website with no clear structure is similar to reading a book without a table of contents, in which the chapters are nowhere near in sequence. It would be extremely difficult to discover anything on such a website. As a result, you may have no choice but to click away and go away.
Users find a website to be uninteresting if it is not well-structured. This has a significant detrimental impact on the site’s credibility with search engines and results in lower rankings. As a result, every website owner should make placing websites high on his or her priority list. As a result, the need for siloing arises.
Siloing is the process of structuring your website’s content in a way that enhances your overall SEO while also providing a pleasant user experience. It makes it easier for search engines to identify what your content is about when your site is well-structured, allowing them to rank you higher for relevant searches.
So, in this guide, we will show you how to build effective silos on your WordPress website to make users and search engines fall in love with the site.
So let’s get to work!
What is a Silo?
To better grasp how to construct a website silo, it will be beneficial to first understand what a silo is. A silo is simply arranging and structuring a website so that subjects are connected. It refers to the practice of organizing web content in a systematic manner.
It’s possible to construct a silo in a hurry, but it isn’t what you can accomplish in a hurry. It necessitates careful planning, with content beginning from the bottom up. This illustration may help you visualize how a silo appears:
mysite.com/topic-1
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-2
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-3
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-4
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-5
mysite.com/topic-2
- mysite.com/topic-2/subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-2/subtopic-2
- mysite.com/topic-2/subtopic-3
mysite.com/topic-3
- mysite.com/topic-3/subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-3/subtopic-2
mysite.com/topic-4
- mysite.com/topic-4/subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-4/subtopic-2
and so on..
This is a brief demonstration of what a silo looks like. You can now see that it isn’t something you can dabble in; it needs lots of planning and work. But, if you want to know whether it’s worth all the effort and attention, ask yourself if this level of activity is necessary.
Let’s look at some of the advantages of creating your website’s silo. Then you can see if it’s something you should do for your website.
Some Benefits of Silo; Why Do You Need It?
It helps search engines better understand your website and rank it for relevant entities
The main reason for constructing a silo for your website is to improve its SEO performance. Search engines will better understand your site through the content you provide on it if you construct a silo into the site architecture.
Search engines want to know how your site is organized and how to find content so that they may give users the most relevant information when conducting searches on their platforms. As a result, enhance your SEO and assist search engines rank your website by making it easy to navigate and understand.
It provides a better user experience
This is another reason why you may want to consider creating a silo on your website. When your material is well-organized and user-friendly because you have a system for organizing it on your site, users will be able to discover the relevant information they need quickly.
If you don’t have a well-considered structure in place for your website, your material will frequently wind up in articles. This will make it more difficult to browse your website, much like going into a library where the books are not arranged into categories.
It makes interlinking super easy
Backlinks on your site are meant to assist people navigate and discover material across your site, as well as provide a framework for how you present your content. It’s quite simple to link between categories, subcategories, and the home page if you have a silo structure on your site.
Linking together your pages provides them a more complete picture of what’s going on at any one moment. This has the advantage of making search engines better crawl the rest of your site. Keep in mind that if your website is crawled, it will have a better chance of ranking for particular keywords and search phrases. Creating a silo can provide the extra boost your SEO needs to get your website to the top of search results for many of your keywords.
It increases the chance of having more content crawled on your site
Having a good silo on your site will encourage additional interlinking between your pages. As a result, search engines can more easily crawl your material by using the site’s internal links to discover more content elsewhere on the website. That once again benefits your website’s overall SEO.
How to Implement a Silo on Your Website
Let’s take a look at all of the advantages your site may get from having a siloed structure, and then discuss how to apply that on your own. It’s now the ideal time to get things right from the start if you’re establishing a website from scratch.
This initial design will serve as a solid foundation on which the rest of the website may be constructed. This is especially essential if the website will include numerous postings and pages, as it would be an authority site.
Before we move on, do you remember the illustration we gave in the earlier section of this guide? Keep it close to your heart because we will be using it again.
Getting the Pages Well-Structured Out
You may see right away what we are aiming to do in the illustration above. The subjects in the illustration would represent sections on your site. Subtopics would also exist. So the topics would be the main silo pages, and the subtopics would fall under individual “parent page” – that is the main topics.
You may also go a step further by creating subtopics for the subtopics. Because there is no limit to the number of nested pages that may be on a WordPress website, this will not be an issue. So, at the end of the day, it would probably appear like this:
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-3/another-subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-3/another-subtopic-2
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-3/another-subtopic-3
This kind of structure is common in very large websites. Having a silo structure on such websites will create easy navigation throughout the site.
Have a Better Understanding of Your Targeted Keywords
The keywords in the silo are the centerpiece – that’s what binds everything together. To build a successful silo structure on your website, you’ll need to have a better understanding of the keywords you’ll be targeting with it. You should focus on the most important keywords regardless of whether or not you have a complete list.
Don’t forget about long-tail keywords while determining your keywords. If you pick the correct ones, they might provide a substantial amount of traffic to your website. Also, consider the keywords that your rivals are targeting and think about them in your strategy. Collect as many keywords as possible; having a silo will make perfect sense.
On the other hand, before you can consider creating a silo on your website, you’ll need a large number of keywords. So, if you’re having trouble coming up with enough keywords for your website, it’s possible that you’re not searching hard enough. In that case, put in more time into your keyword research and acquire more long-tail keywords to your list to increase the likelihood of obtaining a profitable ranking.
For the most part, you’ll need at least five subtopics for your primary pages to completely create a silo on your website. However, so that the subtopics (child pages) may acquire enough link juice, it is advised that you don’t include too many topics on the main page.
The Roles of Interlinking
Not only is it necessary to create a well-organized structure while building a silo; that’s simply the easiest phase of the equation. Another vital component is connecting the pages, which makes the whole thing work properly as a whole.
The goal is to ensure that every page in the silo receives enough link juice. However, there were several different stringent methods floated as to how to connect within the silo so that each page received an appropriate share of the link juice. This doesn’t have to be difficult. Simply connecting related elements will do the trick, and it will improve your users’ experiences on your site.
What you should do, however, is to make your pages resemble the one shown in the image above and link to related material as often as possible. Your site will have a strong silo structure with enough interlinking in this manner.
Some Interlinking Guidelines to Bear in Mind
In order to properly interlink your website, there are certain standards you must follow. Using the scenario described above, let’s look at how some of these rules function. If you’re not sure which illustration we’re talking about, here it is again:
mysite.com/topic-1
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-2
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-3
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-4
- mysite.com/topic-1/subtopic-5
mysite.com/topic-2
- mysite.com/topic-2/subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-2/subtopic-2
- mysite.com/topic-2/subtopic-3
mysite.com/topic-3
- mysite.com/topic-3/subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-3/subtopic-2
mysite.com/topic-4
- mysite.com/topic-4/subtopic-1
- mysite.com/topic-4/subtopic-2
So, using the illustration, let’s take a look at some guidelines for interlinking within the pages in your silo:
- All content in each subtopic page should link back to the main silo page – the topic pages. An example is having content in the Topic-1/subtopic-4 page link back to the main page, which is the Topic-1 page.
- Each page can link to other pages within the same silo and also to the other main silo pages. For example, content in topic-1/subtopic-4 can link to content in topic-1/subtopic-2. At the same time, it can link to content in the topic-3 or topic-4 pages.
- The subtopic pages should not link directly to pages that are not in the same silo. Instead, they should link to the main silo page for the other page. For example, content in topic-1/subtopic-4 should not link to content in the topic-2/subtopic-1 page. Instead, it should link directly to topic-2 being the main silo page for topic-2/subtopic-1.
- The main silo pages should link to all the pages in their silo. For example, there should be interlinking from topic-1 to all the subtopics under the main topic (page) – topic-1/subtopic-1 … subtopic-2, …subtopic-3, etc.
- Each parent page can link to any of the other sub-topic and subtopic subtopics under them.
Adding Content to Your Silo Pages
If you’re creating a new website for this, you’ll want to make sure everything is properly planned out from the ground up. Adding fresh material to an existing silo structure and well-planned content would be no problem at all. It would simply slip into your established framework.
Do your homework, and make sure your material is keyword-optimized. Put related subjects together in your silo and connect the pieces using the linking guide stated above to link the content on your website.
Migrating Old Website to a Silo Structure: Simple Steps to Follow
It may be quite simple to create a silo structure for a new website. However, it won’t be as simple when you already have an established site with many contents on it. It is not something that is beyond our reach – in fact, it’s what you should do to improve the website’s user experience and SEO.
So to migrate your existing website to a silo structure, here are the step to follow to get you there:
#1: Spend enough time working out a plan
Migrating a pre-existing website to follow a particular silo structure is not something you should attempt without first having a solid strategy in place. Before you begin implementing the other phases, you’ll need to spend plenty of time planning everything out. Taking enough time to plan ahead will ensure that you get the intended outcome quickly and effortlessly.
#2: Comprehensive research is important
Siloing is based on categorizing material or pages together based on how connected they are. To determine relevant content on your site, use keywords to assess them. So take the time to do comprehensive keyword research and obtain all of the keywords you want to target, including any long-tail terms you believe you can rank for.
Even if you don’t eventually utilize all of the keywords you discovered, having enough keywords to create at least 5 subtopic pages beneath each main silo page is a good idea.
#3: Have a well-thought-out structure for the website
This is a deeper question about how your material will be structured on the website. To correctly answer this, consider if you would want to land on your own website and how you would have liked to navigate it as an audience.
Map the new silo structure based on the keywords you’ve discovered. Everything related should be placed in one silo, and that’s all there is to it.
#4: Analyze your existing content
Keep in mind that you’re establishing a silo structure to help your users and send the correct signal to search engines about your website. So make a complete record of everything on your website, including posts. Keep track of all of the pages and URLs on the site, as well. To make this easier for you to access, simply grab your Google sitemap and you’ll have the full list in no time.
After you’ve compiled a list of the articles, you may evaluate which one is doing well and which isn’t. This can be easier with tools like Google Analytics. Refine or improve content that aren’t performing as well and, if necessary, boost those that are doing well to achieve greater success.
However, URLs on your site must also be evaluated. Because you’ll be making many changes to the site in order for the content to line up with your planned silo structure, you’ll undoubtedly be making a lot of modifications. You don’t want useless links on your site, so what should you do?
Just make a list of all the pages with the new and old URLs, and use a simple 301 redirect in your .htaccess file to fix all the issues with bad or broken URLs. So add the following to your .htaccess file:
Redirect 301 /oldpage http://yourdomain.com/silo–1/newpage
Redirect 301 /oldpage2 http://yourdomain/silo–2/newpage
This is something you can either do manually or with a plugin. If you have an SEO plugin like Yoast installed, then it wouldn’t be difficult to add these redirect links to your .htaccess file. You only need to copy and paste in the lines and then hit the save button.
#5: Back up the website
The implementation phase is the next stage in your website’s life cycle after you’ve thoroughly examined it and addressed all of the issues that must be addressed, including broken URLs and insufficient content. Before that, you must make certain that your website is backed up. You will be able to restore your website to how it was before the installation if something terrible happens in the future.
Some web hosting businesses will even allow you to have a regular backup for your website; this may be done on a daily or weekly basis. As a result, if something goes wrong with the construction of your new silo system, you can simply request the most recent backup of your website.
#6: Create the main silo pages
The second stage of the process is to focus on developing the main silo pages, or subjects. Your goal when creating each main silo page should be to produce a page with high-quality material that may act as a good foundation for other pages beneath it. So strive for about 2000 words for this one.
Now, concentrate on the interlinking aspect. Keep in mind that each of your main silo pages should link to the subtopic (child) pages beneath it. But where should you put the link?
This might be in the content, which is where most people choose, or at the bottom of the page to connect to related pages or postings. However, don’t push things with your links. Allow each interlinking to occur naturally rather than forcing it.
#7: Start moving your existing posts to pages
This is considered by many to be one of the most time-consuming aspects of the procedure. Every post you’ve already established will need a new page. Then, after this step, you’ll have to transfer all of the material on your existing post to the newly created page. Migrating to a new WordPress site can be time-consuming and stressful, so prepare yourself for it, especially if you have several posts on your previous WordPress site.
To get this done, here are the simple steps to follow:
- Create a new page for each post: This is the same thing you will do for every post on the site. So, create a new page and title it appropriately – usually the same title as the post you are looking to move.
- Update the URL: Even if the parent page does not show up yet, don’t worry about it. Everything will align later on.
- Copy the text to the new page: copy the text of the old post and paste it into the new page. Then check for any details you may need to update due to change, including the post’s meta description.
Choose the right parent page for the new page you just created.
- Set the old post as “Private”: don’t discard the old post yet. Instead, set it as private so that if anything goes wrong with the page, you can also go back to the post without the fear of it being lost.
- Repeat this for all the existing posts on the website until you have all of them conforming to your new silo structure.
- Check to be sure everything went well: before you can relax for a job well done, you need to double-check to be sure you really did a good job. Just click on the “All Pages” view to quickly see if all your pages are arranged in a hierarchical order.
#8: Take care of your top navigation menu
The next step is to create a navigation menu at the top of the page that corresponds to each silo link. This isn’t really hard. You may make this process simpler with the built-in Menu function on a WordPress site.
If you’re not sure what to name the various menu sections, use the major silo topic as a placeholder. If the subject is too lengthy to fit in a navigation menu, though, consider using a shorter form of it instead. Title the silo menus with the keyword for each silo magician in mind, if feasible. You may also use synonyms or connected words instead of the term if you don’t like it.
#9: Test before you launch
After converting your old posts to new sites, you may be inclined to believe that is all there is to it. That’s not the case. You should test the website to ensure that everything is functioning properly. You don’t want your users to be the ones to find a problem as a result of the modifications. Try things out for yourself and look for any concerns you may have.
Not sure what things to check? Here is a list to help:
- Check the interlinking between the main silo pages and the subtopic pages. Check if they are all working well.
- Check to be sure the links of the navigation menu are working well. Also, check the links at the footer and sidebar too.
- Check for any broken links and fix them. A simple broken link checker tool can help with this.
- Check to be sure the Analytics Code is running
- Check to be sure the redirect code in the .htaccess file is working fine. A simple way to do that is to enter the URL of one of the old posts and see where it leads.