Website structures and specifically the silo structure might be the most underrated SEO strategy.
Most people don’t pay enough attention to it.
But the way you structure your website affects:
So what’s the best website structure for SEO?
Simple – a silo structure.
Here’s everything you need to know about silo structures, plus a few examples so you can create a silo structure for your own site.
What Will I Learn?
An SEO Silo is a website architecture method that organizes content into sections based on themes or topics. This structure improves search engine optimization by grouping similar content together, increase relevance and authority for specific keywords and make the site more navigable for users and search engines.
Take a look at my blog for example. I have a silo architecture that organises my content to make it more accessible.
Each of these categories is then broken down into core topics. For the “Learn SEO” category some of the core topics are:
Each blog post I write is grouped under one of these core topics. And each topic directly relates to the category that it sits under.
I even include a table of contents in each blog, which creates a silo style structure in each individual blog post.
The result is a logically organised website that makes it easy for readers to find what they want. It also means a search engine like Google can easily understand my site structure which can have a powerful positive impact on SEO results.
There are two main ways to structure your site…
Flat structure simply means that everything is one click away from your home page.
If you have a blog, all of the blog posts will be linked directly from the home page. It’s the same for every page of your site.
There are no categories or topic groupings like there are in the Silo structure.
Here’s the problem:
If you have a lot of website pages and create a lot of blog content, the flat structure just doesn’t work:
Flat structures only work for small websites.
Silo structure is best for most websites because all of your website content and pages are organised into logical groups.
Both humans and search engines can understand this structure better.
This improves user experience and can increase your SEO results.
If you are designing your website right now… You must consider your structure before you build anything.
Think of site structure as the structure of your house-
As your site grows, how you structured your website in the beginning will considerably affect your ability to scale.
You need to have a clear outline of your structure so you build it correctly from the get-go.
Here are three big SEO benefits of using a Silo structure.
One of the most important reasons for using a silo structure is the positive impact on user experience.
Here’s what I mean:
Your primary goal with your website architecture should be to help users find what they are looking for as fast as possible.
Why?
If you land on a website and can’t find what you’re looking for quickly, the first thing you do is hit the back button and leave the site.
Silo structures make website navigation easy.
Your visitors don’t have to think much to understand how the information is organised. They just click on the categories and then choose the topics they are interested in. Done.
The website will be more intuitive and easy to use.
As a result, your user experience metrics improve significantly-
The truth is all of these metrics can immediately be improved by just updating your site architecture.
The silo structure is the best website architecture you can implement to make your website as user-friendly as possible.
Search engines consider a keyword’s relevance in relation to the content when indexing any website.
They also look directly at the context of each keyword and how it relates to the general topics the website covers.
Here’s what I mean:
A piece of content about “the high-quality protein powder” fits nicely under the category “protein supplements“. Google can see the relevance between:
What about the context of the website in general?
If your website is about “supplements“, the piece of content makes sense in the context of your niche. Google is more likely to then rank that piece of content higher in the SERPs.
If your website is about home repairs, there isn’t much relevance between the piece of content and the other website topics.
This is likely to affect the ability of your piece of content to rank.
Keyword relevancy and context are essential if you want to rank in the Google search results. So,hHow does this relate to using a silo structure?
Using silos to organise all of your website content ensures that every piece of content is relevant to the website:
This makes it much easier to rank your content in the Google search results and get more visibility for your website as a result.
If you didn’t know…
Internal linking is one of the most powerful and underrated SEO strategies available to website owners. A good internal link structure can:
Google uses internal links to crawl your website and better understand your content.
The more internal links you build, the easier it is for Google to index your website. This can lead to an immediate improvement in your SEO.
So then you need to have a website structure that best facilitates internal linking. The silo structure does exactly that.
First and foremost, the silo structure connects more pages together. You’ll end up with topic clusters that feature content only relevant to that topic.
From a search engine perspective, this is a big plus.
Your sitemap design will be simplified and search engines can effectively understand which content relates to each other. They now know where to direct their users when they are searching.
As a second benefit…
A silo structure helps your website visitors by helping them find other relevant pages to the topic they’re interested in.
This keeps them moving around your website and can even increase leads and sales.
Bottom line: A silo structure is the ultimate website architecture type.
I get it…
Getting your head around silo structures and website architectures can be overwhelming.
If you need to implement a silo architecture on your own website, pay attention to this next section.
The following examples will help you understand how to create a silo website structure for your own site.
CNET is a huge website that produces tons of content in lots of different niches. They use a silo structure within the website to better organise all of their content.
CNET is a great example because its content covers a range of different niches.
Website visitors that are there to read about “wellness” don’t want to read about “cars“.
The silo architecture allows CNET to organise all of their content into different niches and then break it down into specific sub-categories covering the entire niche.
This means that CNET website visitors can:
And if you know anything about CNET, you’ll know that the majority of their traffic comes from the search engine Google.
Even though their content isn’t specifically focused on just one niche, the organisation of their website using silo means that Google understands each piece of content easily.
The result is high rankings for almost everything they write.
Most ecommerce sites use silo structures to help visitors find products faster and easier. The structure helps store visitors make sense of what might otherwise be confusing.
Take a look at the Poppin.com silo website structure.
Poppin sells thousands of different office furniture and supplies.
They use a silo architecture to help their customers find exactly what they want as quickly as possible.
But the silo structure has another big benefit…
Google can easily understand what kind of products belong to each category. This will give Poppin a huge SEO boost in their website rankings.
The Poppin silo structure design kills two birds with one stone…
Better user experience and high rankings in the SERPs.
That’s silo structures for you!
Now you know how a silo structure benefits your website visitors and helps you increase your SEO traffic.
Use the examples above as a model for your own website. This will help you understand how to implement a robust website structure that will benefit you down the road.
Remember:
Don’t underestimate the importance of website structure.
Improving your website structure can:
If you haven’t already, update your website to an organised silo structure now.
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