You are probably asking what is a website silo structure and why do I need one?
I’ve been struggling with how to make this subject interesting because frankly you should have a website silo strategy. In this post I’ll explain what a website silo structure and I promise I’ll do my best to explain this in an easy to understand manner.
I’m all about building great websites for my clients and driving massive traffic to them. That’s all great, but if you haven’t thought about how you want to organize your content you’re missing a big opportunity to rank your site higher with the search engines and provide a great experience for your visitors.
Confused? Let me break this down for you…
5 Things You Need to Know about a Website Silo
Think organization, better customer experience and improved SEO rankings when you hear the the word website silo. Organization and inproved user experience are probably two of the biggest benefits I can think of when creating and a website silo. When you have those two things in order…you’ll get more points from Google because your visitors will naturallty stay on your website and consume more of your content.
Let’s dive in to the 5 things you need to know about website silos so you can get started creating one for your website.
1. What is a Website Silo Structure?
If I could pick one word to describe a website silo that would be organization.
Simply put, a website silo is about creating strong keyword related themes on your website in order to improve the relevancy of your site in the eyes of the search engines.
And the best way to achieve this is by organizing your content
Basically you want to organize your website content around your keywords and make sure you link your content to the page you want to rank for. What you want to do is to make sure that when you plan your site you organize your pages around the page you want to rank for. Most often you want to make sure you rank highly for your home page so you’ll want link to and from that page from other pages on your site.
Creating a structure and organizing your content helps to:
- Give your website visitors a clear path of where to go next on your site, lowering your bounce rate
- Gives the search engines have a very clear idea of what your site is about,
- Improves your keyword relevancy for the keywords you are targeting.
Bottom line is that Organization Matters
Search engines are more likely to rank your site higher for your keyword when the content is organized. This is why I love to create resource pages for clients on topics we know their audience is searching for.
Let’s use Infidelity as an topic example from a client of mine who is a Marriage Therapist. Here’s how we walked through the process of building his resource page
- We researched and found hot topics for our client who then wrote a series of articles on the subject.
- Then we created a resource page on the topic and linked all of the articles to and from that page.
- In the eyes of the visitor to the site we did them a big favor by giving the one resource page to find out everything they would need to know about the subject and
- In the eyes of the search engines, the client looks like an authority on the subject because his content is neatly organized.
Check out the resource page we built for our client right here: http://toddcreager.com/survive-infidelity/
The one thing I want you to remember is organization. When you put content into a logical order on a resource page for your readers, you’re doing them a favor. You’re making it super easy for them to consume more of your content.
And by doing so they stay on your website longer and are more likely to sign up for your email list.
2. How do you get started creating a Website Silo Structure?
I want you to think of siloing as building the foundation of your website.
The best way to get started is by organizing and putting your main website structure in place, then build from there. You still need good content to fill the silos, back links to that content and good on page SEO.
This is why it is important to use categories when you organize your posts on your website.
Doing that makes it easier to gather all of the related content for a certain subject. Think of it like organizing your files in a filing cabinet or on your computer hard drive.
To help you get started thinking about creating your own website sile, here is what a silo structure might look like:
3. A well executed website silo structure improves your visitor’s experience
When you group related content you provide a better experience for your visitor.
Doing this makes it easier for them to find a lot of information at their finger tips without having to search or click many times to get at it. By doing this you are more likely to reduce your bounce rate which is the number of visitors that leave your site after only viewing a single page.
The key is to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for.
Make sure you keep the content links related to the category they are nested under and resist from cross linking categories unless it makes sense. Don’t cross link just to build links.
Be methodical and logical, think about how you can help improve your audience’s experience and you can’t go wrong.
4. Getting started building your website silo
Start by creating a spreadsheet, you can download one I’ve created below to get you started organizing your website. Doing this exercise will serve three purposes:
- It will help you organize your site
- Help you create a content calendar as you will see where the opportunities are for new content
- Create a great user experience on your site and make you look like an authority to your follower.
CLICK HERE to download your website silo spreadsheet to get you started and I have added easy to follow directions to help you fill it out.
- Content planning and tracking
- Tracking conversion rates at the page level – add your metrics for landing pages to track your conversions
- Determine gaps in the content strategy
- Keep your pages up to date and remove outdated web pages
- Organize a plan for a a new site build – know what content should be moved and what shouldn’t
CLICK HERE to Download your copy of the website silo template below and get started using it.
Leave me a comment and let me know how you plan to use it!
