Quick Concepts
A silo essentially means a category of content … but it also means that as you drill down into that sub-section of the site, that you access content that you can’t access anywhere else on the site – meaning you effectively group content and have neighborhoods – or – ’silos’ within the site, concentrating the value and topical relevance for that area of the site.
Here are 3 ways you can utilize this strategy:
1. Plan content groups logically from the beginning of the site
2. Use URL structure /sub-folder/sub-item
3. Create intuitive sub-nav systems
Full Transcription
Hey, how’s it going, this is Tim Brown, and this is another episode of “Google Likes It…” Today we’re going to be talking about how Google likes it when you silo your content. So what does a silo mean? Well, a silo essentially means a particular category of content. Google likes it when you have categories delineated within your website, and you can only access that content from that category. So, if you go into a library, for instance, there are different sections of the library. There might be comics, and fiction, and non-fiction, and history, and religion, and science. And essentially within those particular categories, you know what you’re going to find. But, you don’t need to access all of that content from the front of the library. You want to be able to get to those places easily, but you don’t need to access it all right away. And that is essentially the concept that Google respects in websites. If they’re well categorized and, when you go into that area, you can access everything easily. So, some of the concepts to get the most out of silos within your website are:
1) Plan content groups logically – So from the outset, when you’re designing your website, think about the specific categories of content. You might want to do a little keyword research, and you might want to really think about the ways people are accessing this content, and what they really want. You may not need a category for everything. So figure out which categories are the most relevant to the people on your website, and grouping them out.
2) Use URL structure (example: sub-folder/sub-folder/sub-item) – When possible, try to group it in the URL as well. So, sub-folder/sub-item.
Lastly, when appropriate…
3) Create sub-navigation systems – If you have that top navigation bar that a lot of websites have nowadays. Perhaps you also want to include a sidebar menu, where appropriate, in that area of the website. So, if you’re drilling down into, let’s say, fiction, for instance. Perhaps you have the different sub-categories of fiction there on the sidebar; this will allow interlinking. One of the recent “Google Likes It” videos, we were talking about how having a lot of intuitive links around the website internally is really smart for SEO. And having that in there is really good for user experience as well.
So use silos on your website where appropriate. Join us next week for “Google Likes It.”
