SEO Silos vs. Topical Clusters (What's best?)
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- čas přidán 7. 07. 2024
- SEO Silos have been around for a while, but are they still the right way of building out your websites architecture? What about Topical Clusters? What if we used them together? Let's dive in.
Let’s start off with SEO Silo’s - Silo’s are a hierarchical organization of content where related pages are grouped together under a specific theme or topic.
but lets talk about why Silo’s have worked so well over the years?
1. This structure makes it easy for crawlers to find all your pages, and prevents orphan pages
2. We demonstrate topical authority by building a thematically connected silo - because all the pages are connected based on high relevance, we demonstrate our topical authority
3. when you start gaining backlinks, the authority from those backlinks flows basically throughout the whole silo, - important since your homepage (which will naturally get the most backlinks)
So how do we actually go about building one?
So before we get started with Silo’s we have to do some keyword research, so we know what pages we’re building first.
so lets take an example - of a travel website: [Visitspain.org](Visitspain.org)
So what would the internal linking look like to create this silo correctly?
So why does this type of silo work so well?
so topical relevance is high, and the authority flowing through the silo is well connected and also works well.
Now this works quite well in theory, but how realistic is this? For starters - we have to realize that not all of these pages will have the same value to us, and as a result shouldn’t have the same number of internal links pointing to it.
So this is most likely what a more realistic type of structure could look like - where we rank across the silo to try and push more authority to one specific page.
What about linking to other sides of the Silo? Well if we wanted to follow the strict SILO rules, in theory we can only link within our silo, OR to uncles as a maximum
again take the parent / child relationship, the arrows in green, we’d be allowed to have an internal link to, but arrows in red, we’d be breaking the integrity of the silo, and losing the topical relevance.
NOW do I agree with this rule and am i sticking 100% to these old SILO rules? When i’m building big silos, i really try my best to keep things within the silo, but sometimes there are internal links that make sense, and in that case i’ll break the so called integrity of the silo.
What about anchor texts?
Anchor texts allow google to understand the context of the relationship between two pages when we’re connecting them with an internal link, so as much as we’d like to add a bunch of exact anchors, try to mix it up, I try and follow 80% varied variations of the keyword you’re think and 20% random texts like - click here, learn more etc.
NOW, unless you’re building an ecommerce, or a massive content websites where you can clearly organic themes, topics and subtopics, this structure might not make sense for your site. Instead, lets talk abotu what you could do.
The first thing I recommedn is still following the pyramid structure,
These are quite similar to Silos, in that we still interlink collections of related content, BUT there are less rules. They’re still great for topical authority, and spreading link juice, and work quite well for smaller sites.
The beauty of topical clusters is that you can, there are no rules about internal linking between clusters.
say you have two clusters about fruits and vegetables, tomatoes even though they are fruits can sometimes be considered vegetables so theres definitely a contextual link in there somwhere.
Theres no real right or wrong answer when it comes to website architecture, there are a lot of different structures that are successful, The important thing is making sure that your website is easy to navigate for search engines and users. i actually think they can both coexist, depending on the sections of your website. I can imagine an ecommerce having a verystructured silo for their category, subcategory and product pages, but having clusters in their blog sections.
Let me know what you guys think, if you use any other types of silo’s or what your current set up is.
See you guys in the next one.
Timestamps:
0:00 SEO Silos vs. Topical Clusters
0:14 What is an SEO Silo?
0:47 Why do Silos work so well?
1:20 How do we build an SEO Silo?
3:52 A more realistic Silo Structure
5:38 What about Anchor Texts?
5:58 When a Topical Cluster works better
7:05 Can Clusters and Silo's work together?
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How are you guys organizing your websites? SEO Silos? Or Topical clusters? Lmk!
The sibling-cousing-uncle analogy for dilluting the topical relevance is GOLD!
Glad it helps!!
I think this video would have benefitted from a couple of real-life examples of websites using these techniques. Other than that, you've got a really clear way of explaining things and presenting information. I'll definitely keep an eye on this channel :)
Appreciate the feedback! More examples on the next one :)
Real life examples in my course🤣
@@taral927 mans gotta make money some how ;)
@@JaumeRos Sorry to see VisitSpain is no longer up. I've been watching these type trainings and trying to visualize it by looking at site maps of other sites doing this. Great video Jaume! Between you, Kyle Roofs trainings and a few others, my 'topical maps' ought to be okay!
So much value. Great video 👍
Thanks for watching Guillem !
Thanks for the breakdown JR 🤝🏼
Thanks for tuning in Edu!
You know, I've been coming across a lot of gibberish on this Content silo stuff. But having come across this video?
I don't think I'll find something better than this, maybe for the next couple of months.
You did a very great job explaining this topic and this video is highly recommended. I appreciate your content creator skills brother
Thanks for watching !!!!!
Tough topic to learn about, thank you!
Thanks for being here Daniel!
Amazing, thanks.. i have travel niche so it helps me a lot to understand silos and internal linking and backlink strategy
Thanks for sharing!!
The one element that is absent from most structural seo analysis is the business segment that is being targeted. This is what informs a site wide strategy that dictates content tactics.
Yeeeeesss
Interesting video! Would have been nice to see how you would design topical clusters yourself, just like you did with silos in this video.
Noted for the next one!
Just watched your last video and now you posted this😂 Nice job🥳
Hahaha it's non stop !! Thanks for watching 💪
@@JaumeRos can you please tell me that tool from the silo structure?😁 Thank you
The one in the video? Thats just figma!
Hey Jaume, loved your content! So, I'm working on launching my news site, and I'm in the building phase. Could you shed some light on using semantic SEO for news and also about silos? Thanks a bunch, really looking forward to your video on this!
I tend to use silos, but would love to know how people are managing and tracking the content across a site. Like - you've got your cluster, but what are folks doing to track the page's performance, primary and secondary kw rankings, etc.
I've got a spreadsheet built out that lets me see performance at different tiers, zoom into an article to see all it's ranking terms, etc. But on larger sites things can definitely get harder to manage - I've got to assume someone has a system figured out that's less clunky than mine haha
Yeah this is a great point. I like to use the ahrefs tracker for the most important pages, but you’re right once sites get big I honestly don’t have a systemized way of looking at things.
Quick question: do I need to write a new and separate article for each topic to gain authority or can I put closely related topics into one article as different H2s or FAQs? Can google crawlers highlight my H2s and show them in the SERP for that particular search query or should I write a completely new article?
Depends how close those articles are - give me an example
I think silos are the best option. Targeting on a granular level like Google Ads is the best way to increase conversions which is what clients want. Traffic is not the best metric because traffic does not pay the bills if it's crap traffic that doesn't convert to income. Only conversions to a sale or lead are going to keep you in a job.
Yes sir !!
Thank you for the video. Could you provide advice for a WordPress user on whether to use Posts or Pages for City Level and City Features?
I'd probably work with pages instead of posts since posts usually fall under the blog. With pages you can structure the URLs are lot cleaner for other sections of your site.
thanks for this, whats the software youre using to draw out the silo architecture?
Thanks for watching! I’m just using figma (its a free design tool)
To be honest I prefer to follow Kyle roofs silo structure
Yeah makes sense
Jaume, one thing that I am trying to workout is for the niche of wedding photography would it be better to have a silo approach or a topical cluster?
Depends what are your goals?
Great content! Can you please bring "Kevin Meng" in your podcast. that dude know everything, on how to write content specificaly affiliate content, (but he's very underrated)
Honestly had never heard of the guy, can you send me his twitter? Or his website?
he doesn't have a twitter, but his site is web copy master com
great content as always, keep it up!
would it be better to combine the two something similar to a hub and spoke or topic silo? thoughts?
Yeah great question - I’d say the bigger the site the more id try to follow a Silo model, the hubs can get quite messy when they get massive
@@JaumeRos make sense thanks for the input looking forward for your new videos
Thanks! Any specific video topics you’re interested inv
me personally! more on building seo processes and frameworks
Focused on topical cluster is better then silo i already try
Nice!
Another question i have is should i just create my blog posts around low kd high volume focus keywords and interlink them all in creating my topical map or would this not work should i instead find the main sub topics of the niche and create my posts accordingly to this? If i were to use answer the public to find the main sub topics of my niche should i do keyword research for those sub topics to find low kd high volume keyword variations
Kay summarize it all into one question plz
@@JaumeRos my question was if I should just create my posts around low kd high volume keywords I find later to try and interlink everything for relevancy or if I should plan out a logical topical map around category/ niche that all interlinks tightly with relevance and after that’s established I can look for these low kd high volume keyword opportunities if there are any accordingly to my topical map.
What software were you setting that out with, thanks for the video,
Figma!
nice work and explanation. How effective is that? Have you measured it in any way?
Measured what?
Measuring the impact of topical cluster based and silo based structure in place? For any one reading the content, the flow makes sense atleast, but my question of of measure regarding goes to google readibility and assigning authority score or something to the site?
iam currently having the same issue, my site is 3 years old , initially it worked fine and ranked well, but it got hit by core update and then i lost motivation to continue on site so i left working on it durin 2022 end, but now i started the work again and wrote 4 new articles, all are indexed but not of them in visible on google (checked 100 results), all targeting really low competition keywords with below 100 search volume, whats your suggestion to me?, previous blogposts are ranking on number 1, but new ones are nowhere to be seen, authority is 9, please help me out
Hey Apoorv, really hard to help you out with only that info. It does sound like it might be an authority issue? Are you doing link building for your site?
@@JaumeRos i have stopped it for a while because if my new articles are no where to be seen on google, then whats the point of linkbuilding, thats what my thinking was
Which one is better silio or topical cluster for local businesses websites like, plumbers, locksmith?
I’d say it depends on the amount of content.
A lil content -> cluster
a lot of content (which can get messy) -> silo
@@JaumeRos Thanks!
So for small businesses we need to follow cluster format.
@@JaumeRosif we attorney business, then we have two kind of content services (service pages)
And information about each service. Now the information can be range few blog post to hundred of blog posts.
So my question is:
how we need to link the service pages and the informational pages (blog posts).
As in your earlier reply you told that for less content Cluster is good and for larg content is prymid is ok.
That's awesome man! My website is 2 months old with 0 search traffic with 40 high quality articles all of which are closely related and interlinked. What do i do man?
What niche are you in?
@@JaumeRos WordPress Tutorials
I know it's quite saturated with all those hosting companies writing posts on the same topics.
@@daimaryjohn So you’re in the hosting niche? Whats like the average domain rating of the websites that are ranking for keywords you’re targeting?
OH sorry I didn't see this comment. Alright so wordpress tutorials will definitely be competitive as fuck. Try to find keywords where you have atleast 1 or 2 competitors that have similar Domain Ratings to you - thats google telling you that theres space for a new website / a website with low authority to come in.
What tool did you use to make up this SILO Sketch at 2:04
Figma!
@@JaumeRos thanks!
SIlo and cluster are the same thing lol.
Not sure if you watched the vid hahah
5:12 we can link with our uncle but not cousins 😭 that sounds so wrong.
hahaha sorryy :::)
ambiguous anchor text like click here is bad for people that use screen readers and seos should stop recommending people use them, use partial match instead
Thats a great point, thanks.
Where's is the difference between them Sir 😆
Big difference
😆
come on man, tomatoes are vegetables 🤨
ahaha idk about that