Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Silo vs breadcrumbs in 2015
-
Hi ive heard silos being mentioned in the past to help with rankings does this still apply?
and what about breadcrumbs do i use them with the silo technique or instead of which ones do you think are better or should i not be using these anymore with the recent google updates?
-
great thanks ill give that a go
-
It's been a while since I've used WP, but if you use posts (or posts and pages), you will have a major silo and duplicate content problem with blog category pages.
The way to solve this is to go to the section where you set up your post categories, and set the slug to be identical to your category page. For example, if you have a page category with the slug "blue-widgets", set the post category slug to "blue widgets". This makes the category page the parent for posts in that category.
There are also some adjustments that you will need to make to your URLs removing "/category/ from your URLs. I've done it, and it's pretty easy. Maybe another poster could give you the specifics.
-
great thanks very informative reply, i've started using wordpress for most of my sites now, is siloing easy enough to do in wordpress?
-
Silos will always work. It's not some trick - it's how Google works. Here's a very simplified explanation as to why...
Let's say that I have an eCommerce site, and I sell lawnmowers and Plywood. Let's also say that the Lawnmowers category page has a theoretical 100 points of link juice. Lets also say that the site sells 2 lawnmowers - the Fubar 2000 and the Toecutter 300. If the lawnmower category page only links to the Fubar 2000 and the Toecutter 300 pages, the category page will push 45 points of link juice to each page (pages can pass on +/-90% of their link juice, and 90/2=45).
Both pages will receive almost the full 45 point benefit because the pages are relevant to the category page.
If the Lawnmower category page instead only has 1 link to the Plywood page, the Lawnmower category page would push 90 points of link juice to the plywood page. But, the Plywood page would not receive the full benefit of the 90 points, because Lawnmowers and Plywood don't share much relevance. In this case, Google would heavily discount the 90 points, so that the Plywood page might only get the benefit of 30 points. Think of it as a leaky hose.
What happens to the other 60 Points of Link Juice? It gets dumped on the floor, and the site loses the ranking power of those 60 points.
Keep in mind that this is all theoretical, and that link juice comes in different flavors like apple, orange and prune, representing the different ranking factors (Trust, Authority, Topical Authority, Social Signals, etc.) . Orange might discount 90% while prune might only discount 10%. In this case, is there really a 67% link juice hit? Damned if I know, but I had to pick a number... This is all theoretical. I do know that link juice loss between pages that aren't relevant is dramatic. I also know that it is very possible to determine how your internal pages rank based on your internal link structure, and link placement on the page.
By siloing a website, I have seen rankings jump dramatically. Most websites hemorrhage link juice. Think of it as Link Juice Reclamation. The tighter you can build your silos, the less link juice gets dumped on the floor. By reclaiming the spilled link juice and putting it in the right places, you can dramatically increase your rankings. BTW, inbound links work in a similar fashion. If the Lawnmower page was an external site and linked to the Plywood page, the same discounts would apply. That's why it pays to get niche relevant backlinks for maximum benefit.
This in no way accounts for usability, and linking between silos can make sense to benefit end-users. Again, this model is probably overly simplified, and doesn't take into account Block Level Analysis, but the logic is sound. You can build spreadsheet models for link juice distribution factoring in Block level, discounts, etc. It's by no means accurate, but can give you a pretty good idea of where your link juice is going. You can model this on the old (and increasingly irrelevant) PageRank Algorithm. Pagerank is Logarithmic and it takes 8-9x as much link juice to move up in PR. If it takes 100 points of Link Juice to become a PR1, it takes 800-900 points to become a PR 2. Generally speaking a PR2 page, via links, can create roughly 7 to 75 PR1 pages, depending on how close the PR2 is to becoming a PR3.
-
Both is the way to go. Silos are essentially structuring your pages so that per topic, there is 1 master article and multiple supporting articles that link back to the master article. The topic only links to pages relevant to the topic and not other sections of the site.
You can use breadcrumbs in conjunction with a silo as the structure is suitable for them.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Anchor Text vs. Button Links
Hi How important are anchor text links within your own site vs. buttons for SEO? We've redesigned some of our pages from anchor text links to buttons which are just clickable images.I know historically this isn't the best way, but is it still as important as it used to be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Hreflang in vs. sitemap?
Hi all, I decided to identify alternate language pages of my site via sitemap to save our development team some time. I also like the idea of having leaner markup. However, my site has many alternate language and country page variations, so after creating a sitemap that includes mostly tier 1 and tier 2 level URLs, i now have a sitemap file that's 17mb. I did a couple google searches to see is sitemap file size can ever be an issue and found a discussion or two that suggested keeping the size small and a really old article that recommended keeping it < 10mb. Does the sitemap file size matter? GWT has verified the sitemap and appears to be indexing the URLs fine. Are there any particular benefits to specifying alternate versions of a URL in vs. sitemap? Thanks, -Eugene
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eugene_bgb0 -
High resolution (retina) images vs load time
I have an ecommerce website and have a product slider with 3 images. Currently, I serve them at the native size when viewed on a desktop browser (374x374). I would like to serve them using retina image quality (748px). However how will this affect my ranking due to load time? Does Google take into account image load times even though these are done asynchronously? Also as its a slider, its only the first image which needs to load. Do the other images contribute at all to the page load time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deelo5551 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Would it be better to Start Over vs doing a Website Migration?
Hey guys /gals I have a question please. I have a computer repair business that does extremely well in search and is on the front page of google for anything computer repair related. However, I am currently re-branding my company and have completely redesigned every aspect of the UI and the SEO Site structure as well as the fact that I have completely written vastly different content and different title tag lines and meta descriptions for each page. So basically when doing a migration we know that we want to keep our content, titles, headlines and meta descriptions the same as to not lose our page rank. Seeing that I have completely went against the grain in all directions on a much needed company re-branding and everything is completely different from the old site is it even worthwhile 301 redirecting my old urls to the new ones that would (best) correspond with the new? In the plainest English, would I do better at Ranking the New Website QUICKER without doing 301 redirects from the OLD to the NEW? In an EXTREME instance like what I have done, would the Domain Migration IMPEDED me ranking the new site seeing how nothing is the same? I have build a Rock solid SILO Site Architecture on the New site which is WordPress using the Thesis Framework and the old domain is built on JOOMLA 1.5 Thank fellas Marshall
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarshallThompson0 -
One Way Links vs Two Way Links
Hi, Was speaking to a client today and got asked how damaging two way links are. i.e. domaina.com links to domainb.com and domainb.com links back to domaina.com. I need a nice simple layman's explanation of if/how damaging they are compared to one way links. And please don't answer with you lose link juice as I have a job explaining link juice.... I am explaining things to a non techie! Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0