Is Siloing still effective in 2018?
-
I've been advised about Siloing (site structure), although I'm getting conflicting advice now saying it is an outdated practice. What is the 2018 verdict?
-
So by siloing content you mean creating categories and subcategories like in a library. So Reference, fiction, magazines etc. And then having subsections. The old way to 'rank' for something was to pick up keywords for the smaller sections and subsections.
So to use the example of dentistry. I might have adult dentistry and paediatric dentistry pages then in adults i'll have implants, braces and veneers. Then in veneers I might have an article about veneers price, veneers procedure and veneers risks. All of these would link to each other and link up in the architecture. And hey-presto, i'd eventually rank for one of the 'top categories' like adult dentistry.
The problem with this is that it's going to create internal competition and conflict. Google doesn't want users having to hop around highly granular subtopics for answers. They'd rather have the answer to a query all in the same place. So instead I'll now have one single page with everything people need to know about veneers; price, risks, procedure etc. All in one place.
Now there are further difficulties because google will sometimes consider two related things as different 'topics' or answering different questions. So I do have page for everything about veneers and also a page about veneers cost. In the case of veneers everyone wants to know the cost. It's all cost cost cost - so this is it's own topic and it's own page. But for something like root canals, nobody cares how much they cost, they just want to get out of pain. So the root canal cost section is on the main root canal page because it's included in the topic of 'root canals'.
It's now more about searcher intent https://moz.com/blog/how-google-gives-us-insight-into-searcher-intent-through-the-results-whiteboard-friday, possibly 'searcher task accomplishment' https://moz.com/blog/harnessing-link-equity and also how link equity flows: https://moz.com/blog/harnessing-link-equity
Also read this: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/pcm.pdf it's tough going but just ignore what you don't understand and press on with reading it all and you'll learn a great amount about how google functions.
So to answer the question, you still need a solid site structure but i'd say 'siloing' is possibly going to dilute the potential power of each page. You're going to end up with 30 pages all about sub-sub topics that should be rethought out and consolidated using google as your research tool. Always use google as your research tool. To do anything else is like training for a sprint race by going swimming every day.
'Siloing' for me also created a ton of duplicate content, duplicate headlines and I even think I got stung by Maccabees for having some pages about all the different aspects of implant dentistry. They are now all consolidated into a 'super page' and it's ranking #1 locally and really well nationally too. Page one.
Imagine five pages, H1's are 'braces cost', 'braces procedure', 'braces on finance' and 'braces risks'. Google is going to struggle - in my view - to rank me for any of those because they all have an H1 containing the word braces. What would be better would be to have a'braces' page and then the H2's were all those sub sub topics and then an FAQ with all the google suggest words as H2 and then all the 'searchers also asked' words in the FAQ.
Hope this helps - this is my interpretation from my small local business here in the UK. So other users here may have more relevant information. For example IA, cannibalisation, internal conflict etc is much bigger in shopping and information businesses than it is in services businesses.
And of course this classic: https://moz.com/blog/optimizing-for-rankbrain-whiteboard-friday thanks to @miriam ellis for that one.
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
-
Two Different IP address pointing to my website, does it will effect my website from SEO point of view
Due to some reason my website https://xyz.com is not redirecting to my main website domain - https://www.xyz.com so our tech team suggested - we will have the non-www name on a different IP and we'll 301 redirect that to the https://www.xyz.com. if it works does it will effect our website from SEO point of view? please let me know.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BPLLC0 -
Qucikest and most effective way to improve DA and PA?
Hello Moz, In your experience what is the quickest and most effective way to improve a websites DA and PA? Any additional tips and side notes would be greatly appreciated. For example how hard is it to actually get a DA of 60+ - what would that require usually as an absolute minimum?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xdunningx0 -
Old product URLs still indexed and maybe causing problems?
Hi all, Need some expertise here: We recently (3 months ago) launched a newly updated site with the same domain. We also added an SSL and dropped the www (with proper redirects). We went from http://www.mysite.com to https://mysite.com. I joined the company about a week after launch of the new site. All pages I want indexed are indexed, on the sitemap and submitted (submitted in July but processes regularly). When I check site:mysite.com everything is there, but so are pages from the old site that are not on the sitemap. These do have 301 redirects. I am finding our non-product pages are ranking with no problem (including category pages) but our product pages are not, unless I type in the title almost exactly. We 301 redirected all old urls to new comparable product, or if the product is not available anymore to the home page. For better or worse, as it turns out and prior to my arrival, in building the new site the team copied much of the content (descriptions, reviews, etc) from the old site to create the new product pages. After some frustration and research I am finding the old pages are still indexed and possibly causing a duplicate content issue. Now, I gather there is supposedly no "penalty", per se, for duplicate content but a page or site will simply not show in the SERPs. Understandable and this seems to be the case. We also sell a lot of product wholesale and it turns out many dealers are using the same descriptions we have (and have had) on our site. Some are much larger than us so I'd expect to be pushed down a bit but we don't even show in the top 10 pages...for our own product. How long will it take for Google to drop the old and rank the new as unique? I have re-written some pages but much is technical specifications and tough to paraphrase or re-write. I know I could do this in Search Console but I don't have access to the old site any longer. Should I remove the 301s a few at a time and see if the old get dropped faster? Maybe just re-write ALL the content? Wait? As a site note, I'm also on a Drupal CMS with a Shopify ecommerce module so maybe the shop.mysite.com vs mysite.com is throwing it off with the products(?) - (again the Drupal non-product AND category pages rank fine). Thoughts on this would be much appreciated. Thx so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mcampanaro0 -
Old Website Build Effecting SEO
So this is a bit of a strange one. My latest website was built on a different domain, then transferred over (as opposed to being built on a subdomain). I was told that the domain which my site was built on wasn't indexed by Google, but looking at the Google Search Console I can see that the old domain name is showing up as the most linked to domain name of my current site - meaning it was indexed. The domain (and all of its pages) does have a 301 redirect to the new website home page (as opposed to their individual pages), but could this be causing me a problem with SEO? Additionally, my website has a sister (UK and US websites), both link to each other on the footer (which appears on every page). Could this be pulling my SEO efforts down if it is a do-follow link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Should discontinued crusty old products (but still new stock) be listed on site?
Some may think this is not good to do for us, because it tarnishes the image of the site as being: "These guys are pawing off old stuff and not carrying up to date products. It would be a waste of our time to try to sell it off of our site." ... even though 89% of are items are new and up to date products. (My feelings on this would be the opposite: I want all the old crusty stuff up there because it makes it available to a much bigger market area.... called "The World". lol! To me, if it's not moving in our market, it means we bought the wrong item for our market and we need to offer it up to "The World". Maybe I'm way off here, but are there any other spins on thoughts on this? ) Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_McLeish0 -
Bing still not listing my site after 3 weeks, Google ranks very very low
I am scared that somehow the search engines are penalizing me for something, but I don't know what. The site can be found at http://www.hypnotherapy-guide.com It is a business directory/advice/guide site listing a lot of hypnotherapists (9000). Is it possible that such a large site popping up over night is flagged by the SE as spam? I don't know what I am doing wrong.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tguide0 -
If we add noindex to a subdomain, will the traffic to that subdomain still generate domain authority for the primary domain?
We are trying to decide whether a password protected site, that we will noindex, should be set up as a subdomain or if it should be its own domain. The determining factor here is whether or not having that noindexed subdomain will increase domain authority since its noindexed. Any ideas???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayloon0 -
Why my site is "STILL" violating the Google quality guidelines?
Hello, I had a site with two topics: Fashion & Technology. Due to the Panda Update I decided to change some things and one of those things was the separation of these two topics. So, on June 21, I redirected (301) all the Fashion pages to a new domain. The new domain performed well the first three days, but the rankings dropped later. Now, even the site doesn't rank for its own name. So, I thought the website was penalized for any reason, and I sent a reconsideration to Google. In fact, five days later, Google confirmed that my site is "still violating the quality guidelines". I don't understand. My original site was never penalized and the content is the same. And now when it is installed on the new domain becomes penalized just a few days later? Is this penalization only a sandbox for the new domain? Or just until the old URLs disappear from the index (due to the 301 redirect)? Maybe Google thinks my new site is duplicating my old site? Or just is a temporal prevention with new domains after a redirection in order to avoid spammers? Maybe this is not a real penalization and I only need a little patience? Or do you think my site is really violating the quality guidelines? (The domain is http://www.newclothing.co/) The original domain where the fashion section was installed before is http://www.myddnetwork.com/ (As you can see it is now a tech blog without fashion sections) The 301 redirect are working well. One example of redirected URLs: http://www.myddnetwork.com/clothing-shoes-accessories/ (this is the homepage, but each page was redirected to its corresponding URL in the new domain). I appreciate any advice. Basically my fashion pages have dropped totally. Both, the new and old URLs are not ranking. 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | omarinho0