Implementing Silo Architecture For SEO
I am going to give you a very basic breakdown of how this system works. I’ll call it the silo architecture 101 class. 202 and beyond is reserved for my students.
To begin, you will need to gain a more than basic understanding of what keywords to shoot for. I’ll give a quick rundown of that, but to save space I am going to stay on subject for the most part.
Start by picking about 5 keywords associated with what you are marketing. Now take those keywords and type them into the Google AdWords keyword tool that is free to use, and can be quickly found just by typing in that exact phrase. Once you have type in your five keywords, shoot for long tailed keywords vs. broad keywords to narrow the results. This tool is going to give lists of variations on these words and to the right will be the relevant search result totals. Look for keywords with search totals under 6 thousand unless you can find low advertiser competition keywords with higher search volume keywords. Advertiser competition is the key here. Now choose between those keywords for about 5 that you can use in your site topics and articles.
Next is time for a little research. Type each of these keywords into Google and take note of the paid results as well as the organic results. Look for the big players here. It is especially easy with the paid ads because if you see one ad showing up in all five keywords you are looking at a major player and someone you might want to study. Look for other things too, like subjects in these results that you are unfamiliar with. Anything that peaks your interest may well be peaking the interest of thousands of others. So you may want to revise your keyword list to include some things that you think may be a “gold” keyword. Meaning a keyword not many advertisers are shooting for but many people are searching.
Now that you have successfully done your research and narrowed your keywords to 5 or 6 that you really feel good about, you are ready to start building on that aspect of your silo. At the bottom of this article is a basic look at what your end result will resemble. With your website being the top of the silo with all relevant keywords, and each keyword leg that forms the body is a separate campaign not linked together. The only time you will ever link one leg to another is when somewhere in an article you touch on a subject with a relevant keyword for another leg. Do not try to do this with every article or you will lose the value of the target keywords by linking to too many non-relevant places.
You can place articles all over the web on blog sites, ezines and article sites, (and even places like squidoo), which can be leveraged nicely in this type of SEO.
Now you need those keywords implemented well inside your home site which should be silo’d as well with the same keywords, and also inside any capture pages that you place in the middle of your silo between the home site and the keyword articles.
I know you may need to read this a few times to get the full picture, but I couldn’t think of an easier explanation. It only gets more in depth from here, but this is not something to overlook. When you find places to back link to your site, the relevancy of the content should always play a role in how you handle the link.
This is the type of information that top marketers have and implement every day. Though this is a very basic breakdown of implementing silo architecture I go into much more detail with my students, and walk them through the process until they are comfortable with the concepts. This is one piece of SEO that can have the biggest effect on how much money your business brings in. Without visitors there are no sales. The only way to bring in more business, is to for more customers to be able to find you. That is an undeniable bottom line. Below is a crude example of how your silo should look after having 4 sets of keywords implemented.
