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
-
Domain Name redirection to new Domain Name - VS - Transfering Domaine Name from account 1 to account 2
Hi there! Thanks for your time 😉 I have a new cutsomer that bought his domain name via WIX and your know... WIX sucks huge time for SEO. Basically, we want to do SEO outside of WIX. But I am not sure HOW I should proceed. I think I have 2 options: OPTION 1- We transfer the domain name from WIX to a new hoster. But we will lose 7 days during that, lose prospects while the website is in maintenance and we might lose the little bit of ranking we have on the way. BUT! ONCE Everything is done with the transfer, we will be able to operate our SEO campaing with a Domain Name that as 15 domain authority, links, little bit a ranking, etc. OPTION 2- I just buy a new domain name. I build the new Website on it and then use the SEO juice from the old domain name with redirect to push the new domain name. Like this, I won't lose any opportunities. BUT I will have to restart the SEO as new... Any tips or ideas for me? Maybe there is an OPTION 3 that I don't know about.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gab-SEO1 -
New Domain VS New Page Backlink?
Assuming you've already got a link from:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam.at.Moz
sitea.com/page1 (Moz domain rank 55, Moz page rank 30) You have two choices for another link: 1. Another link on the same domain but a new page:
sitea.com/page2 (Moz domain rank 55, Moz page rank 30) 2. A link on a new domain but with a lesser domain & page rank
siteb.com/page1 (Moz domain rank 30, Moz page rank 20) Assuming you have no other links to your site - both sites are relevant to your industry, both 5 years old, both have the same number of visitors/external links/ads and the content and anchor text remains the same. Which will have a bigger impact on SERP movements? Sam0 -
H2 vs. H3 Tags for Category Navigation
Hey, all. I have client that uses tags in the navigation for its blog. For example, tags might appear around "Library," "Recent Posts," etc. This is handled through their WordPress theme. This seems fairly standard, but I wonder whether tags are semantically appropriate. Since each blog post is fairly lengthy (about 500-1000 words) with multiple tags, would it be more appropriate to use tags for this menu navigation? Are we cutting into the effectiveness of our tags by using them for menu navigation? The navigation is certainly an important page element, and it structures content, so it seems that it should use some header tag. Anyways, your thoughts are greatly appreciated. I'm a content creator, not an SEO, so this is a bit out of my skillset.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ask44435230 -
Microdata or RDFa for breadcrumb ?
Which one do u prefer and why? Does RDFa is better for SEO or is just the same as microdata?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoMartin10 -
Competitor sites vs mine - No links, lower DA, and still beating me.
Thank you for taking the time to read my question. I have a website - berneseoftherockies.com - it is a bernese mountain dog website My competitors are Rockymountainpuppies(dot)com and Coloradobernesemountaindog(dot)com When using the Moz tools, I see they have no incoming links, except for one site has 5 links from its own pages. But when I type in Bernese Mountain Dogs Colorado - I am no where to be found, except for a you tube video. So what am I doing so wrong? They are basically doing nothing, and killing me in the serps. I have gotten social media stuff like Google +, facebook, twitter, pinterest, and youtube. They are still behind the times. So any thoughtful advice is appreciated. I mainly cater to the state of Colorado where I live. So just curious if there is something at the top of your head that you may think of that's causing my issues? Like could it be my hosting? Like can you have a black listed host? I am with Hostdime I did have a few, like 10 foreign backlinks, which I did remove or disavow I think its called. I have used the title tag tools here to get proper size title tags, and decent keyword density. I built the site for people first, then Google etc. So not sure if you are allowed to tell me, but maybe you can advise me on a decent seo company, or maybe give me a couple tips that may help me out. Please no - read the moz book, I am reading it and trying to do what I am reading. But maybe something simple is keeping me from showing up, while these other sites are. Thank you so much for any advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Berner0 -
Extensions Vs Non Extensions
Hello, I'm a big fan of clean urls. However i'm curious as to what you guys do, to remove them in a friendly way which doesn't cause confusion. Standard URLS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie
http://www.example.com/example1.html
http://www.example.com/example2.html
http://www.example.com/example3.html
http://www.example.com/example4.php
http://www.example.com/example5.php What looks better (in my eyes)
http://www.example.com/example1/
http://www.example.com/example2/
http://www.example.com/example3/
http://www.example.com/example4/
http://www.example.com/example5/ Do you keep extensions throughout your website, avoiding any sort of confusion and page duplication; OR Put a canonical link pointing to the extension-less version of each page, with the anticipation of this version indexing into Google and other Search Engines. OR 301 Each page which has an extension to an extension-less version, and remove all linking to ".html" site wide causing errors within software like Dreamweaver, but working properly. OR Another way? Please emphasise I'm sorry if this is a little vague and I appreciate any angles on this, I quite like clean url's but unsure a hassle-less way to create it. Thanks for any advice in advance0 -
Site wide footer links vs. single link for websites we design
I’ve been running a web design business for the past 5 years, 90% or more of the websites we build have a “web design by” link in the footer which links back to us using just our brand name or the full “web design by brand name” anchor text. I’m fully aware that site-wide footer links arent doing me much good in terms of SEO, but what Im curious to know is could they be hurting me? More specifically I’m wondering if I should do anything about the existing links or change my ways for all new projects, currently we’re still rolling them out with the site-wide footer links. I know that all other things being equal (1 link from 10 domains > 10 links from 1 domain) but is (1 link from 10 domains > 100 links from 10 domains)? I’ve got a lot of branded anchor text, which balances out my exact match and partial match keyword anchors from other link building nicely. Another thing to consider is that we host many of our clients which means there are quite a few on the same server with a shared IP. Should I? 1.) Go back into as many of the sites as I can and remove the link from all pages except the home page or a decent PA sub page- keeping a single link from the domain. 2.) Leave all the old stuff alone but start using the single link method on new sites. 3.) Scratch the site credit and just insert an exact-match anchor link in the body of the home page and hide with with CSS like my top competitor seems to be doing quite successfully. (kidding of course.... but my competitor really is doing this.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nbeske0 -
Links in Behind a Tab in Body vs Footer
Though I would ask the community this as it relates to positioning of external links on page vs. code and body vs footer. Working with a strategic partner for some data sharing arrangements and the question exists whether followed links in the template footer to our partners website provide better value vs. Body Links with context behind a CSS Tab (All code for Tabbed content is resolved on the same page)? Yes there are links coming back from the partner site as well.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO0