Do you create silos intentionally on your websites or do you just interlink where relevant in the content?

[DanielS]

Do you create silos intentionally on your websites or do you just interlink where relevant? By creating silos intentionally I mean mapping out internal links in a particular structure like so: Article 1 <--> Article 2 <--> Article 3 <--> Article 4.

 

[bernard]

Do you create silos intentionally on your websites or do you just interlink where relevant? By creating silos intentionally I mean mapping out internal links in a particular structure like so: Article 1 <--> Article 2 <--> Article 3 <--> Article 4.

If you're using categories, those are already silos, but the typical method is to use a pillar page that links to other subpages and all those subpages link to the pillar page and to each other where relevant.

 

[DanielS]

If you're using categories, those are already silos, but the typical method is to use a pillar page that links to other subpages and all those subpages link to the pillar page and to each other where relevant.

Right, so this is different than simply interlinking where relevant? For example, I have an article than can be linked to at least 4 times, but doing so would ruin the typical silo structure.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Do you create silos intentionally on your websites or do you just interlink where relevant? By creating silos intentionally I mean mapping out internal links in a particular structure like so: Article 1 <--> Article 2 <--> Article 3 <--> Article 4.

I don't bother any more. Silo's are old, and I mean OLD. They were used at a time when CMS's didn't really exist in the way they do now, nor was web design done the way it is now. It was mainly about user navigation as it was the flow of page rank.

The reason to do it now is for relevance. And Google understands the relevance of your content and your anchor text. That's all you really need to worry about. If you try to build a strict silo you're hurting yourself. It's impossible to only link to the specific related pages these days if you think about headers, footers, sidebars, etc. Of course you can be strict within the main content, which you will be anyways if you only link to related content. I agree that categories are silos at this point, too, and they achieve all this.

I think it's better to let the page rank flow than to try to do page rank sculpting, which is what silo's have become about at this point. If you search the term "mini-net" on the forum you'll find me talking about this a ton. That's what I call silo's now. Hubpages (it's not them, I'm just having a brain fart) or someone later came in talking about "Content Hubs" and basically jacked my argument that you should build mini-nets, and these extend off of your own website too. You'll do this naturally if you only link to relevant content, but not as tight as Hubpages (or whoever) says to do it. You can Google "Content Hubs" and find tons of info too, since that spread like wildfire due to the big exposure that big site gave it. I like to think they read it here on BuSo first, as usual.

 

[bernard]

Right, so this is different than simply interlinking where relevant? For example, I have an article than can be linked to at least 4 times, but doing so would ruin the typical silo structure.

I don't think that's a problem.

I think Google has quite enough knowledge to know different types of links.

You can have breadcrumbs in the top of the article, showing the actual silo structure in terms of categories and then I usually add "Also Read" stand alone links in the text. Check newspapers for examples. These work to link to pillar pages or other content, but the point of them are to send visitors to pages of interest, not just for Google.

Then if I have a new post, I can go back and find some articles that can link to it and do a few in content links, just words or phrases in text, which are links mostly for Google.