How to effectively use a silo landing page

[Michael]

Let's say I have this silo structure:

• Gaming
  • Headsets
    • Wireless
      • Brand 1
      • Brand 2
    • Wired
      • Brand 1
      • Brand 2

The gaming silo will have a link to the child silo 'headsets'.
Then headsets will have two more children links to 'wireless' and 'wired.'

Say I want to review the new tutrlebeach wireless headset, i'll make a review and place it into Gaming --> Headsets --> wireless --> Turtlebeach --> review article here.

Now, what if I discover a keyword along the lines of 'best gaming headset for CS: GO.'

I don't really have anywhere to put it? My assumption is that all articles belong at the last level of the silo.

Can you create content to support the headfones silo? So something like this: gaming --> headfones --> best gaming headfone for cs go in 2016 (supporting article) or does this break the silo structure?

Hope I have made myself clear, thanks

 

[CCarter]

Yes you can create content specifically for the "headset" category and use the "best gaming headset for CS: GO' article there, and also interlink the different brands (wired and wireless) within that content. That would actually make the that article for "CS:GO" more powerful since it's interlinking below.

You need top-level category content like that at each level. You obviously are also going to make simple "gaming" content too.

You shouldn't create a website that's just super-siloed out for the bottom of the category.

You need broad and upper category content, since you want to show Google, but MORE importantly your visitors, that you did research on "CS: GO" specifically for example, and that you understand the different nuances of your niche.

 

[Michael]

I'll ask this here instead of making a new thread..

Why the fuck does every single site I look into to get ideas from virtually just use single level categories for their posts? Even the big boys in the tech niche, all those review sites just cram every laptop review in a laptop review category.

Am I missing something here? Why aren't they grouping laptops by brand or screen size at least?
Are these sites just that old that it'd be too hard to change their structure so they just live with it?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Shane, I think it's not a fault with them so much as it shows that silo-ing isn't remotely as important now as it was in the old days of 90's flat-file site building. There are a lot of ways to imply a silo that Google understands now, that's not strictly URL structure based or even link based.

The common conventions of tons of menu, footer, and sidebar links make it impossible to create strict silos while not confusing your users. Google understands, if you mark-up your site well, what is main content versus supplemental. You can use that to interlink where you want contextually. But a true strict silo not only is impossible but not desirable.

Breadcrumbs, Interlinking "Mini-Nets", Tags even... these create what I call "virtual silos" that get the job done the same as the old physical style did.

The reason is that Silo-ing was meant to do 2 things:

• Show hyper-relevancy
• Manipulate the flow of page rank

Now there are a lot more factors but relevancy has become stronger and stronger. Google's ways of measuring relevancy are far more sophisticated now. Your virtual silos can extend between categories and even off of your site.

To get back on target with your question with physical silos deemphasized, I think too many nested levels of categories is harmful to user experience when the same can be achieved with tags or the search bar.

 

[John Peterson]

VSL or video sales landing pages are very popular these days and audience feel that they are talking to you face to face. I have been split testing my landing pages for all of my paid campaigns and over the period I have learned that not just pages but 2 analytics is a must too. It's good not just to compare reports for 2 landing pages but reports on 2 sources too so a 3rd party tool like gostats helps a lot.