Is the Wordpress Blog Archive Bad for SEO Silo's?

Asad

Asad

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I have a question: I have built out a silo using wordpress. Since wordpress requires you to have a 'Blog' page, I have every categorized page showing up on the Blog page. The blog page is no index/no follow. Will this destroy my silo? Is there something more intelligent I should be doing with the Blog page?
 
Asad said:
I have a question: I have built out a silo using wordpress. Since wordpress requires you to have a 'Blog' page, I have every categorized page showing up on the Blog page. The blog page is no index/no follow. Will this destroy my silo? Is there something more intelligent I should be doing with the Blog page?
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You don't need to have a blog page by any means.

I'm confused though, are you saying your categories only appear on yoursite.com/blog/ or?

If yes, then it's definitely a bad move for a bunch of reasons.

I wouldn't recommend a silo more than 2 URL levels deep, and of course click-depth matters a lot as well.

Your best bet these days is to use more of a hybrid silo.

Level 0 - Homepage
Level 1 - Category
Level 2 - Sub-Category if necessary.

I would recommend making your money page URLs a Level 1.

yoursite.com/money-article/

Too many people go way too deep with their silos...

example.com/category/sub-category/money-article/ is not a good idea. Yet this is the setup too many people are using because of a few diagrams that have been shared around from a few blogs.

These guys have no idea what they're doing. They aren't paying attention to what's working best in the SERPs and they certainly have no idea about optimizing for crawlers.

Like I said you don't need to have a blog page. You can use posts and just link to the categories from the navigation.

This is the most simple way to setup a hybrid silo in 2018. It's a super easy setup. It'll also work better 9x out of 10 than a lot of the "fancy" setups I've mentioned seeing popularized.

A lot of people try to over-complicate silos. In theory it's possible to create extremely tight silos with widget context and conditional navigation style plugins.

Is that the best option though? I don't think so.
 
RomesFall said:
You don't need to have a blog page by any means.

example.com/category/sub-category/money-article/ is not a good idea. Yet this is the setup too many people are using because of a few diagrams that have been shared around from a few blogs.

Is that the best option though? I don't think so.
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This is EXACTLY what I was doing. You just saved me a few years @RomesFall !
 
Asad said:
This is EXACTLY what I was doing. You just saved me a few years @RomesFall !
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How does it save you time and what in the argument are you taking as gospel? The post doesn't explain why it's correct other than to appeal to the masses and appeal to the SERPs, which I'd say it's done incorrectly. I'd argue that that entire post has a gaping hole in logic.

Crawling has to do with landing on a page and moving through them based on the links on the page. The URL structure has nothing to do with it. The silo structure has little to do with crawling inefficiencies either. Google uses three ways to crawl your site. The main one you need to use is submitting your sitemap, which assures you that they can now find and crawl every page regardless of the click depth (which has nothing to do with the URL structure). They also recrawl every page in their index, so once you're indexed there's no problem there. They also find pages based on ping lists, which most CMS's submit to. Crawling is not an issue, not even to determine relevancy. Google will find your page because they start crawling from every page that they undoubtedly know about thanks to the three methods mentioned.

There are some serious benefits to using a /folder/sub-folder/ in the URL scheme, and they do appear in the SERPs, everywhere. There may be a human benefit to keeping it short mainly in terms of social sharing and link getting, but that doesn't outweigh the longer method.

The real benefit comes when you want to move content around to different categories. It saves you the trouble of having to set up 301's and deal with that risk and fluctuation.

Do what's right for the user, first and foremost. The URL is a navigational tool. It's a family tree, one that everyone knows how to use, but can only use if it's present.
 
Future State said:
Do what's right for the user, first and foremost. The URL is a navigational tool. It's a family tree, one that everyone knows how to use, but can only use if it's present.
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^^ This all day.

RomesFall said:
I would recommend making your money page URLs a Level 1.

yoursite.com/money-article/

Too many people go way too deep with their silos...

example.com/category/sub-category/money-article/ is not a good idea. Yet this is the setup too many people are using because of a few diagrams that have been shared around from a few blogs.


These guys have no idea what they're doing. They aren't paying attention to what's working best in the SERPs and they certainly have no idea about optimizing for crawlers.
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Hmm... Yeah I'm a bit confused to what you mean by some of this; I'd like to see examples of what benefit you see from the simpler version. There are intrinsic benefits from a user perspective for silo-ing your URL structure. Here are some examples:

l7mMEFs.jpg


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Another example:

9n0hBh9.jpg


^^ You'll notice that as a user you can see the category's name and can get an understanding of what a page is about before like the "Blog" example. As well, the breadcrumbs do not follow the URL structure perfectly but rather what you've setup using proper Schema markup - I talk about this in Day 26 of the Digital Strategy Crash Course - Schema Markup

The problem with the "yoursite.com/money-article/" example is that it is limiting in organizing your website, and doesn't help Google understand your content structure - at least giving it hints from a URL perspective. Google rewards people for marking up their websites to help them understand what's going on, and that "yoursite.com/money-article/" example is usually for sites that do not tend to go far = small affiliate sites which will have a limit amount of pages, etc. Imagine if "yoursite.com" had over the course of 5 years over 1,000 articles, all using the that structure, seems very messy.

It's a style thing IMO, like some people like wearing suits all day, others like wearing street clothes. However if you want to get better exposure within Google you should probably give them a helping hand with Schema Markups and creating breadcrumbs using your URL structure. But if you aren't interested in that or the added user benefit then go nude.
 
Future State said:
There are some serious benefits to using a /folder/sub-folder/ in the URL scheme, and they do appear in the SERPs, everywhere. There may be a human benefit to keeping it short mainly in terms of social sharing and link getting, but that doesn't outweigh the longer method.
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Yep, they are in the SERPs everywhere but if you haven't noticed the trend among newer sites then you're not paying attention.

CCarter said:
It's a style thing IMO, like some people like wearing suits all day, others like wearing street clothes. However if you want to get better exposure within Google you should probably give them a helping hand with Schema Markups and creating breadcrumbs using your URL structure. But if you aren't interested in that or the added user benefit then go nude.
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Yup I agree with this, if you remember when this forum started I was one of the first people talking about how effective silos were.

Schema, breadcrumbs etc all a good thing, where did I say not to do this?

I recommended he uses a silo 2 levels deep or else to go with a Level 1 max-depth structure.

I'm just stating what the trend I'm seeing among less established sites doing and winning.

Code: 
Established sites:
https://thewirecutter.com/ - L0
https://thewirecutter.com/kitchen-dining/ - L1
https://thewirecutter.com/kitchen-dining/baking/ - L2
https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-cookie-sheet/ - L2
https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/ - L1

Two levels deep e.g. what I'm recommending... Keeping the post itself outside of the URL of the categorized siloing. Still nice and relevant filing it under /reviews/

Code: 
Newer sites:
https://www.gamingscan.com/ - L0
https://www.gamingscan.com/best-settings/ - L1
https://www.gamingscan.com/best-settings-for-call-of-duty-black-ops-4/ - L1

One level deep, not using a traditional silo either. Doing fantastically in the SERPs too. Just one example of new sites taking this approach beating competitors doing things very very similar in every other area.

--
Do your own research I guess, but I'm telling you that you're not going to find anything but outliers and established aff sites doing well that have more than 3 levels in the SERPs right now. Most of the established sites of 3 levels and over don't even have pretty URLs and are virtual dinosaurs surviving because they're too big to fail.

I dunno how to make it any simpler... There's a fucking reason why one of the most successful affiliate sites ever has setup a L2 max structure. Yeah shoreee it could rank without it, but they do every single fucking thing right.

You guys can talk all you like about the beautiful technical side of setting it up in a way that is super structured, logical etc - it doesn't mean that's what is working best even if it seems like it should.

You don't need a super duper strict silo to have Google understand your content anymore. Haven't for a long time.

I think people who still get results with that would find they'd get a lot better results without those kinds of setups.

People can take my advice or leave it, but I hate to think when you see it you'll see it, and kick yourself for either needing to ride it out or .301 every URL on your site. Everyone's entitled to their opinions or is this forum not about that anymore? Feels like whenever an alternative opinion is offered its barked down by people who assume they know better.

CCarter said:
9n0hBh9.jpg
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And FYI you don't actually need to have the category in the URL to get this to work.

Guessing that's where the assumed non-use of breadcrumbs comes from.
 
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RomesFall said:
People can take my advice or leave it, but I hate to think when you see it you'll see it, and kick yourself for either needing to ride it out or .301 every URL on your site. Everyone's entitled to their opinions or is this forum not about that anymore? Feels like whenever an alternative opinion is offered its barked down by people who assume they know better.
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You have to show proof if you do not want people to question your advice. I showed proof, you showed nothing. Why are you confused when someone counters your argument?

No one here has suppressed your message; I’ve counter it meanwhile you change your story to two levels of URL even though your original argument and examples YOU used show no levels, simply the post name - L1 as you call it in your recent posts.

People that want validation without question are considered gurus. This forum is pretty anti-guru, so when making arguments you’ll get counters - that’s how civil debate occur and how everyone profits from a discussion.
 
I think it's a style thing as CCarter said. We discussed something similar here

You can use a virtual silo (no url structure) and get almost the same benefits as if you were using it.

If you SHOW the virtual structure with a clear breadcrumb you get the UX benefits
If you use the correct schema markup you show Google where's that page located in the site structure.

And you get the extra flexibility if you want to change or add new categories down the line.

I see big sites like thespruce doing this

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xjCsFCm.png
 
CCarter said:
The problem with the "yoursite.com/money-article/" example is that it is limiting in organizing your website, and doesn't help Google understand your content structure - at least giving it hints from a URL perspective. Google rewards people for marking up their websites to help them understand what's going on, and that "yoursite.com/money-article/" example is usually for sites that do not tend to go far = small affiliate sites which will have a limit amount of pages, etc. Imagine if "yoursite.com" had over the course of 5 years over 1,000 articles, all using the that structure, seems very messy.
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So my user-centric approach should look more like yoursite.com/attention-and-interest-article/ ➡️ yoursite.com/decision-article/ ➡️ yoursite.com/money(action)-article/ ?
 
Asad said:
So my user-centric approach should look more like yoursite.com/attention-and-interest-article/ ➡️ yoursite.com/decision-article/ ➡️ yoursite.com/money(action)-article/ ?
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Can you elaborate, I don't fully understand the question. What do the arrows represent? Are the posts "/attention-and-interest-article/" - the sub-category or the post?
 
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