Chris Litchfield - Digital Marketing Consultant | SEO And Sponsored Search | Online Business Development | Charlotte NC

Natural search engine optimization is the conveyance of data through an information clearing house for easier indexing and more readability by the human eye.  The search engines have a complicated job to do, and without assistance, may never truly uncover hidden content for display. As a result, your website ranks poorly because its information spread is too wide, trying to rank for too many keywords at the same time.  The restructuring of your information into silos for indexing is a fundamental SEO tactic that leads to higher conversion and more prominent placement in search results.

 

Utilizing the Information Silo

The information silo is created using existing content on your website.  Whereas most websites have sections dealing with Product A and other parts dealing with Product B, the silo theory dictates that each Product or Category online be compartmentalized into its own section, semi-connected to the parent site, but standing on its own foundations.

Think of your website as housing.  Is it an apartment complex dealing with multiple unrelated tenants in the same building, under the same roof?  Or are they housed in single family homes, unrelated except for a common landlord?

When we restructure website content, we should always look at the relationship between the content and work to group the similar parts together.  Other, unrelated parts we should break off and host parallel to the website.  What you will start to see happen over time in SEO is the silo information grouped and tagged as similar content will rank higher for those niche keywords, long-tailed keywords, and eventually, the category keywords.  Product A now ranks better for Product A keywords, while Product B, free from the constraints of being associated with Product A, ranks better because 100% of the keywords, URLs and content reflect information about Product B.  The same is true with Product A.

So the information silo theory reflects a SEO practice to group similar content under a related URL, while unassociated content gets cordoned off into its own silo.  Each does better on its own when the web page more directly reflects the content you want ranked better.

Theory in Action

Say you had a website that sold shoe, both high heels and hiking shoes. The tendency would be to create a website and try to get it ranked for terms such as ‘shoes’, ‘heeled shoes’, ‘hiking shoes’, ‘quality shoes’, etc. Because you are attempting to rank for highly competitive terms, the probability you’ll to rank well for both, at the same time, is very slim.

Instead, divide the sites up into two, each website selling one type of shoe.  Obtain a search engine friendly URL for each, and design the site focusing on the individual qualities and merits of each type of shoe.  Your new site, highheeledshoes.com, is optimized for ‘high heeled shoes’, ‘high heels’ &‘heeled shoes’, while your hiking line is optimized for ‘hiking shoes’, ‘quality hiking shoe’, etc…  You are sure to see a spike in your key wording efforts when you focus your efforts on niche categories with focused content.  Having these sites linked or under the same umbrella is fine, but always make sure to categorize and optimize for better search rankings.