2

Comments

Ranking high in the search engine results pages (SERPs) relies on two main factors:

* Relevance
* Authority

Of course, there is an infinite amount of nuance when it comes to achieving these twin Holy Grails of search engine optimization (SEO). But these are the two overriding principles that you’ll want to keep in mind for everything you do. And the best way to do so is to implement some procedural structure so that keeping these goals in mind is “baked-in” to the process. The best tool for organizing content for relevance and authority on a website is the content silo.

What is a content silo and what does it do?

Simply put, a content silo is a structured method of organizing the pages on your website that makes sense to search engines and web users. Just like the five paragraph essay format provides a familiar and logical structure for both writers and readers of high school papers, so to does the content silo streamline the process of writing relevant content, indexing the content properly and guiding users towards the information that they are looking for. Essentially, all a content silo does is organize your posts by topic, theme or keyword. This benefits:

* The ease with which your site is indexed by search engine spiders.
* The intuitiveness of your user navigation.
* The content direction for your writers and editorial staff.

For webmasters with SEO in mind, the construction of a content silo works hand in hand with keyword research.

Building a Keyword-driven Content Silo

Let’s say we’re building up content for a website about helicopter pilot training. The first page would be keyword optimized for our primary keyword: helicopter pilot training. This page would then in turn link to a page based around a secondary keyword (learn to fly helicopters) and mention several related keywords (helicopter pilot licenses, helicopter pilot jobs and helicopter pilot careers). The second page would be keyword optimized around the secondary keyword (learn to fly helicopters) and link to another secondary keyword (helicopter pilot schools) and mention a new list of related keywords (helicopter pilot licenses, helicopter pilot lessons, etc.). The third page would be linked from the second page and would be based around the secondary keyword on that page (helicopter pilot schools) and so on.

So, a basic outline of your website would look like this:

* Homepage
o Primary keyword: helicopter pilot training
o Secondary keyword: learn to fly helicopters
* Second page
o Primary keyword: learn to fly helicopters
o Secondary keyword: helicopter pilot schools
* Third page
o Primary keyword: helicopter pilot schools
o Secondary keyword: helicopter flying lessons

And so on…

In this way, you get a number of pages that are all carefully targeted towards a particular topic and logically flow into the next topic without overlapping. At the same time, you are creating valuable in-bound links with relevant anchor text and encouraging users to keep clicking and moving deeper and deeper into your website, rather than merely skimming and browsing at random.

Making Content Silos Work For You
As you can imagine, once a content silo gets started it can expand to include hundreds of pages. Not only that, depending on which content management system (CMs) you are using, there will be various back end decisions to make regarding file naming, interlinking and content structure that can make a big difference to your search engine ranking.

But what the importance of a content silo really highlights is the fact that content truly is king. You’ll need a minimum of 250 words of unique text on each of those pages, replete with keyword optimization, a clear call to action and compelling information that keeps users reading. This can be extremely time consuming – but it’s absolutely vital to getting your pages ranked.

If you don’t have the staff and resources in-house to produce content at this high of a volume, shoot us an email. We offer affordable packages for bulk content that will drive traffic to your website. Get in touch and we can talk about how we can build your website into a content kingdom.