New Article - Siloing Revisited

[thejenn]

Authored by: Lisa Barone

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/barone/009352.html

A Snippet:

In its simplest terms, siloing is a site architecture technique used to split the focus of a site into multiple themes. The goal behind siloing is to create a site that ranks well for both its common and more-targeted keywords.

[copywriter]

Good information, but advice such as this:

Sticking with our peanut butter example, say your site sells a type of jelly that is particularly complimentary to creamy peanut butter. It may be fitting to link from your peanut butter page to the flavored jelly page. Since the jelly page would be a supporting page in the Jelly silo, you would want to link your creamy peanut butter page to the landing page of the Jelly silo instead of to the particular flavored jelly page. Doing this would dilute your theme of the creamy silo. By linking to the top of the Jelly silo, you not only keep the integrity of the two silos, but you also are helping to establish the Jelly landing page as the main page for that silo.

makes me nervous. This strategy is focused solely on the engines and appears to disregard the needs of the visitor. I'm also concerned it sacrifices conversions. It does make sense to cross sell jelly with peanut butter. Not linking directly to the individual jelly product page is making the visitor go around his elbow to get to his butt Not the easiest way to convert lookers to buyers.

I did see where a suggestion was given about using a nofollow tag. However, that was stated for use when "you absolutely had to link the creamy peanut butter page to the flavored jelly page." Of course you would want to. That's how you make more sales

Just be cautious about how far you go to appease the engines. Creating a site focused more on the needs of the SE's instead of the needs of your visitors is a dangerous game.

There are tons of ways you can drive traffic to your site. There are only so many ways to get people to buy once they are there.

[suzukik]

Hi,
Thank you for a very useful article.

I have questions.

Does a landing page mean top page like index.html?
If so, does a silo of expample have 6 pages(1 landing page + 5 sub pages)?


I understand all subpages links to their main page when I use virtual siloing.
I wonder if they are linked from their main page too?
(i.e. the main page links to all the subpages)