Let me tell you more \u2026<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an SEO strategy that\u2019s been around for a while, yet the majority of brands \u2014 even bigger brands \u2014 aren\u2019t utilizing its power to improve their site\u2019s rankings, relevance and usability.<\/b><\/p>\n You\u2019ll gain a competitive advantage as I explain in this post:<\/p>\n It may or may not surprise you that the majority of website designers and developers are not skilled in search engine optimization.<\/p>\n Yet, these are the folks who are in charge of designing your website.<\/p>\n And the design of your site, from the code to the layout to the architecture, impacts your SEO<\/a> strategy.<\/p>\n So why aren’t more brands building SEO into their website from the start? Simply put: no one is really talking about SEO during a website launch or redesign.<\/p>\n Most brands today design their sites like brochures, focusing on colors, look and feel and high-level business objectives.<\/p>\n Topic-focused content organization is overlooked. The problem with that is it doesn\u2019t create subject matter expertise in the search engines\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n If you were a search engine, which of these would you rather show to users?<\/p>\n The garage without order or the garage with a clear focus?<\/p>\n Our job as website publishers is to help the search engines better understand what our business is about.<\/p>\n To do that, we have to hit the mark when it comes to look and feel and colors, but also content depth and organization. Google\u2019s algorithms are getting smarter, but they still need a lot of help.<\/p>\n To better understand that a business is about X and has subject matter expertise about X, you need to create a cluster of organized content around X versus just mentioning it in a few words on pages randomly throughout your site.<\/p>\n And by the way, doing this will help you in a RankBrain world, where the machine learning AI system is working hard to match a search query to the best possible website.<\/p>\n OK, now let\u2019s talk about the right way to structure a site for SEO.<\/p>\n We invented the concept of siloing<\/em> for SEO 17 years ago<\/strong> and have taught and written about siloing<\/a> ever since.<\/p>\n This is something you should consider when you\u2019re launching a new website, redesigning an old website or trying to implement a more powerful SEO strategy.<\/p>\n Organizing your website\u2019s content, through directory structure and links, in a way that conveys subject matter expertise to search engines is an SEO methodology I devised years ago, and it\u2019s called siloing<\/i>.<\/p>\n Siloing is organizing a website\u2019s content by heavily queried themes to make it clear what topics a site is about.<\/b><\/p>\n Put another way, siloing attempts to take a website with disjointed areas of focus and make sense of it by organizing the content.<\/p>\n Why is this important? A disorganized site doesn\u2019t clearly convey what it is about. So a disorganized site can negatively impact your search rankings, and thus traffic.<\/p>\n When you organize your website content by topic or theme, search engines can see that you have sufficient content around Topic X, and that you are probably a relevant choice for a query on X.<\/p>\n Remember, one of Google\u2019s key recommendations is to have a site with a clear structure and information-rich content.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an excerpt of Google\u2019s recommendations<\/a> from its Webmaster Guidelines:<\/p>\n Siloing is a highly technical and strategic SEO process. I won\u2019t go into the technical details here, although you can find them in this guide to SEO siloing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Instead, I\u2019m going to share with you the guiding rules of siloing, so that you can consider it for your own website.<\/p>\n Siloing starts with sufficient website content around the topics and ideas that are crucial to your business.<\/p>\n In SEO-speak, your site needs to have lots of content that uses your target keywords.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at an example. Say your website sells power tools. A website with disorganized focus may cover all the types of power tools on one page.<\/p>\n A website that has siloed its content might instead organize the various types of power tools it sells like this:<\/p>\n And by the way, each one of those pages represents a primary target search keyword and mentions the keywords common to their own themes.<\/p>\n This is not only a way to create a more streamlined user experience for your visitors, but also a way to tell Google that you are an expert on the various categories of power tools you sell.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because there\u2019s a clear hierarchical structure that makes it easy for search engine bots to crawl and understand the relationships and focus of topics.<\/p>\n In its simplest terms, here are the steps for how to do siloing for SEO:<\/b><\/p>\n Step 1 to siloing is knowing your keywords. All of these pieces are critical to establishing your site as an expert. But now, let\u2019s look at some results, shall we?<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Siloing is a foundational component of our SEO services, and clients see powerful results.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at a couple examples of real client results now.<\/p>\n Understand that the siloing strategy in these cases didn\u2019t exist in a vacuum. There were other SEO-driven revisions that occurred along with the website architecture edits and internal linking of siloing. However, it is our experience that every SEO tactic is amplified once siloing is in place.<\/p>\n Case Study No. 1: Manufacturer of Custom, Specialty Home Construction Parts<\/strong><\/p>\n This client came to us due to a link penalty from Penguin<\/a>. But they also wanted us to migrate their site from a .net domain to their Unix-based .com, and from a custom CMS to WordPress. We found this to be a perfect opportunity to silo their content.<\/p>\n For this engagement, we did the following:<\/p>\n Here are the results:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Case Study No. 2: Insurance Plans and Easy Enrollment Website<\/strong><\/p>\n This client had a new domain with very little content. They needed to identify the top keywords to target and the supporting content that would help them reinforce their primary keywords. Site architecture and internal linking structure would need to be established.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what we did:<\/p>\n And here are the results we saw:<\/p>\n Siloing can be the most powerful tool in your SEO arsenal, and yet many brands aren\u2019t even aware of it. Talk about a competitive advantage to siloing adopters.<\/p>\n If your website needs a boost in relevancy and a lift in organic search traffic, siloing your web content and organizing your link structure is just the thing to do that.<\/p>\n Tell me your own siloing experience in the comments.<\/i><\/p>\n Would you want to discuss more about how you can be helped? Let\u2019s talk.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n This article just scratches the surface of the most powerful SEO tactic, siloing. Send your technical search marketing team to SEO training<\/a> with me to learn how to do it for your business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What if I told you that the way most websites are structured is completely wrong for search marketing?<\/p>\n And then what if I told you that there was a proven way to structure your website to:<\/p>\n \u2022 Boost its relevancy for search engines Let me tell you more \u2026<\/p>\n It\u2019s an SEO strategy that\u2019s been around for a while, yet the majority of brands \u2014 even bigger brands \u2014 aren\u2019t utilizing its power to improve their site\u2019s rankings, relevance and usability.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll gain a competitive advantage as I explain in this post:<\/p>\n \u2022 Why website architecture is the key to making your site relevant to the search engines.![\"seo](\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/competition-busting-seo-strategy-siloing.png\")
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Website Architecture: The Wrong Way<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nWebsite Architecture for SEO<\/h2>\n
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Siloing: What You Need to Know<\/h2>\n
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\nStep 2 is understanding how people search.
\nStep 3 is having ample content.
\nStep 4 is organizing topics and supporting topics hierarchically.
\nStep 5 is using internal links to connect related pages.<\/p>\n
\nThe technical implementation instructions for SEO siloing are outlined here<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe Power of Siloing: 2 Case Studies<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>Start Siloing for a Competitive Advantage<\/h2>\n
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\n\u2022 Drive more organic search traffic
\n\u2022 And gain a massive competitive advantage?<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 How the organization of your content positions you as a subject matter expert and creates a good user experience.
\n\u2022 Case studies that show the power of website architecture for SEO.<\/p>\n