Definition: Content silo
What is a content silo?
A content silo is a method used in search engine optimization (SEO). It involves taking your website content and structuring it around keyword-based themes.
In short, when you create a 'silo' structure, distinct sections on your website are created by grouping any related content together. Relevant keywords and topics are gathered together under 'subtopics' or subcategories'.
Content silos rely on a strong linking structure to help guide visitors to additional pieces of content that relate to the web page they’re currently viewing.
Why do we use content silos?
Content silos are important for SEO because they help search engines understand your website content more easily.
When a search engine crawls your site, it wants to ascertain exactly what your content is about, how it’s structured, and where it’s located.
By utilizing silo architecture, a website is able to provide the type of structure that makes it simpler for search engines to complete this task.
This technique not only helps you improve SEO, but it also helps you improve usability.
Some websites contain content that can seem disjointed because there is no clear way to understand how the web pages are related to each other. However, siloing your content by using taxonomy or subcategories can greatly improve user experience. It helps visitors better understand how each piece of content relates to each other.
How do you create content silos?
A thorough audit of your existing content (and future content) should be completed before you consider installing any content silos on your website.
You should use keyword research to help you do this because the data keyword research can provide will help guide you down a path that is more likely to produce positive results.
Consider the following data points when creating content silos:
- Keyword research data so know what keywords you want to target
- Existing content structure or hierarchically
- Future content needs
- Possibly future content structure based on those target keywords with parent/child relationships
- Places where content silos can exist:
- Pages
- Blog categories
- Products
- Product Categories
- Custom taxonomies (nerd talk for custom categories or tag structures)
- Places where you can reinforce that structure:
- Menus
- Breadcrumb
- Linking
- URL structure
- Creation of 301 redirects for use in URL structure updates
