Silo Architecture

[websteve]

Anyone know about Silo Architecture and if it is a good SEO strategy to follow?

Thanks!

[KernelPanic]

this answers your question Matt Cutts on Themed Website Architecture - YouTube

say no to mega menus they are a tool for the weak imo

[joshz]

say no to mega menus they are a tool for the weak imo

Respectfully disagree. I find them easier to convert for visitors and older generation views. Those who 'refuse to search', often find everything they need in a nice mega menu.

Example: Office Supplies: Find Office Products at OfficeMax

It's becoming a more popular trend for ecommerce sites and those with massive content. I, personally, love mega menus. The less scrolling I need to do on a site, the better.

[websteve]

I tought I was on the right track and this confirms it.

Thank you!

[KernelPanic]

Respectfully disagree. I find them easier to convert for visitors and older generation views. Those who 'refuse to search', often find everything they need in a nice mega menu.

Example: Office Supplies: Find Office Products at OfficeMax

It's becoming a more popular trend for ecommerce sites and those with massive content. I, personally, love mega menus. The less scrolling I need to do on a site, the better.

We have had this discussion before and I feel so strongly about it I won't even agree to disagree brother.

Straight line hierarchal navigation structures are better for SEO and easier to navigate if designed properly. People today, including the office max retards above, are unwilling to put in the time it takes to properly design navigation that benefits the user.

Quite frankly it's "becoming a more popular trend for ecommerce sites " to use mega menus because the work most often goes to either the lowest bidder or the 2 year college tard hoping to move out of his intern position.

Have you ever gotten lost at an airport? When you go to an airport what navigation choices are you presented with? Tickets and Gates. Once you are through your gate then you get some more choices, once past there you get some more. Boom, destination without a single wrong turn. Would you like it better if every single possible destination was listed for you at the entrance? Do you want to know that their is a Starbucks at Gate D157 when your plane is at A17? At the entrance of the airport do you want to look through a menu of 180 items just to find your ticket counter? I think not.

FURTHER (yes I know I am ranting, forgot my pills today) if you understand how pagerank flows there is no freaking way you would ever put 200 internal links on your home page.

I know I am fighting a losing battle here, but that's my story and I am sticking to it.

Edit to add: I might have stolen my analogy from here READ IT: http://www.andybudd.com/archives/200...er_experience/

[fathom]

Respectfully disagree. I find them easier to convert for visitors and older generation views. Those who 'refuse to search', often find everything they need in a nice mega menu.

Example: Office Supplies: Find Office Products at OfficeMax

It's becoming a more popular trend for ecommerce sites and those with massive content. I, personally, love mega menus. The less scrolling I need to do on a site, the better.

I'll disagree with your disagreement because you are not talking about search you are talking about direct referrals from non-search oriented developments.

KernelPanic is absolutely correct... less is more because you're building depth to funnel in the same amount of pages and with depth comes relevancy (or relatedness).

With search people land on the landing page they wanted - they don't need your menu whether massive or petite they clicked on exactly what their interest was.

Silo architecture is a valid development but the part that really matters is compounding link anchors e.g. level 1 SEO > Level 2 SEO Services > Level 3 Tampa FL SEO Services or the impact of the internal use of SEO (and SEO Services) in multiple link generations making you rank extremely easily for Tampa FL SEO Services (because of the backpath of anchors) and if you also have breadcrumbs back to the higher level pages Tampa FL SEO Services ^ SEO Services ^ SEO - you also drive the value back to top level pages (in your Silo).

[fathom]

Example: Office Supplies: Find Office Products at OfficeMax

Using a small part of your example:

Desk Accessories & Organizers
Desk Pads

No one searchers for Desk Accessories & Organizers so you wasted that link anchor... and the reason I know you wasted it is because you rank #2 for that phrase: Desk Accessories & Organizers that no one types in.

But if you structured your anchor like this:

Desk > <next level down>

Desk Accessories
Desk Organizers
Desk Pads

You've made enormous gains in typed in targeted phrases that are searched.

Course your 396 links of your homepage is costing you massive revenue.

I can increase revenue by a whopping 500% just by siloing your product arrangements.

If you get 1000 orders a day and your average profit margin is $10.00 that 10,000.00/day... but if you placed over hot ticket or high profit margin items on the homepage and drop everything else one level down your profit margin goes to what? $50 or $50,000/day.

Course some people only care about "every little bit helps"... but then there is the internal search function for $5.99 orders.

[JennifferGrey]

I use Silos on my own sites, because I've seen what they can do in the SERPs. Plus If done correctly the Silo will help traffic navigate the site in a logical way.
I would be careful on the Google Images when looking at Silo info. some of those guys got stuck on the idea of linking out of the bottom of the first Silo to the 2nd Silo for no reason, they link regardless If the pages are related or not. Linking out to unrelated pages isn't a a good idea IMO, it dilutes the whole purpose of creating a Silo

[fathom]

Linking out to unrelated pages isn't a a good idea IMO, it dilutes the whole purpose of creating a Silo

Not really... it will make your solution much more unpredictible for sure but as for linking related only vs unrelated it is refuted by Wikipedia as the best example that "where ever the keyword lands naturally in the text is a link."

Wikipedia has 1 page on SEO and is #1 in Google for SEO. It does not have an infinite supply of external SEO related links like SEOMoz and SearchEngineLand do (#2 & #3 respectfully) but it does have a massive amount of internal SEO links from unrelated topics (the birth of the Internet isn't really related but has a reference to SEO in the content earning an internal link. PLUS 10s of thousands of other not so related pages and their links).

[joshz]

Oh. My bad. I forget, we're developing and optimizing for Search Engines... Not users. In that case I am totally wrong.

I still stand behind my opinion on mega-menus. I like them as a consumer.

[giggity]

I have a shop as part of my site and its architecture is like this (example):

/shop/mobiles/iphone/
/shop/tablets/ipad/

Breadcrumbs are set up as:
Home > Shop > Mobiles > iPhone
and
Home > Shop > Tablets > iPad

but the navigation menu is a dropdown menu that displays all pages and does not change depending on the page (therefore every page will have a link to every other).

Is this structure OK and should I consider changing the navigation menus so that not every page links to every other? Also, am I really using anchor text effectively in my navigation menus when I could be linking to /shop/mobiles/iphone/ with the anchor text (Buy an iPhone) rather than simply iPhone.

Thanks.

[fathom]

Oh. My bad. I forget, we're developing and optimizing for Search Engines... Not users. In that case I am totally wrong.

I still stand behind my opinion on mega-menus. I like them as a consumer.

Amazingly 30,000 consumers search Google every second ... and according to you they are not consumers but search engines???

Did I read that right?

[joshz]

Yes, you did. You just neglecting to comprehend the sarcasm.

[fathom]

Yes, you did. You just neglecting to comprehend the sarcasm.

Actually I was only wrong once in my life and that was only because I thought I was wrong (when I was actually right) so you could say "thinking I was wrong" and "saying I was wrong" as a mathematical equation makes me perfect again!

[joshz]

My brain just imploded. Sometimes I love to hate you, Rod