Use Silo Structure and Latent Semantic Indexing to SEO Your Site

Complex Terms, Simple Idea

You want to create a site that will rank highly in search engines. You can start down the road to getting good rankings before putting a single thing on your site.

Build your site using silo structure. Silo structure is related to latent semantic indexing (LSI). Silo structure and LSI may sound complicated, but I use them mainly to give you a deeper understand of the following simple principle: Organize your site well with valuable content and the search engines will rank you highly.

That’s what the search engines have been saying all along.

On-Page Search Engine Optimization

Things you do to your site are called “on-page SEO,” as opposed to off-page SEO. Off-page SEO deals a lot with the crucially important issue of backlinks.

Today, we will mostly be discussing on-page SEO — that is what you have control over and can act on right now.

Latent Semantic Indexing

If someone claims to be an SEO expert, a good litmus test to use is to ask what they think of latent semantic indexing. They need to know about it because it is the future (if not the present) of SEO.

In simple terms, LSI is the software Google uses to analyze your site like a human. LSI was first widely used within Google’s AdSense program to ensure that their ads were as relevant as possible to the web pages they appeared on.

One of LSI’s key ingredients is that Google can make a much more accurate assessment of a site’s theme when it looks at groups of words rather than words in isolation.

For example, “fork on the table” would tell Google to put a cutlery ad on the page, while “fork in the road” would indicate to Google to put a map product ad on the page.

To improve the LSI of your site, write using less fluff and more industry terms.

LSI Is to Content what Silo Structure Is to Website Architecture

LSI demonstrates how we should use related words to communicate to Google what our site is about. While LSI is most clearly relevant to on-page content, it is also an important concept for improving the structure of your site or sites.
Silo structure is when you create verticals throughout your sites, verticals that each have to do with a related topic. Verticals are the main sections of your sites, as seen in the categories in your site’s navigation.

You can use these verticals to prop up the SEO of your sites.

Your new site, that you plan to invest a ton of time into developing, is about forks made of China’s finest stainless steel, let’s say. You create that site as well as a few others.

The other sites will link back to your main site. (Note: Search engines know that you own all the sites unless you take a few steps to separate them. But those steps are not worth your time right now.)

Each of those sites that link back should be focused on a topic related to Chinese-stainless steel forks. You could build out one site about cutlery in general, and another site about American-stainless steel forks, and another site about the stainless steel industry in China.

You want to have each of those other sites cover a relevant topic to the one on your main site. And you want each of those other sites to link back to your main site.

You can also execute silo structure on a more targeted level by organizing and theming the navigation of each site in the way you have organized and themed your sites around the main site theme (e.g., the main site’s keyword). In simple terms, you should create categories that cover all the major relevant themes within the navigation links of your site.

Here’s an enlightening article that goes deeper into how exactly to do silo structure for your site, with pictures and background: http://bobwilloughby.com/BeyondSilo.pdf

Content Sites

Silo structure is one form of architecture. It’s particularly good for content sites, which are sites consisting mainly of text information. Organize your site around it if you have a content site.

If you do not have a content site or do not think silo structure serves the experience your site is intended to make, the principles of silo structure can still help you understand what Google is looking for and how they are looking through your website.