Website Design
Siloing Is About Making Sure Your Topics
Have Their Own Space And Can Be Truly Independent
Understanding Website Siloing
Rough Draft Version
Home = Sites main index page.
LP = Landing Page (topic specific)
1-5 = Pages on the same topic or related sub-topic.
Siloing involves taking pages of the same topic and putting them together into "Silos" (as pictured). At the top of each silo is a Landing Page devoted specifically to the topic supported by a minimum of at least five other pages dealing with pages related to the same topic or a related sub-topic.
In order to set up Siloing as displayed, each silo would be given its own directory within the main website structure. The links within each directory would connect the landing page and sub-pages to the main index page but not to other pages (even in the same Silo). As the picture shows, the black Downward Links connect the Landing Page to each of the sub-pages. The sub-pages then link back to the Landing Page (red Upward Links) but at no time connect to each of the other sub-pages.
If you need to connect one sub-page to another for usability purposes then the link can be created with the addition of a (rel="nofollow") element. This will maintain the purity of the Silos without giving up the usability needed.
If on the other hand you need to connect a sub-page from one Silo with a sub-page from another Silo the same method could be employed. However, in that situation it is better to link to the Landing Page of the other Silo (leaving the link as normal). This will still maintain the Silo's purity as it is connecting to a Landing Page while also increasing the relevancy of the linked to Landing Page.
The only major downside to this linking strategy is that it puts serious limitations on global navigation. One easy way around this is to follow the same structure with the global navigation. To do this, you set rel="nofollow" elements to the global navigation elements on the pages, while leaving that out for the main page. This is the method we have used on this website. The links on the left all have rel="nofollow" attributes except the link going back to the index page. The same links on the index page itself have no rel="nofollow" attributes. To accomplish this we made two versions of the main template used for the site. One including the rel"nofollow" attributes and one that leave them out (and then adds a link to the sitemap as well).
NOTE: This same link structure can be used when only one main topic is being discussed on a website (like this one). The main element is that the individual pages don't link to the other individual pages, but instead link to the index page only.
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