Blog Silo Development Tutorial For Beginners

Credits to Bruce Clay who developed the silo concept for websites

Psst...I will get back to blog promotion, please bear with me.

I first discovered the silo architecture in 2013 after I read the ground breaking article written by Bruce Clay and subsequently implemented it to some degree on a site I developed for my brother's music band (check them out here).

I did so by tweaking the categories, pages and menu after I read this article by Stephen Cronin. Stephen Cronin is NOT for beginners, mind you.   I did pretty well on naming the Pages and Categories alike, but got stuck because the category pages kept going back to blank pages. I know today that these pages must contain the contents of the category, thanks to a recent video by Brendan Mace. 

Since my first introduction to silos, I used the free plugin offered by Network Empire on WordPress.org. However, the free version had its limitations. I'm now reading more about Network Empire and wishing I had explored more about them back then. 

Caught up in the allure of the silo architecture, I bought the the Dashnex Plugin, but had to dash it back due to technical difficulties. 

In my opinion, a blog that is not siloed is in the boon docks.  

The image that I have is of content stacked like plates.  Since the content is stacked, the blog owner can seamlessly add new stacks of content when necessary  without interfering with anything else once the principle and structure are understood.

SEO Ultimate WordPress Plugin claims to silo sites (free version is available).

Silo defined by Niche Site Profits

Mind map of the silo architecture with examples from this blog

Conceptualized and done manually by Mercedes Moss. 18th August, 2015

KEY to the silo structure

Main Blog Page = Main Theme Page

• About Page or 
• Landing page or 
• Welcome page or 
• whatever relevant synonym you assign 
• make it engaging 
• one or two well placed and relevant resources such as ADs etc - free or paid
• reward subscription with a free gift 
• add links to all of the main pages on the blog
• links to external authority source of high page rank - e,g, your profiles on Google+,  Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, RSS aggregators, social bookmarking sites
• build image and confidence

Sub theme pages  

• one page per theme
• add posts on this page 
• the posts should be hyperlinked to allow the visitor to click directly to the post

• categorize or group  the posts
• should baclink to ONE external authority source of high page rank - e,g, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin
• e.g. on Juicy Backlinks, there are inbound links from the blog's RSS feeds that were submitted to Top EIGHT RSS aggregators

Labels 

• one label per theme
• name the label identical to the the related theme
• equivalent to categories on WordPress

Posts - contain content related to the specific silo theme

• add natural links to related posts on the blog
• link to the previous post at the end of each post
• add relevant links to external sources
• must integrate at least ONE relevant image to entice visitor interest
• add title and ALT text for search engines
• I sometimes write the blog url in the title box
• image searches will provide a backlink to the blog
• Archangel Michael told me posts must integrate at least ONE  video. Video is King.
• Use a range of resources to heighten reader interest and involvement

• infographics

• animations

• slideshows

• polls

• questions and answers 

• statistics 

• reports

• whitepapers

• case studies

•  integrate relevant resources (free or paid) as necessary
• add a link to the previous post at the end of the post to provide internal link juice to the reader and search engines. 
• add related posts widget to the blog to interlink posts. Get it at this link - very easy to install.

Great material

More silo development articles by Bruce Clay