How to create a reverse silo structure for your website

A reverse silo structure is a website architecture that deviates from the traditional hierarchical silo structure. In a traditional silo structure, the homepage of a website is at the top of the hierarchy, followed by categories, subcategories, and individual pages. On the other hand, a reverse silo structure starts with individual pages and works its way up to broader categories. This type of structure can be effective for websites that have a lot of content that doesn’t fit neatly into specific categories, as it allows individual pages to rank for specific keywords related to that page. Some benefits of using a reverse silo structure include:

• Maximizing link juice through strategic interlinking of content
• Allowing individual pages to rank for specific keywords
• Allowing broader category pages to rank for more general keywords
• Improving user engagement
• Increasing organic traffic
• Ultimately leading to better conversions

Understanding Your Target Audience

• Defining your target audience is crucial for any successful marketing strategy. Here are some important points to keep in mind:
  1. What is a target audience?
     • A target audience is a share of consumers that a business directs is trying to reach with its advertising efforts.
     • It is the specific group of people who are most likely to want to purchase your product or service.
     • A target audience defines that group using audience demographics, interests, and buying history.
  2. Why is defining a target audience important?
     • Helps align your content with the needs and interests of your audience.
     • Drives a brand’s growth, marketing strategies, and equity, leading to the overall improvement of the bottom line.
     • Allows you to focus on the people most likely to convert.
     • You can spend your advertising budget more effectively.
     • You know which social media platforms to focus on.
     • You can develop messaging that truly resonates with current and potential customers. This makes it easier to connect with them and earn their loyalty.
     • Consumers will feel as if they connect with your brand.
  3. How to define your target audience:
     • Figuring out your target audience isn’t rocket science. It just comes down to a few simple questions. Six actually, to be exact.
     • Your target audience will be defined by demographics, the challenges they’re facing and the solution they’re hoping to find.
     • It is always best to use several methods to pin down your target audience to be comprehensive. Surveys involve a series of questions asked from a group of respondents.
  Remember that understanding and recognizing your target audience correctly is the most crucial step in any successful marketing strategy. As Peter F. Drucker said, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

III. Grouping Related Topics Together

Grouping related topics together is an essential step in organizing your site’s content. Here are some ways to determine which topics should be grouped together:

1. Use topic pages: Topic pages are an easy way to organize your content by the topics that you have written about. With topic pages, readers can quickly view all the content pertaining to a specific topic on a single page. In addition, topic pages are great for long-tail search engine optimization.
2. Create an organized sitemap: After identifying the crucial elements to help you decide on the right content and framework for your website, the right arrangement is the next step.
3. Keep your blog user-friendly: Proper organization keeps your blog user-friendly, promoting continued readership. Your readers should not have to scour your site for the content they want; it should be accessible and easy to locate.
4. Use descriptive navigation titles: Be descriptive in your navigation titles. Use labels that use top-of-mind phrases for visitors and popular keyphrases according to the Google Keyword Tool.
5. Group related topics together: Organize your site’s content into related groups of topics. These groups will form the basis of your reverse silo structure.

As Andy Crestodina suggests, “descriptive is better from both a user and an SEO perspective”. By grouping related topics together, you can reduce screen clutter by bringing together similar content and allow readers to quickly find different perspectives about the same issue

IV. Creating Individual Pages

Creating individual pages and working your way up to broader categories is a website design technique known as a reverse silo structure. This approach can improve the user experience, increase conversion rates, and enhance search engine rankings. By using a reverse silo structure, each individual page can rank for specific keywords related to that page, while broader category pages can rank for more general keywords related to the type of content. This can help the website to rank well for a wider range of keywords. According to Kyle Roof, a reverse silo is an SEO technique where you strategically interlink content in such a way that maximizes link juice. This technique has been born out of 400+ SEO tests made over 4 years. It’s tested, powerful, and it can help improve search engine rankings. Here are some benefits of using individual pages in a reverse silo structure:

1. User-friendly design: A reverse silo structure is a user-centric design approach that focuses on making the website more accessible and user-friendly. By placing the most important content at the top of the page, users are immediately presented with the information they are looking for, which can improve the overall quality of the site.
2. Improved search engine rankings: By using a reverse silo structure, each individual page can rank for specific keywords related to that page, while broader category pages can rank for more general keywords related to the type of content. This can help the website to rank well for a wider range of keywords.
3. Better organization: A reverse silo structure allows for better organization of content on a website. By starting with individual pages and working your way up to broader categories, you can ensure that each page is relevant to its category and that all pages are organized in a logical manner.
4. Increased conversion rates: By presenting users with the most important information first, a reverse silo structure can help to increase conversion rates. Users are more likely to take action when they find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
5. Easier content creation: A reverse silo structure can make it easier to create content for a website. By starting with individual pages, you can focus on creating high-quality content that is relevant to specific topics. This can make it easier to create broader category pages later on.

To create individual pages in a reverse silo structure, you should conduct keyword research, prioritize pages, create high-quality content, interlink pages strategically, and use categories sparingly

V. Interlinking Content

Maximizing link juice through strategic interlinking of content is a proven SEO technique that can improve search engine rankings. According to Kyle Roof’s study, a reverse silo structure can maximize link juice by interlinking content in a strategic manner. Link juice is the flow of authority or value that circulates between the internal links of a website. Optimizing this juice of links is essential to pass the authority of the websites with the best positioning, to other URLs that do not have enough strength, but that they want to position. Link juice refers to the value that one web page transmits to another through links. The links between two pages boost the end site’s authority, meaning Google and other search engines will take notice and account for this when determining which position in the search engine results pages (SERPs) a particular page should land on. A good internal linking strategy can guide visitors to high-converting pages, leading to more revenue for your business. With users spending more time on your website and increasing the page views, Google will get a positive signal about the performance of your site and boost its ranking

Keyword Mapping and Content Silo

LSIGraph Keyword Mapper is a tool that can help you design and strategize your site’s structure by mapping keywords to specific pages of your website based on keyword research. This map informs the structure of your site, which affects how Google’s bots crawl your site and evaluate it. The tool is natively integrated with the Semantic Writer, allowing you to kickstart your content silo, keyword by keyword, content by content.

LSI keywords, or Latent Semantic Indexing keywords, are related keywords under the main keyword’s umbrella that can help you build a rank-pulling article. According to Brian Dean, the more LSI keywords you embed into your content, the better Google understands what your page is about.

Using LSIGraph Keyword Mapper and Content Silo can help you visualize your site’s structure as a relationship tree, making it more intuitive to build your content silo. The tool can also help you find hidden LSI words that Google expects to see within your content in order to rank on page one.

Here are some relevant statistics:

• Hundreds of factors could improve your Google rankings. But some are more difficult to influence than others. For that reason, if you want to rank higher, you need to be methodical5.
• Ranking high on Google for one keyword is great, but ranking high for many keywords is even better. So once you’ve followed this process for one keyword, repeat it for more. You’ll rank higher for hundreds of keywords and get tons of organic traffic5.
• Google uses LSI keywords as a way to identify the context of your content. Since different keywords can obviously have different meanings, Google uses latent semantic indexing to identify the meaning of the keyword that you’re using and return relevant content for the user’s search query4.

Overall, using LSIGraph Keyword Mapper and Content Silo can help you design and strategize your site’s structure while natively integrating with the Semantic Writer to kickstart your content silo, keyword by keyword, content by content.

VII. Conclusion

• Benefits of using a reverse silo structure for your website:
  • Maximizes link juice through strategic interlinking of content, which is a proven SEO technique that can improve search engine rankings.
  • Helps Google’s bots crawl your site and evaluate it more effectively by mapping keywords to specific pages of your website based on keyword research.
  • Creates neatly organized sections of related content, making it easy for Google’s bots to find your pages and boost your site’s ranking.
  • Boosts your site’s authority and ranking by passing link juice to related web pages through internal linking best practices.
  Final thoughts on implementing a reverse silo structure:
  • Use LSIGraph Keyword Mapper to design and strategize your site’s structure by mapping keywords to specific pages of your website based on keyword research.
  • Natively integrate with the Semantic Writer to kickstart your content silo, keyword by keyword, content by content.
  • Use LSI keywords to identify the best keywords for ranking at the top 10 of SERP and to understand what search users are really trying to look for when searching for a keyword or page.
  • Incorporate LSI keywords into your content to help Google understand what your page is about and rank it better.
  • Remember that implementing a reverse silo structure is a methodical process that requires planning and organization, but it can ultimately lead to higher rankings and more organic traffic.