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In a logical way, a search engine such as Google for example will consider such a site as an authority site, because it is well structured, and it is able to bring a useful experience to the visitor looking for specific information on boating.
To complete a silo structure, you will need to tell Google that your site is indeed silo structured (we all know that search engines follow links to index and analyze pages). You can achieve this by simply creating a landing page which in turn links to all of your "Silos".
In this way:
You have a complete coverage of a given industry.
Information is always categorized and relevant (you don't have information on power boats at hand when discussing sailing boat equipment).
You provide information your visitors are likely to look for.
A silo (one of the sites) could be "considered" as a standalone site, but it mostly contributes to the building of a much bigger structure (the silo structure), thus giving more weight to the overall structure.
A given silo is not linked to the other silos. But a silo can link (and should link) to the landing page, thus letting visitors and search engines follow the information flow in a natural way.
Results have proven that this type of structure is highly effective for these reasons: - Search engines will index silo structured sites very quickly.
You give a lot of information to search engines on how your information is structured. Search engines will love you for that.
It's a robust structure that lasts long in search engines.
Can you now see the point about silo structure? So what's the deal with LSI, and how is the concept connected to silos?
It's simple...but not really well known.
LSI is a way to find "related" topics. For example, if you want to create a site on "weight loss", semantically related words would be "obesity", "diet", and so forth.
In their quest to both index according to relevancy, and to fight keyword stuffing, search engines started to analyze sites using the LSI concept. They tend to favor naturally built sites. A naturally built "weight loss" site would discuss obesity, diet, healthy eating, natural herbal supplements, and other related words, and so won't only use the words "weight loss".
Finally, just remember that humans are way ahead of bots when it comes to analyzing content, and that search engines (bots) will always tend to copy our brain.
So what's the connection between Silo Structure and LSI?
LSI is a way to get the topics that your silo structure site will cover. It's the "tool" you will use to build your set of silos.
If you want to build a silo structured website covering the "fitness" industry, you might want to cover some of the following topics:
Aerobics
Wellness
Training
Weight Loss
Of course you NEED to cover directly related terms such as "fitness equipment", "fitness programs", and so forth.
But the point is that you need to include some of the "semantically related" niches into your silo structured site to give it more weight in the search engines.
It's a way to combine the power of Silo Structure with LSI (latent semantic indexing).
Now everything I have just spoken about above was purely for the purpose of giving an introduction.
If you remember, the subject line was "Going beyond the Silo Structure concept".
The above gives an overview of what Silo Structure is, and how it should be used along with the LSI concept. (FYI, no one in the online marketing niche today currently sells sites using these concepts...apart from me and my nichesinabox concept)
Now, going beyond the Silo Structure concept means we will need to understand how the search engines will evolve. If a silo structured website has a high value in search engine indexes (and even greater if built utilizing LSI tools), we then need to ask ourselves what would be an even more effective scheme?
A silo structure is indeed a natural scheme, and you will find this everywhere throughout nature. Our universe is built upon this basis.
So, given this fact, then our next performing or effective scheme should be...Silo of Silos. Yes, adding 1 additional level to the structure to make it even more categorized and effective.
You may want to re-read the above carefully. It may seem obvious, and it is, but it's also HIGHLY important. It will give more structure and this will allow even more relevancy, both for search engines, and for your visitors.