– Search Engine Indexing

Let’s say your website is just a collection of pages, all linked to the home page.

When a search engine indexes the content on that site, it won’t necessarily understand what your topics and sub-topics are.

But when you have a well laid out silo structure, you are telling the search engines: “this is how I want you to understand my content”.

By nesting sub-topics within a content silo you are signalling to the search engines that your website has topical authority for that topic.

And that’s important.

Because getting a web page ranked for a given keyword is not just about the content on that web page. It’s also about how much related content you have on your website.

If you write a single web page about a particular restaurant in Paris and the rest of your site is all about Paris hotels, it’s unlikely you’ll get that page listed on Page #1 of Google.

Why?

Because your site has no topical authority for ‘Paris restaurants’.

But if you have a whole content silo devoted to Paris restaurants, you have a much better chance of ranking.

Google wants to deliver content that will answer all of a searcher’s questions. And a website that has a content silo for ‘Paris restaurants’ is more likely to do that than a website that lists just one Paris restaurant.

But a silo structure is not just for search engines. It also helps your human visitors.

– User Experience

Let’s say you have a travel site about Paris, and one of your web pages deals with ‘Restaurant x’.  When a visitor lands on that web page, he or she will see from your site navigation that you have a whole category (or content silo) dedicated to Paris restaurants.

Chances are he or she will click on that category page and look at your other ‘Paris restaurant’ pages.

That’s going to increase the time your visitor spends on your site. And the more time a visitor spends on your site, the higher your pages will rank in the search results.

Why?

Because it tells the algorithm that your content answered the searcher’s query.  

So a silo structure creates a better user experience for your visitors and that in turn improves your SEO.