What Is A Physical SEO Silo?

physical seo silo

SEO siloing is a content organization strategy that could significantly improve your search engine ranking. This process groups together like topics so your site is easier for users and search engines to navigate.

There are two types of SEO silos: physical silos and virtual SEO silo. Either option can improve your ranking for target keywords, but one may be easier to implement than the other. This guide explains what a physical SEO silo is and how to create one on your website.

What Is a Physical SEO Silo?

A physical SEO silo is a silo you create in the directory of your website. With a virtual silo, all of the connections within the silo are achieved through interlinking. With a physical silo, the connections are created in a more literal manner. Essentially, you will create folders on your website to represent each of your silos, and the pages within the folders are the supporting pages for the silo itself.

Implementing a Physical SEO Silo Structure

In our SEO silo guide, we used the example of a dog food store specializing in wet and dry dog foods. We created the following silo structure:

  • Wet Dog Food Category Page
    • Beef Flavored Wet Dog Food
    • Salmon Flavored Wet Dog Food
    • Turkey Flavored Wet Dog Food
    • Quail Flavored Wet Dog Food
    • Chicken Flavored Wet Dog Food
  • Dry Dog Food Category Page
    • Chicken Flavored Dry Dog Food
    • Turkey Flavored Dry Dog Food
    • Beef Flavored Dry Dog Food
    • Pork Flavored Dry Dog Food
    • Deer Flavored Dry Dog Food

For a physical SEO silo structure, the URLs for the wet dog food pages may read as follows:

  • DogFoodSite.com/wet-food/chicken.html
  • DogFoodSite.com/wet-food/quail.html
  • DogFoodSite.com/wet-food/turkey.html
  • DogFoodSite.com/wet-food/salmon.html
  • DogFoodSite.com/wet-food/beef.html

As you can see, each of the subpages is under the “wet-food” directory on the website. There would most likely be a category page under the URL DogFoodSite.com/wet-food, with links pointing to the other pages in the silo.

Linking within a Physical SEO Silo

Even though physical SEO silos are formed in the site’s directory, you can still link pages within a silo like you would with a virtual SEO silo. The key here is to only link to pages within the SEO silo. That way, search engines can see a clear grouping of webpages on your website with no outer linking going on. If you have to link to a page in another silo, link to the category page for that silo. This will show search engines that you are linking to a new topic and will help to maintain the separation between your silos.

A Physical Silo Structure Makes Your Website Easier to Crawl

The internet is filled with an unquantifiable amount of information. Approximately 380 new websites are created every minute, and every website has anywhere from one to thousands of webpages within it. With all of this information out there, it’s nearly impossible for search engines to index every single page when it’s published.

A physical SEO silo gives the search engine a map to follow. “Here is the main page, and here at the pages that support it.” Interlinking between those pages further emphasizes their connections. Marketers still take other measures to get a page indexed, but SEO silos help streamline the process.

How to Safely Reorganize Your Website without Losing Traffic

If you want to convert your existing site structure to a physical SEO silo, be careful. Changing URLs may hurt or eliminate any traffic you’re getting to an existing webpage. This is especially true if that particular page is heavily linked to. The links will now show as broken, which damages your quality score and could frustrate potential customers.

In many cases, a virtual SEO silo is the best approach for existing webpages. You can implement a physical silo for new pages, but a virtual silo would not change your URL structure. If some of your existing pages are getting little to no traffic, then you could update some of the content and repost with a new URL. You could also move the content and create a redirect link on the old URL. Learn more: How to Clean up Webpage URLs

The experts at Detroit Internet Marketing have over a decade of experience in website repair, content organization, and proven SEO strategies. We can evaluate your website and recommend the best way to reorganize your content. Contact us at (248) 234-4830 to schedule your website repair consultation.