Is Siloing still effective in 2018?

[Undergrnd]

I've been advised about Siloing (site structure), although I'm getting conflicting advice now saying it is an outdated practice. What is the 2018 verdict?

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

So by siloing content you mean creating categories and subcategories like in a library.  So Reference, fiction, magazines etc. And then having subsections.  The old way to 'rank' for something was to pick up keywords for the smaller sections and subsections.

So to use the example of dentistry. I might have  adult dentistry and paediatric dentistry pages then in adults i'll have implants, braces and veneers.  Then in veneers I might have an article about veneers price, veneers procedure and veneers risks.  All of these would link to each other and link up in the architecture.  And hey-presto, i'd eventually rank for one of the 'top categories' like adult dentistry.

The problem with this is that it's going to create internal competition and conflict.  Google doesn't want users having to hop around highly granular subtopics for answers.  They'd rather have the answer to a query all in the same place. So instead I'll now have one single page with everything people need to know about veneers; price, risks, procedure etc. All in one place.

Now there are further difficulties because google will sometimes consider two related things as different 'topics' or answering different questions. So I do have page for everything about veneers and also a page about veneers cost. In the case of veneers everyone wants to know the cost.  It's all cost cost cost - so this is it's own topic and it's own page.  But for something like root canals, nobody cares how much they cost, they just want to get out of pain.  So the root canal cost section is on the main root canal page because it's included in the topic of 'root canals'.

It's now more about searcher intent https://moz.com/blog/how-google-gives-us-insight-into-searcher-intent-through-the-results-whiteboard-friday, possibly 'searcher task accomplishment' https://moz.com/blog/harnessing-link-equity and also how link equity flows: https://moz.com/blog/harnessing-link-equity

Also read this: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/pcm.pdf it's tough going but just ignore what you don't understand and press on with reading it all and you'll learn a great amount about how google functions.

So to answer the question, you still need a solid site structure but i'd say 'siloing' is possibly going to dilute the potential power of each page.  You're going to end up with 30 pages all about sub-sub topics that should be rethought out and consolidated using google as your research tool.  Always use google as your research tool.  To do anything else is like training for a sprint race by going swimming every day.

'Siloing' for me also created a ton of duplicate content, duplicate headlines and I even think I got stung by Maccabees for having some pages about all the different aspects of implant dentistry.  They are now all consolidated into a 'super page' and it's ranking #1 locally and really well nationally too.  Page one.

Imagine five pages, H1's are 'braces cost', 'braces procedure', 'braces on finance' and 'braces risks'.  Google is going to struggle - in my view - to rank me for any of those because they all have an H1 containing the word braces. What would be better would be to have  a'braces' page and then the H2's were all those sub sub topics and then an FAQ with all the google suggest words as H2 and then all the 'searchers also asked' words in the FAQ.

Hope this helps - this is my interpretation from my small local business here in the UK. So other users here may have more relevant information.  For example IA, cannibalisation, internal conflict etc is much bigger in shopping and information businesses than it is in services businesses.

And of course this classic: https://moz.com/blog/optimizing-for-rankbrain-whiteboard-friday  thanks to @miriam ellis for that one.