Silo Structure Versus User Friendliness?

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

It seems that lately larger site (especially well branded ones) that have a silo structure are doing incredibly well in the SERPs.

Is this just coincidence? Or is a silo structure an important aspect of ranking well in google today?

So for a smaller, less well known site to compete, how important is it to have a silo structure?

And how do you create a silo structure without hampering usability? The lack of "sideways" linking, while helping to tailor the flow of page rank, might be a turnoff to users.

Thanks in advance.

[tedster]

I prefer a silo structure for large site Information Architecture - outside the main navigation that is. Not only does it help with ranking, but it also seems to help with visitor navigation by providing a strong information scent.

When there is too much cross-linking, that tends to depress various measures of stickiness. I think it's a question of "too many choices"="no choice". A moderate amount of well-chosen cross-linking always makes sense, however. Too much rigidity is always a drawback.

[Planet13]

I prefer a silo structure for large site Information Architecture - outside the main navigation that is.

Would that mean that the main navigation would appear ONLY on the home page, with links to the main categories?

Or would you have the head pages of the main silos link to the head pages of the other main silos, but then not link from the child pages in the silos to the head pages of the other silos?

[tedster]

The main navigation still appears on every page. Not to do that is suicidal and very unfriendly for users, IMO. It's just that deeper pages rarely link cross category into a different silo;s deeper pages.

Having that work out well requires a very good Information Architecture - but that's where I usually focus in any site development project. First, market research, then Information Architecture. Then the IA suggests menu labels and at that point you can begin to assemble a visual design and content for each area - because the range of content should have already been "penciled in" and generally classified during the IA work.

If the "silos" get any more restricted than that, you've got something like orphaned microsites all hosted on a single domain. Good luck with that - I wouldn't touch the idea.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I hear the term silo a lot recently, and the mention of "it's working for big sites". A word of caution: established sites don't need to link to a page to keep it indexed because pages have often been linked to from outside sources. The internet is one big web though people tend to look at interlinking as being about their domain only.

A newer site however doesn't have the luxury of being sure their every page is linked to from related places around the web and so an aggressive silo build may actually result in a lot of pages being unreachable from anywhere. These will fall out of favor with search engines. silo builds are best left to established and well linked to sites, newer sites fare better by ensuring their every important page is properly linked to.

[Planet13]

Thank you both, tedster and Sgt_Kickaxe.