Thread: Silo sites

The answer to your question would be yes.

Yes, they are part of your main site AND separate sites.

The author of the report is (rightly) basing his recommendation on the fact that there is a fundamental difference between blogs and a business website. (I'm not talking about software, since WordPress can certainly be used for a business website, I'm talking about the mindset of the site).

In the report he suggests building a silo for each of the major categories of your topic. Then building content to support each of these silos on the main site.

Now he recommends creating a blog, which used correctly is a tool for creating social buzz and relationship building, as well as boosting rankings, for each of the silos of your main business site. These blogs would remain tightly focused on one topic and link to the articles in your business site's silo, as well as other relevant content.

Hope this helps, let me know if it is unclear.

Thanks for the thread! I also read the article with great interest and have a couple of basic questions.

Somewhere it said to have the funneling websites with 10 articles each on a different server.

So, to continue with the previous example here are my questions:

1. kurt.com is hosted by godaddy.com, so you have uglykurt.com, hotkurt.com etc. hosted at 1and1.com. The question: Can uglykurt, hotkurt be all together in one 1and1 account or do you recommend different accounts for each of them? Even if one has different accounts with the same webhosting co they could be in the same server, correct? Should I get a different host for each funneling website?

2. Since the funneling websites have nothing but articles (starting with 10 each) and then adding more, should those websites be just blogs say using wordpress? Or what do you recommend?

Thanks,

-C

PS Jonlee, I have to spread speed around before giving you more!

First off, let's get clear that the only purpose of the satellite sites (blogs) is to send traffic and/or ranking power to the main business site.

Therefore it isn't even worth thinking about these satellite sites until you have a well tuned main site that is converting sales at a decent rate. If you can't get traffic to it any other way, then use Adwords because it is essential to get this part right before building out other sites (they will be a waste of time/money).

Q 1. The premise here is the Google will devalue links going from sites you control to your main site. Besides their comprehensive link pattern matching algorithms, the main tip offs would be who the domain name is owned by, and the IP address of the sites.

So it you want to take this type of strategy to the maximum effect, you'll need to put your satellite sites on a different hosting account, register them in someone else's name (preferably in a different state) or at least get privacy protection (although google can see through it as they are a registrar as well) and then establish a linking pattern that is natural (don't link to your main site more than about 5% of the time).

Q 2. "just blogs" LOL, blogs are very powerful, and realizing the difference between a blog post and regular articles is essential to this strategy.

Blog factors: written mostly in first person, link out to other sites a lot, have comments from users, get bookmarked on social media sites etc.

Jon,

Thank you for your response. Very useful! I did not mean to denigrate blogs. I started one on my biz website not long ago and it is a good contibutor to increased business.

I was just wondering what the structure of the website should be. Thanks again.

Originally Posted by Jonleehacker

So it you want to take this type of strategy to the maximum effect, you'll need to put your satellite sites on a different hosting account, register them in someone else's name (preferably in a different state) or at least get privacy protection (although google can see through it as they are a registrar as well) and then establish a linking pattern that is natural (don't link to your main site more than about 5% of the time).

does it have to be registered in a different account, or can they all be registered in one account and the DNS point to a domain in a different host account?

Another way of asking it, does the register side matter or the server side?

I'd like to jump in here, but I think it would confuse the hell out of a lot of people. lol

Kurt, that is a rather extreme approach, and IMO, that would have to ALREADY be a pretty profitable niche/authority site network to go to the trouble.

But to answer your question, both, if you want to really get technical as that report suggests. You shouldn't let that stop you from building FOAF's though. I do it on a reseller account all the time.

Originally Posted by mtnman

I'd like to jump in here, but I think it would confuse the hell out of a lot of people. lol

Kurt, that is a rather extreme approach, and IMO, that would have to ALREADY be a pretty profitable niche/authority site network to go to the trouble.

But to answer your question, both, if you want to really get technical as that report suggests. You shouldn't let that stop you from building FOAF's though. I do it on a reseller account all the time.

Here is the where I am at and why I ask.

I have my site, feedyourfamilyfeedtheworld.com which sells amish food for a cause. This site is hosted at hostmysite.com in my company name.

search engine wise, I would love to climb the ranks for 'amish'.

I have secured close to 5 domains related to amish and amish life. My goal was to build these up and have them all link to my feed the world site. All 5 are registered at 1and1 with privacy protection.

I recently launched the first one as a blog at amishfamilypantry.com through pointing my dns to aptohosting. My plan is/was to launch the others soon, but after reading the attachment that jonlee included, I am now questioning if I need to tweak my strategy to include some phantom hosting accounts. I do not want to waste my time and effort if it will not help my ranking at all.

Any insights?

It almost seems my "Funnel System" and the Silo system are similar but being confused throughout the forum. I will explain the motive behind the "Funnel System" and some more detail:

It is more important to get traffic to a website for sales than it is too get high on Google rankings. This was not always the case, but now it is. Web surfer impressions is more important than search engine webbot, spiderbot, crawler's.

When people read materials like their favorite magazine or a trade journal in their industry, credibility is already established for said publication. If you advertise in such mediums, it is likely you will get good quality traffic with higher than normal conversion rate. If your website is linked in the articles read by a prospect, the quality of that prospect is extremely high, meaning conversion rate is probably over 70%.

The idea of info websites (funnel websites) is to attract traffic for specific characteristics of your primary website theme. Your primary website is where all of your processing and customer support happens, but not where your main marketing happens. With this system you can change the theme of your primary website at any time with little or no effect to traffic (depends on landing pages restructuring).

Also, this provides a level of protection in case a info website is shunned or criticized so badly all traffic falls from the site. You just shut down the $58 per year website and build a new one. Another benefit is info websites can be sold based on traffic if you need an influx of capital.

Also, the info websites need to be a separate server than the primary with who is masking. Some call it domain privacy protection, etc.

So now hopefully you can all see the benefits of the separation. Try not to get too stuck on SEO. It is better to have 50,000 people per week with 30,000 purchasing than 100,000 per week with only 10,000 purchasing.

Originally Posted by kurtyordy

Here is the where I am at and why I ask.

I have my site, feedyourfamilyfeedtheworld.com which sells amish food for a cause. This site is hosted at hostmysite.com in my company name.

search engine wise, I would love to climb the ranks for 'amish'.

I have secured close to 5 domains related to amish and amish life. My goal was to build these up and have them all link to my feed the world site. All 5 are registered at 1and1 with privacy protection.

I recently launched the first one as a blog at amishfamilypantry.com through pointing my dns to aptohosting. My plan is/was to launch the others soon, but after reading the attachment that jonlee included, I am now questioning if I need to tweak my strategy to include some phantom hosting accounts. I do not want to waste my time and effort if it will not help my ranking at all.

Any insights?

I wouldn't worry about it Kurt. All those extra details might hinder you from taking more action. That will be your greatest penalty, much more crucial than SEO perfection.

My take for you.... set up those blogs like you have been and start targeting your keywords. Don't worry about the hosting accounts, you can use one account or a reseller. You can always learn and implement these techniques, but I think you just need to get some lines in the water.

For example, you need to broaden your reach.

"amish friendship bread" - about 700 daily searches ; "+- 16-50k"

What's one thing people need for bread? JAM!

You need to be like an octopus. Use your many tentacles to draw in your prey from many angles. When you find food within your grasp (highest converting traffic sources/phrases/sites) flock momentarily with all of your tentacles to ensure a good grip and move in for the kill.

By targeting long tails with your blogs and running analytics, you can see what areas provide the most interest for your end target. You will have a better idea of what topics will have converted interest in your product. Move swiftly to "do more of THAT" and increase your ROI.

You can target these keyword phrases with your blogs and steer people wherever you want. Obviously it has to be pertinent to what they were looking for, but like the example above, it would be pretty easy to say a few words about friendship bread and have them end up at a jam site.

Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Bump great thread!

The funneling thread is: http://www.thefastlanetomillions.com...g-success.html