How Do I Set Up an SEO Silo as a Marketing Funnel?

[dopeideas]

I have two or three questions regarding my silo/sales funnel set up and keyword targeting.

My understanding is that an ideal set up would have the money page at the top of your category structure. My approach is to create comprehensive cornerstone informational resources/guide, targeting my primary highest volume keyword.

How should I handle this set up in terms a money page? I want to funnel my visitors to the purchase pages but that's difficult if your primary page is Wikipedia Lite.

Secondly, is it okay to have pages targeting no primary keyword or the same primary keyword, but for visitors with different knowledge on the subject?

I have three articles: one informational guide with a table of contents (seemingly the natural candidate of the top silo), one introductory page for beginners, and one "executive summary" article for visitors with intermediate knowledge.

Any of the three might be best for the primary keyword (same one as my first question). Is there a way to split test then to see which is best received by my audience? My concern is that I place one of them lower in the silo structure and it ends up better suited for the primary keyword.

If a lower page ranks better or has better visitor metrics, how should I handle it? Flipping the pages content probably wouldn't be well received by Google. I would still want the page with the best metrics and best audience targeting to be my top-level page, right?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@dopeideas, You're thinking about this exclusively in SEO terms, when you need to be thinking about it in Marketing terms that is supported by SEO. Which is to say, you don't want to funnel people towards a generalized page that ranks for a more generalized short-tail keyword. You want to capture them there and funnel them away from it and towards pages with higher buying intent.

You'll make less money on a page designed for people who have no clue what they're reading about and are learning from the page, even if it has 25x the volume, than you will for one designed for people who know about the topic and are ready to buy something. You can bring people in from the SERPs at any stage of this process.

But your funnel is designed to take the general knowledge people, teach them in steps as you ready them, persuade them about products or services, and then tell them which the best option is now that they trust you as an authority. Then you make money off of them.

SEO silo's should be built in the form of Marketing funnels.

Yeah, it'll take a lot more juice to rank for the short tails with more volume because Google gives so much weight to old brands with big domain metrics, but the reality is you don't even need those terms. You can drop people into your funnel "below" that part, where they're already closer to buying. You can skip that struggle that'll take years upon years, or go after it if you want but don't make it the purpose of your silo. The money is in the buying intent keywords, which is why they're so competitive even though the volume is low.

 

[dopeideas]

Which is to say, you don't want to funnel people towards a generalized page that ranks for a more generalized short-tail keyword. You want to capture them there and funnel them away from it and towards pages with higher buying intent.

But your funnel is designed to take the general knowledge people, teach them in steps as you ready them, persuade them about products or services, and then tell them which the best option is now that they trust you as an authority. Then you make money off of them.

SEO silo's should be built in the form of Marketing funnels.

Yeah, it'll take a lot more juice to rank for the short tails with more volume because Google gives so much weight to old brands with big domain metrics, but the reality is you don't even need those terms. You can drop people into your funnel "below" that part, where they're already closer to buying. You can skip that struggle that'll take years upon years, or go after it if you want but don't make it the purpose of your silo. The money is in the buying intent keywords, which is why they're so competitive even though the volume is low

@Ryuzaki Thank you for the reply. I recognize that I want to funnel them way from the general content and towards higher buyer intent pages, from info pages to sales pages. I'm struggling to structure this in a way that is of the most benefit to the end user.

I believe that presenting a comprehensive guide on a subject is valuable to the end user (I would find such a guide valuable to myself). If I don't make the guide overview the top of the silo, where the heck do I put it?

With my current set-up, even with the wikipedia-style subject guide at the top of the physical silo, it's acting more as a knowledge directory. (The pages within it are only pointing to the guide in sidebar table of contents navigation). Essentially, this informational guide links out to all child pages within the physical directory, with child pages linking through the sales funnel acting as virtual silos within the physical directory. Interlinked pages deeper in the virtual structure are specifically funneling visitors to pages with higher intent.

Users who land in the homepage of the physical directory and wiki-like guide pages are funneled away from informational pages towards high intent pages, it's just at the top of the directory. I'm just struggling with what to include as the homepage of the physical directory.

The current set-up has the informational guide at the top of the physical silo, but it links out more than other pages link to it. Deeper pages are funneling visitors to buyer intent pages. Can a virtual silo be treated higher in importance than the physical directory it's nested under, if interlinked correct?

Where should I put my informational overview page within the silo, if not the top?

Current set-up is something like this:

1st Level Physical Silo: Wikipedia-Like Informational Guide

2nd Level Directory / Virtual Silo: Informational Pages -->

2nd Level Directory / Virtual Silo: Interest Pages -->

2nd Level Directory / Virtual Silo: Intent Pages -->

2nd Level Directory / Virtual Silo: Purchase/Action Pages -->​

All pages are within the first level directory targeting a specific user action, intent, or direction (i.e. read this more intent-focused article). Content organization starts with the info guide and informational pages and leads down the funnel to the money page. --> indicates linking. Each level has other pages in the same directory referencing important pages on each level of buyer intent.

With this set-up, each level would be in the same physical directory, but they would all slowly funnel users to the purchase/action pages. Does this look okay? If I'm focusing on interlinking to create virtual silos for all posts within the same parent directory, does the physical directory/silo still need to act as the money page?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Users who land in the homepage of the physical directory and wiki-like guide pages are funneled away from informational pages towards high intent pages, it's just at the top of the directory.

I don't see the problem with this. It makes sense, organization-wise too. It's how it has to work or you end up with orphan pages. Main silo nodes have to link downward too. Like your "homepage" of the silo might link down to the 5 core pages that each link down to all of the smaller pages. But all of those small pages link upward, as do the core pages. You have to cycle it around a bit. This is and has always been less about sculpting page rank than it is with tight topical relevancy.

Can a virtual silo be treated higher in importance than the physical directory it's nested under, if interlinked correct?

I'd say yes. It's why anchor text and topical relevancy work at all, on-site and off-site.

The reason I talk a lot about 'virtual silos' is because the strict physical silo leads to this kind of frozen structure where you get stuck worrying about breaking the silo. In the mean time, every CMS is breaking it all over the navigation in the header, the sidebar material, the footer stuff... Google grew past it out of necessity, because the rest of the world moved on. Because frankly, silo's as they are intended to be built are shit for helping the user navigate your website.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Close is where you want to be. Perfect means you're doing stuff for search engine robots instead of people, which is backwards, especially today as machine learning keeps making advances and Google can collect nearly every user metric on your page whether you have Analytics or not.