Trying to square the concepts of AIDA with Silo'ing

[quantumtoast]

Hi All,

Been going through the 30-day intro, and yesterday poured through Bruce Clay's SEO articles that @stackcash posted in Day 7 (thanks for that all, by the way).

I fully intend on re-reading these a few more times, and maybe silo'ing is less of a focus than it was a few years ago, but I'm having a tough time conceptualizing how the AIDA content planning framework interplays with SEO siloing in an ideal world.

• Is it fair to say each "Silo" should be their own standalone AIDA funnels that should work together to drive to the main LP?
• Should there be multiple AIDA funnels that work 'across,' the different silos?
• Am I overthinking? Or underthinking this?

Thanks in advance for your time reading this and to everyone who's made this a great place to get acclimated.

 

[MrMedia]

Numbers.

I swear you guys love the theorising more than anything else. I nearly need a degree to decipher half the stuff you’s all talk about.

so let me ask you this… what are your numbers and what will all this AIDA yammering do to those numbers?

Be as precise as you can.

 

[Ryuzaki]

AIDA and funnels matter for many, many projects. "I don't know what this is, therefore it's stupid and/or a waste of time." is not a real opinion, it's a cope. Most people work on one slice of the AIDA funnel, where:

• Attention = top of the funnel and monetized with display ads. Someone who does this might think all of this is nonsense and a waste of time.
• Interest = you have someone's attention and they're interested in learning more. You direct them down your funnel or monetize this slice with an educational e-book or something.
• Decision = They're ready to take action. You either drive them to your cart or lander, or you use affiliate links to monetize this slice.
• Action = People are ready to commit to whatever your conversion is. All of those coupon code sites are monetizing this slice of the funnel exclusively.

If you have your own brand and products, you're going to work the entire funnel and it will make a difference to your conversion rates and provide all levels of landers as you nurture an email list or send people to your site through off-site advertising.

It will also help you create relevance and topical authority for Google, which will help you rank, if that's your goal. People are catching on and "topical mapping" is becoming a new topic-of-the-year in SEO.

If you're only doing SEO, then yes, you may be overly-concerned with how strict and accurate you need to get this whole "silo" thing done. I don't think it's that big of a deal, especially for "one slice of the funnel" sites. Silo's are really a very old concept. They're useful to talk about and think about, but people get lost in the weeds. I took to calling them "relevancy mini-nets" and things of that nature to try to help people realize the interlinking and all of that doesn't have to be extremely strict.

If you only have one main landing page, either one of the "shoulds" you mentioned in your list would work. You could have different funnels for each sub-topic or you could have one giant one. It just depends on how broad of a topic you're dealing with and how many products you're trying to sell, etc. You wouldn't have one funnel for both golf gloves and golf balls, not if you want to be extra-effective.

Even then, it's easy to overthink it and feel like it's more critical than it is. For an email nurturing sequence it's vastly important. For random people popping into your site at all levels of the funnel, it's important to have everything present and make it known that you're offering the ultimate solution once they get to that point of their journey, but you're not likely to take them there in one visit.

Just create your content to cover the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel and let people enter the funnel where they already are and have conversion goals for each level. At the top that might be "they're very likely going to bounce after this one article, so at least I showed them some ads and got paid" or even "I want my pages per session higher for these pages". For the bottom of the funnel it might be "affiliate link clicks and conversions" or "low cart abandonment rates" and obviously "revenue".

 

[MrMedia]

I worked in an ad agency for 13 years so yeah I’m slightly familiar with AIDA. I’m also familiar with the navel gazing and over the top analysis that people bring out to avoid taking action. That’s the real cope here and I’m many similar threads I see.

AIDA has largely been outdated by the latest neuroscience research findings and for anyone who is really interested check out Byron Sharpworks. This was 6 years ago when I was still in the industry so it’s even more dated today.

I’ll wait on op coming back with some numbers before I comment further to add actual actionable feedback.

Maybe he’s writing a thesis on H1 tags so I might be waiting a while.

 

[quantumtoast]

Appreciate the responses.

@Ryuzaki - thanks for all of the content I've already read from you as well as your response. It sounds like I'm overthinking here, and that's what I wanted to hear.

My plan is to use content to monetize display and collect subscribers (push, email) and eventually white-label physical tools for anyone active in my vertical. So plan involves eventually moving down-funnel, at which point I'd be more willing to experiment w/ Paid directly to PDPs, but it sounds like Silos and AIDA are tools to be aware of vs mission-critical scaffolding. Thank you.

@MrMedia you've diagnosed me well - I'm consciously working against my "analysis paralysis," tendencies. Posting the question here for your feedback was better than mulling over it until I eventually did nothing.

I'm still around day 7 of the follow-along, and some of the stuff on Bruce Clay's site got me thinking that starting site structure was more important than I'd initially thought, so no numbers - yet. On an aside, Byron Sharp was recommended to me a few months ago - just picked up on Audible. Thanks. Look forward to sharing numbers soon.

 

[poppystopper]

Tbh, IMO you're overthinking it. Silos should be used to structure your site architecture to create mini-pockets of relevance and topical authority.

I've never heard of AIDA, but if you're creating regular content websites I wouldn't be overly concerned about it.

Most funnel questions just come down to the intent of the search query and most of that will be intuitive. For example, when building a commercial page such as a buyer guide/top X round up, or a product review, you will be addressing bottom of funnel.

Eg Best Electric Lawnmowers in 2023 or Flymo 9000 Lawnmower Review are clearly terms that have commercial intent.

You can try to funnel users from informational and navigational queries into more commercial terms. But, I'd be far more inclined to just build loads of content and not stress about funneling users from informational queries into commercial pages.

Good luck!