Question: What is a website silo?  Is it just another word for categories?

A website silo is a type of format for websites and blogs that categorizes its contents in distinct silos, or categories, and confines each piece of content (pages, posts, etc) to those silos.  In addition, each silo has its own page that links to the various topics within.

By using silos on your website, you can keep your content organized, and help your search engine ranking by offering the search engines a clean “path” to indexing the content on your website.  Silos are not only physical categories on your website, they also help you organize your thoughts, pages and posts into easy-to-follow areas your site visitors can quickly navigate.

Let’s look at an example website on apples.

You might have the following main categories:

type of apples
apple recipes
growing apples
apple news

Those are your silos  They are usually your main topics that are listed (sometimes as dropdowns) in your navigation menus.

Each of those silos also has its own page.  That page has links to all the articles underneath it.

For instance, the apple recipes silo might have articles on apple pie, apple crumb cake, cinnamon apples, and caramel apples.  The main index page would contain links to all of those other sub-topics or even individual articles.  The page can be in list form in a pinch, but doing so in a narrative (paragraph) format will help boost your SEO rankings.

Each article, such as apple crumb cake, would link back to the main silo of apple recipes, using the term “apple recipes” as the linking text.

Cross-linking between silos isn’t forbidden, but usually everything underneath a particular silo will link upwards, but not across categorizes.

Using a silo format on your blog/website helps keep your posts and pages within their categories, which is said to also help search engine relevancy.