How to use content siloing to achieve success
When the word, “silo”, comes to mind - most would immediately think of the agricultural industry’s mass storage of produce; a very practical method of repository. Which dates back as far as the 8th century BC. The name is derived from the ancient Greek word, siros, which loosely translates to “pit for holding grain”. By this stage, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with marketing real estate online. Though the concept of a silo traditionally has nothing to do with the internet, the term, “Content Silo” has been coined in the digital world. This has recently been developed as a tool to categorise information on a website so that it is easy to find and use.
This is done by configuring content in a coherent vertical or horizontal framework where categories are structured so that relevant content converges. It's very similar to the system a library would use to categorize books by genre and author. Search engines such as Google tend to favour the concept of Content Silos as it makes it easier to source the most relevant content and rank it as such while building credible internal links.
4 Functions of a content silo and how it can help effectively market your real estate business
“Breaking down content into more and more specific categories makes it more likely that your content will answer specific user queries. If you can get your content to cover every query in every topic in an entire niche, you’ll have the best site in Google’s eyes - and that will result in better rankings”. 2017 - altosagency.com
Now that you have a brief understanding of what a Content Silo is, here are four practical points to consider how your real estate business and clients will benefit from engineering your website using this method.
1. How this method helps in marketing real estate online:
Real Estate marketing deals mainly with property listings in particular areas, therefore it makes sense to promote these areas and listings in the best way possible. Content is arguably one of the most effective ways to do so. An example of this is placing property listings directly under information on a particular area. Area profiles and news articles achieve this perfectly. If your potential clients can find news, area profiles, listings and contact details all in one easily navigable location, they are that much more likely to use your services than if information were separated. This is precisely why Content Siloing is becoming more common as search engines become more advanced.
2. Creating order and structure so the consumer finds what they are looking for on their first visit:
Most people who are looking to buy any kind of real estate know exactly what information they need. If your website is too cluttered and doesn’t follow a coherent structure, this task can become incredibly difficult. Following a content silo (or content cluster). This groups all the relevant information together so the consumer finds everything they are looking for easily and quickly, which helps convert visitors into leads.
3. Why content siloing helps with Search Engine Optimisation:
Just as your local librarian favours order over chaos so does the internet. This is the same for search engine optimisation. Siloing creates this order to help you rank. Internet algorithms which have become the authority of obtaining that first-page result also prefer order over chaos. Disorganization will do your website no justice and this can become challenging for your audience in terms of finding readable and relevant copy. Crawling content also becomes challenging for search engines if chaos prevails. This why Content Siloing is becoming favourable.
4. Blogging isn’t everything:
It used to be standard practice to place a lot of your key information, content or data on your blog page and link it back to other pages on your site. However, as the internet advances, this is becoming more and more of a futile exercise. Yes, blogging is important for a number of reasons, however, the fact that it’s structured in a certain way detracts from your original site and breaks your website into two different sections which can confuse search engines and lower rankings. When search engines crawl they can often see your blog as something separate this can hinder your overall ranking.