Content
Silo Site Structure: Or How Not to Waste Your SEO Budget
October 9, 2025
12 mins
Today, SEO specialists are willing to try almost anything to preserve traffic that’s being relentlessly devoured by Google’s constant updates and the rise of AI agents. One of the popular experiments is building a silo site structure.
On paper, it sounds perfect — a clear hierarchy, organized content, and a structure that’s easy for search engines to crawl.
But — spoiler alert — it doesn’t quite work that way in reality.
In this article, we’ll break down what a silo structure is in SEO and how it actually performs in practice. We’ll share real-life “anti-cases” from our own experience, explain why this model often fails to deliver, and show what approaches really help your traffic grow.
A silo structure is a way of organizing a website where all content is grouped by topic. Essentially, you create separate “sections” or “clusters” of pages focused on one theme and interlink them internally.
Each topic has its own main page (for example, a category), with a set of subpages beneath it — subcategories or articles. Within a single silo, all content is tightly connected, while links between different silos are minimal.
“A silo structure makes sense only for large websites with multiple directions. If your site focuses on a single niche, there’s simply no point in building such complex groupings.”
— Oleksandr Utkin, SEO Product Growth Manager at Promodo
The theory of silo structure was first formalized and popularized by Bruce Clay, one of the early pioneers of search engine optimization. Back in the early 2000s, he introduced the concept of “SEO siloing” as a way to logically organize website content and help search engines better understand topical relevance.
The main idea rests on a few key principles:
As Bruce Clay himself put it:
“A silo structure isn’t the whole secret to ranking — but without it, you’re losing the relevance battle right from the start.”
A silo structure can be implemented in two ways — physically or virtually.
This approach is based on a clear hierarchy reflected directly in the site’s URL structure.
For example, in an online electronics store, the structure might look like this:
/home-appliances/washing-machines/samsung/
This organization helps both users and search engines understand that the “Samsung” page belongs to the “Washing Machines” category, which in turn is part of the “Home Appliances” section. It strengthens topical relevance and helps Google identify which pages are main and which are subordinate.
In this case, connections are built not through URLs but via internal linking.
For instance, a page about “washing machines” may link to related articles such as:
— “How to Choose a Washing Machine for a Small Apartment”
— “Energy Efficiency Tips for Home Appliances”
Imagine an online store that sells multiple product categories such as Home Appliances, Plumbing Supplies, and Computers. Each of these represents a separate silo — an isolated group of pages connected by a common theme and interlinked with one another.
Categories define the main directions of your website. For example, under the “Home Appliances” section, you might have subcategories like:
These pages don’t just coexist — they’re connected through internal links. If a user is browsing washing machines, they might see links to dryers or vacuum cleaners in the menu. For search engines, this signals that the pages belong to one thematic group and provide comprehensive coverage of the topic.
Within each silo, content should naturally guide users — and crawlers — from broader to more specific topics.
For example:
This clear hierarchy helps both users and Google understand that each level adds more detail to the previous one. It reinforces topical relevance and shows search engines that your site is an authority on home appliances — not just a random collection of pages.
A key principle of silo structure is thematic isolation. If a page about “Kitchen Sinks” links to “Laptops” or “Vacuum Cleaners,” the structure loses coherence. Google interprets such links as noise, making it harder to determine what the current page is really about.
That’s why cross-links between silos should be minimized, keeping only those that make sense for the user experience.
A silo structure is implemented not only through content but also through technical architecture:
A silo structure defines how Google perceives your site’s logical organization. When pages are properly linked, share a consistent architecture, and support each other through internal links, your website gains stronger topical relevance within its niche.
In other words, a well-built silo helps you build topical authority — Google understands that you don’t just sell appliances, you specialize in them.
In theory, the silo structure looks perfectly logical — a clean hierarchy, better relevance, and huge potential for eCommerce websites. That’s why the Promodo SEO team, with over 20 years of experience, decided to put this concept to the test on several large-scale projects.
“You never implement a silo structure at the early stage of business growth. Usually, this comes into play when the project is already mature, key SEO tasks are completed, and the online store has a large number of categories. Most often, experts consider siloing when the site starts to stagnate and they’re looking for ways to improve performance.”
— Oleksandr Utkin, SEO Product Growth Manager at Promodo
We tested this technically complex approach on four major eCommerce projects. We gave Google enough time to crawl all the pages and re-evaluate the logical relationships between sections... and the results were underwhelming.
There was no significant traffic growth or ranking improvement.
Of course, we managed to stop the traffic decline and even achieve growth using other SEO strategies — but SEO siloing itself became a kind of anti-case in our experience.
While the concept of SEO siloing may sound appealing in theory, our practical experience has revealed several significant downsides.
Silo structures are typically tested only after the core SEO tasks are completed — meaning they’re not part of the foundational strategy but rather an advanced optimization attempt. At that stage, implementing such changes becomes complicated: internal linking has to be reworked directly in the HTML code, and navigation often requires a full redesign. This process demands substantial time and resources, while the results don’t always justify the effort.
None of the popular CMS platforms (like WordPress, Shopify, Magento, or Tilda) offer native support for a classic silo structure. That means implementation requires custom development and a carefully built system for internal linking. As a result, even small adjustments can turn into time-consuming and resource-heavy tasks.
Because of the technical complexity and the need to involve multiple specialists — typically both an SEO expert and a developer — implementing a silo structure can become expensive. Add to that the need for thorough testing, and you’re looking at a costly experiment with no guaranteed payoff.
Silo restructuring doesn’t bring instant results. Search engines need time to reindex pages, understand the new linking relationships, and update relevance signals. Sometimes, the first visible effects appear only months later, making the method less attractive for businesses seeking a quick ROI.
If a silo structure is a gamble, Promodo experts are ready to share SEO strategies and real-world cases that actually drive results.
Your site’s structure should make sense not only to you but, above all, to users and search engines. One of the most common mistakes businesses make is organizing categories based on internal logic or brand names rather than how people actually search.
Take our SEO case study with the international bridal fashion brand Ariamo. Initially, the website had only two product categories — Ariamo Boho and Ariamo Light. Loyal customers understood them, but new visitors had no clue what those meant. As a result, potential buyers couldn’t find these pages in search results.
After a detailed keyword analysis, we completely rebuilt the structure, creating clear categories aligned with real search queries — by silhouette, neckline, and dress style.
Result: +404% organic traffic growth.
The main issue with silo structures is that they artificially limit internal linking — even between pages that are clearly related. Other site structures don’t impose such barriers.
For example, a page about washing machines can naturally link to one about bathroom sinks. For users, that’s logical — both belong to the broader “home appliances” theme. These kinds of contextual links help users navigate more intuitively and support topical relevance for search engines.
The more clicks it takes to reach a page from your homepage, the less visible it is — both to users and to Google. Deep pages tend to receive less crawl attention and weaker ranking signals.
Keep your most valuable pages close to the top levels of the site and reinforce them with contextual internal links from related content.
You can’t create a perfect website structure once and expect it to work for years. It should evolve along with your business, product range, and user behavior. What worked last year might now be holding your traffic back.
Another success story by Promodo: ongoing structure optimization was crucial for our client in the automotive industry, who saw a drop in visibility after a major Google update. We removed duplicate pages and rebuilt the navigation into a clear hierarchy of categories and subcategories.
Result: +47% organic traffic growth and stabilized visibility.
A well-organized site structure is essential — but a silo setup isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. In practice, it often fails to deliver the expected ROI. Choose strategies backed by experience, analytics, and real success stories — not just theory.
Team Lead of Content for promodo.com
I’m a content marketing manager with over 9 years of experience in business writing. Currently, I lead the content team at promodo.com, where I focus on creating useful, well-researched content that supports marketing goals and helps businesses grow.
I enjoy working with data, expert opinions, and real insights to craft content that’s both relevant and easy to understand. I also have a solid background in SEO — I completed the Search Engine Optimization Course at Promodo Academy, which gave me hands-on skills in keyword research, content optimization, and improving visibility in search engines.
Whether it’s an article, blog post, or case study, I aim to make sure the content is clear, helpful, and aligned with both user needs and business objectives.
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