Rules to Follow with Link Silos

Rules for Tier 2:

Their Primary Job is to push rankings of tier 1 UP!
These are used to interlink:
 Link to tier 1 article
 70-80% if these should only link out once
 Place link in first few links if possible
 Follow rules similar to backlinks
 Their secondary job is to rank (never first)
Keywords:
 DFS has 600M keywords for the US market
 Pages rank for dozens keywords
 All we need is to understand which we can rank together
Clusters:
 Discrete items that are close to each other
 Individuals collected in one place; a crowd
 Galaxies or Stars that appear near each other
Why do we need them?
 To feed the algorithm
 To build proper structure
 To satisfy the user intent
User Intent
X Topic Clusters
  People want what they need
 Not less
 Not more
 Good Cluster address essential information
Cluster Level -
What can go wrong?
 Domain
 URL
Off the Topical Clusters -
Irrelevant Pages:
 SEO agency writes about TV Ads
 Rankings drop on SEO related Keywords
Content Pruning:
 Get rid of pages that bring no presence in SERPs
 Put weight on pages within your niche
 Allocate your crawl budget properly
Building Topical Relevance:
 Become Niche Expert
 Strong and Relevant Internal Linking Structure
 Better Rankings
Off the Topical Cluster –
Irrelevant Keywords:
 Article is too wide
 Diluted expertise and negative behavioral signals
 Hard times with ranking and maintaining positions
Off the Topical Cluster –
Lacking Information
 Article is too narrow
 Missing answers
 Requires a strong push from backlinks to rank
Clustering in 4 Ways
 Manual
 Semantic
 Keyword Level – SERP Similarity
 Page Level – URL’s Visibility
Manual Clustering:
Process
 Open your researched list of keywords
 Assign each keyword to a bucket based on your expertise
 Simple but powerful if you know the niche
Manual: Pros and Cons
 Easy and Accurate
 Not scalable
 Vulnerable to human error
Manual: Examples
 False Positive
o Best Running Shoes and Best Running Shoes for Marathon
False Negative
o Best Marathon shoes and Best Long Distance Running Shoes
Semantic Clustering:
Process
o Various Methods on Comparing two words
o Set your rules and let the algorithm work
o Check the results and adjust it
o Keywords are grouped based on semantic commonness
Semantic Pros and Cons:
o Scalable
o Repeatable
o Good for initial grouping
o Not Accurate
o Requires Setting up detailed rules
 o Has to be reviews manually
o Has nothing to do with Google
Similar SERPs: Examples
Two keywords joined but the overlapping results position 8,9 and 10,
while top 3 has separate landing pages with precise targeting.