Website Makeovers – Adding Silos to Non-silo Sites

Krakken is a market analysis tool that was designed to facilitate the creation of a silo structured website.  The silos created by Krakken can easily be used as a completely new site or as an addendum to an existing site, with the option that the silos completely replace the old site after the new construction has been indexed and are providing conversions.

Lot’s of folks have asked me the specifics of how this might be accomplished so I thought I would take a few minutes today and explore some ideas about how this can be put into play.

1.  Web Logging

I can’t stress the importance enough of knowing what is going on with your websites. Without this knowledge you are simply guessing and shooting in the dark.

You need to know and to be able to show your client, in no uncertain terms what is going on – where the website was when you took over and what it grows into as the two of you work together to make his business more profitable.

Options that can be used for implementing tracking on your website include:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytic Tools
• On-site Search
• Standard Website Log Files

2.  Appending a Silo Structure to an Existing Website

The basic steps:

• Leave the current website untouched.
• Create new silos “beside” the current structure.
• Include the silo landing pages to the menu on the index page.
• The new addition will pretend that the old site does not exist.
• If you must link to pages in the old site, use a no follow tag.

Make sure the new pages contain fresh content, don’t reuse any of the old content to avoid being de-indexed for duplicate content.  If you need to re-use the ideas from the older pages, make sure the content is significantly different.

3.  Start the Pruning and Re-purposing Task

Allow time for the new silos to get ranked, traffic and conversions, then over time you can start to prune away the parts of the old website which are not useful, and moving the remaining useful pages into the new silo structure – creating new articles under existing silos or even new silos, if need be, to accommodate these pages.

Any pruned pages containing some useful content may now find a new home on new pages which are properly silod. Often the text needs a bit of a rewrite to fit in with the appropriate keywords.

Either move the older pages with a 301 redirect. Or leave the page where it is and make it a “virtual” part of the silo using links.

These older pages will need a bit of a “fluff up”:

• Correct them for proper SEO and theme
• Check to make sure that the page stays within a single topic, splitting some pages into two or more pages
• Make sure they are properly “purposed”

4.  Lead the Visitor from Education through Conversion

It is important that the visitor is lead from information gathering through to conversion. This sales funnel should be laid out in a meaningful way during the website design phase.

Each page on a website then has a designated purpose; playing a part in leading the customer through an information gathering phase, a brand selection phase, a product selection phase and into the close of a sale with a call to action – obviously this is often done over time.

When doing a makeover on an older site, you have to carefully consider what purpose the page used to have (if any) and how that purpose needs to change (if at all) to fit in with the new plan.

Older pages that did not have a clear purpose can be initially assisted by including opt-in boxes for newsletters and autoresponders.  Any page that can not be clearly purposed should be removed as soon as possible so it does not encourage a visitor to leave the site.

Analytics should be carefully examined for exit pages so that older pages that are proving problematic can be dealt with swiftly so conversions are not compromised.

If you found this blog posts informative, we invite you to attend our next Theme Zoom Certification.  A webinar with details will be announced shortly.

–Sue & the Theme Zoom Team

Theme Zoom Krakken is an integrated application suite that radically combines Market Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Keyword DNA Creation, Automated Silo Structured Blueprint and Website Development.

For more information about Krakken or to sign up with The Last Keyword Tool Free Trial visit Theme Zoom.