Now, anyone can navigate to any page on a site within three clicks, overcoming the usability hurdle, and still not compromising my internal linking scheme. In addition, all of my content is visitor optimized, you always know where you are going and what you are going to find there.

I do understand it’s a preference but I don’t believe that the quote:

“And Google seems to love this… as “was” indicated with lots of indented listings for a particualr keyward phrase… and is NOW indicated with lots of 2, 3, and 4 part listings with a “+Show more results” type link in the SERPs”

….is really an indication of that particular preference directly. I’ve noticed the exact same results with some of my clients. One stands out in particular since his site is only 14 months old and he’s ranked for his target keyword (broad match, #19, 20, & 21) and for exact match he’s #10, 11, 12 & 13 + the “show more” link you mentioned. This site only has 3 silos with 3 articles each. NO marketing has been done with it, local or otherwise, not even a Google Places or a Facebook Fan Page.

So, in conclusion, both ways seem to work, I’m not sweating the small stuff, not unless my clients’ visitors (or Google) starts complaining about my usability practices.

Oh, I forgot, Google never complains, they just deindex, banish, relegate to position #10,356 in their SERPs, or give extended timeouts in their supplementary results (“more results” link). It’s good to be the king.

Thanks for stopping by. There are lots of ways to build the navigation for these types of sites… I like the linking up and down within silos/pyramids because of 1) usability – it allows the user to navigate the site in an intuitive way rather than having to jump all the way back to the root of the web to go down an adjacent subpyramid and 2) the pages immediately above and below any given page in a silo/pyramid are going to be the most relevant [ages to the current page. It maximizes what I like to call the “flow of relevance”. And Google seems to love this… as “was” indicated with lots of indented listings for a particualr keyward phrase… and is NOW indicated with lots of 2, 3, and 4 part listings with a “+Show more results” type link in the SERPs.

But that’s just “my” preference. As I said there are two extremes (build totally for SEO, build totally for usability), and lots of variations in between when it comes to building silos/pyramids.

I’ve been using ‘Themeing and Siloing” on all of my clients’ sites for 4 years now and still do because it works. Many clients targeting non-super competitive keywords/phrases/niches and conducting the correct market research, realize top 100 rankings very quickly.

If they really dedicate themselves to marketing their sites with long-tail keyword articles, building links, social media campaigns etc, as we outline for them, they jump to the front page.

Here’s the problem: You must know how to build the navigation architecture properly. If not, you can quickly dilute any link juice coming to a page. For example, where internal linking is concerned, I’m not a big fan of linking “down” to children pages from silos as you seem to suggest. Also, when linking “up”, children pages are only linked to the top of silos.

This method of structuring websites just makes sense. Any building must have a strong foundation in order to keep standing. Broadly speaking, (in terms of web development), content linking up to silos that then link up to your main “money keyword” pages are similar to this foundation.

Inbound anchor text links, both internal and external, is one aspect of development that dictates how strong or weak that particular area of the foundation is. This foundation links up to your homepage (which sports content optimized for your “theme/niche” keyword), topping of the roof of the building, its highest point.

Nice work,
Mike.

These are sections of the site that all support a major them on the website.

For instance we are organizing the pages into a green section, new car buying, owning, and so on. This should help identify the major themes of of website for the search engines.

Long tail keyword phrases generally have more keywords like 3, 4, 5, or more words in the phrase… and head terms are generally one and two word phrases. But I think it’s more correct to base the distinction on search volume.