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What a silo is in SEO, in plain words.
A silo is a group of pages about one thing, arranged so that every supporting page makes one main page stronger. It is the difference between a website that is a pile of pages and a website Google can read as a business.
The shape of one silo
At the top sits one page that has to win a search that brings customers. For a cleaning firm, that might be the end of tenancy cleaning page. Under it sit pages that each answer one narrower thing a customer asks on the way to booking: what it costs, how long it takes, what the landlord checks, the towns it is offered in.
Each of those pages links up to the main page, using words that describe the main page. The main page links down to them where they help. The pages in this group do not link sideways into an unrelated group, such as the carpet cleaning silo, unless a reader would genuinely need that link.
Why it works
Google reads links as votes and as a map
Links between pages tell Google which pages the site itself thinks are important, and what they are about. A silo points every relevant vote at the page that should rank.
Every page has one job
When each page answers one search, pages stop competing with each other for the same one. That competition, called cannibalisation, is one of the most common reasons a site with plenty of content still ranks poorly.
Depth reads as expertise
Ten pages that each answer a real question about one service show Google, and the reader, that you know the subject. One page that tries to say everything about everything shows neither.
It survives more content
With a structure in place, the hundredth page has an obvious home and an obvious parent. Without one, every new page makes the pile bigger.
What a silo is not
It is not a menu. The navigation can be as simple as you like; the silo lives in the links inside the pages. It is not a rule that no page may ever link to another group. A reader who needs the carpet cleaning page from the end of tenancy page should get that link. And it is not a reason to publish thin pages to fill out a diagram. A page with no real question to answer should not exist, silo or not.
Does the address need the folder in it
People often ask whether a silo means addresses like /services/carpet-cleaning/stockport/. It can, and folders are tidy and readable. But the address is the least important part. Google understands the structure mostly from the links between pages and what the pages say, not from slashes in the address.
So if your site already has flat addresses that rank, do not change every address just to show a folder. Changing addresses means redirects and a period of settling. Build the structure in the links first. Reach for new addresses only when the site is being rebuilt anyway.
How big a silo should be
As many pages as real questions
A silo is as big as the number of genuinely different searches people make about that service. For a small niche it might be four pages. For personal injury law it can be dozens.
Start with the money page and three to five supports
The service page, the price question, the main how-long or what-to-expect question, and the towns that bring the most work. That is enough to see whether the structure moves the service page.
Grow it from what people actually search
Search Console shows the searches your pages already appear for. Questions that keep appearing without a page to answer them are the next pages in the silo.
Stop when the questions stop
A page written only to make the silo bigger competes with its siblings and dilutes the set. When the real questions are answered, the silo is finished until people start asking new ones.
How to plan one before you write anything
List the services that bring your money, one per line. Each becomes the top of a silo. Under each, list the questions customers ask before they book, the places you do it, and the variations people search for. Check each one is a real search, then give it one page and one address, and write down which page it links up to.
That plan, written before a single word of copy, is most of the value. It is also the step most websites skip, which is why so many of them end up as a pile.
Keep the plan in one sheet: page, address, the search it answers, the page it links up to, and the date it is due. Every later decision, from what to write next to what to merge, is read off that sheet.
Silo, pillar and hub, the same idea in three words
You will hear these used interchangeably. A pillar page is usually a long guide that covers a subject broadly and links out to detailed pages on each part. A hub is a page whose main job is to connect a set of related pages. A silo is the whole group, top page and supports together.
The names matter less than the rule underneath all three: every page belongs to a group, every group has one page it exists to strengthen, and the links say so. On a service business site, the page being strengthened should almost always be the one that takes the booking.
Silos for businesses that work in more than one town
Location is the question I get asked most about silos. The service stays the top of the silo, and each town you genuinely serve gets a page underneath it, about that town: the streets and estates you cover, how long it takes you to get there, the jobs you have actually done there, and what people there ask. The town page links up to the service page. The service page links down to its towns.
The mistake is a page per town with the town name swapped and nothing else changed. Google reads those as the same page many times over and tends to refuse most of them. If you cannot write something true and specific about a town, it is not ready for a page yet.
A real one
For a Manchester cleaning firm, I rebuilt the site as a silo per service: commercial, residential, carpet, end of tenancy. Thirty three guides that had been sitting unlinked were wired into the services they belonged to, and sixteen town pages went in under two area hubs. Across June to August 2026, the firm averaged position 6 for "house cleaner manchester" in Search Console, which is page one.
The same idea on a law firm
The shape does not change with the trade. For a Las Vegas injury firm, one hub carried the firm's core search, with every accident type as a proper page beneath it. Four surrounding communities each became a real hub with practice pages under them. The nineteen services on the firm's Google listing were matched one to one with live pages, so the listing and the site told Google the same story.
In the Ahrefs rank tracker, the firm went from 9 top-three rankings to 44 by July 2026, ahead of the 25 to 40 the engagement had set out to reach. Pages accepted into Google's index went from 133 to 543, read in Search Console on 3 September 2026. The writing mattered, but the structure decided where the writing went.
Questions people ask about silos
Is siloing still worth doing
Yes. Google keeps relying on links and content to understand what a site is about and which pages matter. The fashion for the word comes and goes; the principle has not changed.
Can a page belong to two silos
It should have one parent it links up to. It can link across to a page in another silo when a reader would need it, but it should not try to be the support page for two services at once.
Do I need a silo for a five-page website
A small site still benefits from each page having one job and linking clearly. You do not need the word silo; you need the service pages to be the strongest pages.
Will building silos change my rankings quickly
Structure tends to move things over weeks and months, as Google recrawls and the links take effect. It is the base the rest of the work stands on, not a switch.
What is the most common silo mistake
Linking every page to every other page from a big footer or sidebar. When everything links to everything, the links stop saying which pages matter.
Want to see what your site's silos look like?
Send me the address. I will map the pages you have and show you where the structure is missing.