In part three of this tutorial, we narrowed down the number of keywords to 46 by gathering more information about them, and using 3DMarketVision’s custom filters. Now it’s time to refine these keywords into silos, so that we can start creating our website structure.
We will create silos one at a time, starting with those silos that have the most promising keywords in them. To start creating the first silo, follow the steps below. The actions to do are in bold face, followed by an explanation of what they do.
1) Click the KMV/R column header - sort the keywords in descending order, so the highest KMV/R value is first. In this way, we can start creating our silos with the most promising keyword first. In this example, our most promising keyword is “ipod speakers”, that will be the core keyword of the first silo.
2) Select the top keyword “ipod speakers” - this keyword has the highest KMV/R value. Select this keyword by clicking on the word or the checkbox just in front of the word. Notice that whenever a word is selected, the values in the theme relevance (TR) column change. The TR column values are calculated using a latent semantic analysis (LSA) algorithm and show how similar keywords are, based on what words tend to appear with them.
3) Click the theme relevance (TR) column header - sort keywords in descending order so the highest TR value (usually 100%) is on top. We now have a complete list of keywords, sorted by their similarity to our selected keyword.
4) Shift-click the last keyword with TR of 80% or higher - our first silo will be created from our top keyword “ipod speakers”, and all other keywords that have similarity to our top keyword of 80% or more. Since the top keyword “ipod speakers” is already selected, just find the last keyword with a TR value of 80% or higher and shift-click that keyword. This selects all keywords that are 80% or more similar to our top keyword “ipod speakers”.
5) Click the Set Tags button, enter “silo 1″ (without quotes), click OK, click Select/UnSelect All - Now it’s time to create the first silo that we have just selected. Doing this is simple, just click the Set Tags button, type in “silo 1″ (without quotes) into the text box, and click the OK button. The tags of all the selected keywords change from “Normal” to “silo 1″. Then click the Select/UnSelect All button to remove all keyword selections. Congratulations, you have just created your first themed silo based on the best keyword, according to its KMV/R value. The color of this silo can be changed by clicking the Tools | Color Options menu item.
6) Click the Filter Keywords button, click “silo 1″ tag in the lower right, then click OK - the final step is to hide all the “silo 1″ keywords so that they do not interfere with creating the next silo, “silo 2″. Fortunately, hiding “silo 1″ is very easy. Just click the Filter Keywords button, click “silo 1″ in the bottom part of the dialog box so a checkmark appears before it, and then click the OK button. All “silo 1″ keywords will disappear, leaving the way open to concentrate on building the next silo.
Now repeat the steps above on the remaining keywords in order to create “silo 2″ and the rest of the silos. Sometimes, there will only be one word in a silo, if a word does not have any similar words closer than 80%. That’s OK, for now put it in its own silo, and we will flesh out the silos further in the next tutorial.
Also, when the best keyword left has a KMV/R number that is too low, it’s not worth trying to create silos. Usually, I stop making silos when the best remaining keyword has a KMV/R value less than $300. When that happens, you can just select all the remaining keywords using the Select/UnSelect All button, and then click the Delete/UnDelete Keywords button to make them disappear. Then you can ignore them, and concentrate on just the most promising silos.
Just in case you’re wondering, deleted keywords are not really deleted, they just have their Tag column set to “Delete” and those keywords are notmally not shown. You can override that, and show deleted keywords just by clicking Filter Keywords, unclicking the Delete tag near the bottom, and then clicking OK.
In this tutorial we have described a step-by-step procedure for creating themed silos, based on the keywords that we have narrowed down previously in part three. In the next tutorial, we will flesh out the silos and decide which keywords and silos are worth keeping.
