Why Thin Content Still Ranks as a Top SEO Issue to Solve

Hi Bruce Clay,

I see you are enough skills in all arena especially in digital marketing. Would you like to share me how I be a good digital marketer and how I improve my keyword research skills?

I really enjoyed reading your blog post about why thin content still ranks as a top SEO issue. It really makes me think about how we can create content that is relevant and helpful for our clients, which ultimately helps our business.

I’ve always been interested in SEO and how it can help a company’s website rank in the search engines. I also find that it’s a very popular topic and often gets a lot of attention from everyone. I really enjoy when I see posts like this because it showcases how important quality content is for getting good rankings and more traffic.

I have read this article. But didn’t understand “what is thin content?”. Can anybody explain?

Thanks for informative post. It helped me save many hours of browsing other similar posts just to find what I was looking for. I’m going to bookmark this.

It’s about content! Indeed, regardless of whether you have great promoting abilities, you ought to have content that bodes well! Keep it up!

product pages and service pages will usually face this thin content issue. Because those are commercial content. Hence people won’t want to read a mega-blog guide when they land on an e-commerce store page to buy trending t-shirts. But still, I feel that as an SEO pro a lot can be done to overcome the thin content issue. We can write a more detailed and useful FAQ section, insightful product description, and show the reviews. This will improve sales plus makes the content look great in the eyes of Google.

“In some cases seo makes no sense if sites with little or poor written content outrank the proper ones (putting backlinks aside). It’s like google ranks old poor sites created 10 years ago better taking domain age as more important factor”@Martin – Yes, it’s 100% truth in terms of seo. I saw lots of high standard blog failed to get high ranking on Google only because of the domain age. Thanks for sharing this wonderful post with us.

Yes, Because Google like high quality unique content with low keyword density.

Excellent article. Thanks for sharing with us. I have seen a lot of low quality, think content rank well in search engines including Google but the quality content can not do that.

In my experience, it helps to do a complete site audit. Depending on how many pages comprise your website, it could take a while, but it’s worth it.

Use Google Analytics to Identify pages that have performed poorly over time. This is also a great opportunity to identify pages with similar or duplicate type content. I agree with your point about sometimes being stuck with content that you have no choice but to improve – but I also think that it’s sometimes worthwhile to “wipe the slate clean” and get rid of bad content all together.

Use the tools that you have at your disposal (ex: Google Keyword Planner tool, Search Term report, customer feedback) to create topics and pages containing information that your target audience actually wants. You can’t go wrong if you do.

This is mostly applicable to brand new websites, I hope the thin content is not that big issue for big publishers. Really worth to read it. Just followed you & retweeted this post to my audience. https://twitter.com/venkatweetz/status/882101104623755264

Google’s relies so many factors but if the website has great content it’s going to get traffic which is what Google also wants to see and more importantly from a UX it is very important. If you’re a genuine why wouldn’t you want to put valuable information on your pages.

Original content with good points is very important. The content must be useful for the readers and keep them engaged. If it is a professional website or a static page website then add keywords in the content. Find more discussion regarding Content SEO at our Question and Answer Website.

Wow… That a great article on Thin Content. I agree with Martin on Buying a 10year ago domain name. Google ranks old domain with quality content on top of SERP.SO in total, your SEO will take less time.

Excellent article. Thanks for sharing with us. I have seen a lot of low quality, think content rank well in search engines including Google but the quality content can not do that.
I think backlink is a big issue and the domain authority and page authority also play the vital role. If a page has enough high authority backlink, it must rank well.

Great write-up as usual. Thanks Bruce.

It’s great to see the conversation about content revolving around quality.

So often small business owners overlook the true value that quality content adds to a web presence, no matter how competitive the niche.

Updating a site with powerful content not only better serves a website in the eyes of search engines as you have outlined, but creates lasting improvements in user experience and engagement, something that is often times overlooked by webmasters and business owners alike.

I have seen so many websites are ranking on the top having poor and thin content. I believe this is only because the competition is low for that particular one.

Google’s trust factor relies on a combination of many factors. If the website is brand new then don’t ignore webmaster guidelines.

Content matters. In fact, one of my customers has a website which ranks very well with less than 10 backlinks. But content is fat. Many, many pages of unique content were written.

Very useful content for the Google Panda Recovery. I am impressed and reading full content..Good one

What an amazing article, Bruce! Sad but true, sometimes badly written but old websites rank higher than fresh-but-new blogs.

If you’ve liked Facebook folios that incline to pump out races or “please buy our thing” posts, expect to see them less in your feed from January. “Pages that post publicity creative should expect their organic delivery to fall meaningfully over time,” explains the social network.

With PPC, you effectually skip over the middle circle which cost you. By avoiding your prospects’ inboxes, you’re only competing with marketers on a SERP, a pertinent website on the GDN, or Facebook / Instagram. You’re also getting a leg up on your contestants, who are probably only using an automatic email funnel to nurture prospects (if they’re doing it at all).

Excellent article,

I’m often struck by how many subject-matter-expert level individuals find it hard to produce high-value content on a particular topic that goes beyond a quick summary.

A blog is a great way to warm these individuals up to the concept of producing high-quality information to people who want it/need it. It gets rid of that digital stage fright, and as they say, practice makes perfect. Then they can target that new level of comfort throughout their website.

It’s not hard to fix … write articles that are actually substantive and poof! No more thin content problems. Makes me shake my head how many people think they can take the easy path to success…

Thin Content is a somewhat broad term, that encompasses multiple misdemeanours.
Googles list, as you included, covers;
* Automatically generated content
* Thin affiliate pages
* Content from other sources (example: scraped content or low-quality guest blog posts)
* Doorway pages
People should be able to draw a common thread from such items.
Any content you have that is;
a) built solely for Ranking
b) built solely for Traffic Gen
c) doesn’t match the users intent
is a potential risk.

Google’s pretty good with internal duplication caused by “errors”; this included canonical problems and poor code that creates weak pages – but there are limits. If a large % of the pages G hit on a site fall into this category, they will flag you. If your site is only producing a small % of such pages, G will just omit them from the initial SERPs.
On the other hand, if these pages appear in intentional, then G may be harder on you. This includes cookie-cutter content (content on 2+ pages that is largely the same barring a few keywords), pages that consistently link out to other domains (whether you own them or not!), that appear to have to on-site closing (referal sites again!), content that is highly similar to content that appears on other sites (whether you own them or not) etc.

Resolving thin content.
Doesn’t matter how large the site is, the process is pretty much the same;
1) Apply NoIndex to any/all pages that are deemed as being thin
.. chances are, you Know which pages they are!
2) Identify Valuable pages
.. not just home/head pages, but those with a high number of
.. (valuable/natural) links, those with a large number of visits,
.. those that seem to get an above-average number of bot crawls, those
.. that have an acceptable minimum conversion rate, those that have a
.. low exit rate etc.
3) Identify Chaff pages
.. These are the pages that exist solely for Ranking/Traffic.
4) Tag everything else as Weak Wheat pages.
5) Look for relationships
.. Look at the best performing WW pages, note the target
.. term/audience/goal. Tag that as a Consolidation Page.
.. Look at the target term/audience/goal of the Valuable pages.
.. Redirect (301) all Chaff pages that have the same targets to
.. the most relevant VP/CP.
.. Redirect (301) all WW pages that have the same targets to the
.. most relevant VP/CP.
.. Delete all remaining C/WW pages that don’t match any
.. Consolidation pages.
6) Rewrite the content of all VP/CP pages (you can include
.. unique/original content from redirecting WW/C pages)
7) Review the remaining pages, ensuring that you have increased the quality,
.. and avoided keyword stuffing.
8) Review the remaining pages, ensuring that you have not decreased
.. the focus or the conversion value of those pages.
9) Identify terms/intents that may now be missing/uncovered,
.. and create quality content to fit/suit (without spamming/stuffing!)

That process works on all sized sites, and a fair part can be automated based on the metrics I pointed out (saves a ton of time).

To finish, I do have a question;
Why have you included the below items as features of “thin content”?
* Image alt attributes lacking text and/or keywords
* Autogenerated title and meta description tags that often lacked targeted keywords

Neither of those have anything to do with it.
Those are just items that hold ranking influence and are often targeted for optimisation – there is no relation between the failing to optimise them and them being seen as flags for thin content.

Hi Bruce,
It’s indeed a great joy to be here today.
This is indeed an informative post.
Though Google insist on long content and surely it shows the needed ranking, it is good to know that thin content too can play a good role in ranking. This is really an amazing information.
Thanks for your elaborated post and the connected links. will surely check those links too.
Keep sharing
Have a wonderful weekend
Best Regards
~ Philip

Hi Bruce Clay!I am happy to see you are founder of digital marketing (PPC). Could you tell me what is the latest PPC marketing policy.

Whenever I’m working with a new client these are some of the first things I look for, especially the duplicate homepage. Most site owners don’t even realize it’s an issue because it’s just the way the site was built. It’s always worth getting the little things on your site in order first!

My pleasure, Paula.

Bruce, as usual, hit the nail squarely on the head. If your content sucks, your website sucks. No one of consequence will link to thin content. Not unless you were paying them to, but in that case, you wouldn’t want their link anyways.

Note to editor: The first quote I tried to tweet had too many characters. You ought to edit it down a bit.

It’s all about content! Yes, whether you have good marketing skills, you should have content that makes a sense! Keep it up!

Thanks for sharing here. Agree with the thin content thoughts. Quality and depth to content is key. You can’t expect to write something not worth reading to rank on SEO.

George

Content with very good information for customers will certainly increase the site among the customers.so very good content is needed

Thanks a lot for such a wonderful post. I really like your way of blogging. Actually guys i heard about digital marketing.

Google Panda treated thin content as low quality content, which is harmful for website ranking.

One has to look after the fundamentals… and making sure to deal with thin content is one of them :-)

In some cases seo makes no sense if sites with little or poor written content outrank the proper ones (putting backlinks aside). It’s like google ranks old poor sites created 10 years ago better taking domain age as more important factor.