Thin Content: How to Diagnose and Fix the Issue
Thin content is defined by Google as web pages that “contain little substantive content” and is also known as “low-quality content” or “thin gruel.”
While it’s not specifically stated in the search engine’s guidelines, they consider poor grammar and spelling, the use of overused words like “the,” tired phrases like “Top 10 listicles,” or even duplicate or shallow information to be examples of thin content.
In addition to being a problem for readers who might click on a result only to find little useful information there, thin content can affect your site’s rankings in SERPs. That because if a page doesn’t have any useful information, it’s unlikely to be able to satisfy a user’s query.
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How to Identify Thin Content on Your Site
- One of the first steps our SEO toronto and NYC SEO team takes in diagnosing thin content on your site is to search for several keywords related to your business or brand. While you want to make sure that more than just one page is indexed, if you do see any pages that are indexed with very few words on them, then chances are they’re thin.
- You can use Google Analytics Site Content Report to identify low-quality pages by filtering for only those with less than 100 words per page.
- Some types of sites might have a higher percentage of thin content than others. Compare how many posts written within the past 30 days have under 100 words/under 1000 characters (whichever comes first) against all posts vs posts created over 3 months ago – if it’s a relatively new site you’re looking at, there might be more thin content than older sites.
- Some common types of pages that can end up with short content are landing pages (such as clickbait) and listicles (articles made up entirely of lists).
- You can also use a word count tool like Hubspot’s to make sure your content is staying above the 100-word mark.
- Another way to identify if pages on your site are light on information is by time spent on page – if users aren’t spending much time reading the article, it could mean it’s not sufficiently helpful or lacks depth.
How to Fix Thin Content
There are several ways that you can go about removing or improving thin content on your site, depending on the page.
1. Improve your old content with new upgrades
If you have any pages with information dating back to before 2016, chances are they’re not as up-to-date on new trends, current events , or your company’s most recent product announcements.
Hire a professional copywriter – what doesn’t work is just slapping some filler content together about the topic at hand and expecting it to be both informational enough for users and valuable enough for Google.
While there are plenty of writers who still think keyword stuffing is an effective SEO tactic, it’s 2021 now – you need quality articles that provide value without being too promotional.
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2. Remove it
One of the most straightforward options is to simply delete the page – this might be appropriate if it’s an old or out-of-date article that doesn’t contribute much to your brand.
Just make sure that you properly redirect the URL so users don’t have trouble finding relevant content on your site.
Do you have thin content? Maybe you have some tips on how you got yours up to snuff? Let us know in the comments!