What is Thin Content?

Thin Content translates as thin content, poor quality content that does not bring much value to the user’s search intent, and is underestimated by Google’s algorithms in terms of content optimization.

For sites specializing in product reviews often encounter this error. Specifically, they only add a little content to the specifications or manuals from the supplier. Meanwhile, on an article containing too many affiliate links, there is too little useful information for users. This makes the user bounce rate higher…

Thin Content is also shown from websites with poor quality content but owning a lot of backlinks or containing all spam articles … they are likely to be penalized by Google.

Besides, not every short article length will affect the quality of the content. For example, sites specializing in downloading music, image stores, etc., although short, still provide a good user experience. So, the core of the problem is that the content must bring value to the reader, so that they do not need to search for more information from other pages.

So the more content a website contains, the richer it is with relevant keywords, the more Google will prioritize displaying it in the search results and vice versa.

You can also refer to the video from Google by Matt Cutts about Thin Content for more details:

4 types of Thin Content

In Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, it specifies 4 types of Thin Content, they will evaluate your site based on these types of content and may remove them from search results.

Website copy content automatically

How is a website rated as automatic content copy? Automated content is content that is copied, “fried” from other websites in the same industry using the tool. The purpose of this type is to manipulate rankings in Google search results without benefiting users.

And of course, Google will not tolerate websites that are deliberately taking advantage of them. Here are some typical examples, where Google will implement penalties for such content:

• The text may contain search keywords but bring no value to the reader.
• The text has been translated from one language into another without being edited before publication.
• Text is generated from automatic scanning tools by programming.
• Texts are collected from various sources on the internet.
• Patchwork text from many different websites but not enough value to provide users.

Website Affiliate spam link

Affiliate Marketing is one of the long-standing terms, which has been used by many people in making commissions from businesses. However, not everyone can afford to create quality content on their website. Instead, they focus too much on attaching countless product and service links. This will make your website rank not only lower, but also prevent users from getting the real value you provide.

So when using the Affiliate Marketing model, you need to consider the allocation of affiliate programs. As well as putting the value of the user’s interests first before directing them to a place to sell products and services.

Website specializing in content plagiarism

Some webmasters use content from more authoritative sites, thinking that more articles will help improve rankings. In certain cases, it also constitutes an infringement of the copyright of other people’s content. Therefore, you should take the time to create and deliver your own content. This will attract more natural user traffic as well as get high appreciation from Google.

Some examples of websites showing signs of content plagiarism:

• Copy and publish content from another website without providing or creating additional content.
• Copied and slightly modified, neither has its own stamp nor adds any useful value to the user.

Lane page

Gateway pages, also known as pages, are created to rank for specific, or synonymous, search terms. These pages basically all direct users to the same landing page, which causes the user’s search results to yield similar information. In addition, this type of page can also direct users to intermediate pages but do not bring as high value as the landing page.

The easiest example is when multiple domains or pages target the same area or location. However when clicking on the details section it redirects the user to the same page.

How does thin content affect SEO?

If you already understand what SEO is and what it takes to improve search rankings, you know how thin content can affect your long-term business goals. As follows:

Your website is not getting backlinks

Backlinks have always been one of the top signals, having a strong impact on improving rankings. If you want people to link to your website, you have to show them a reason for them to link to you.

Let’s say you have content with attractive titles, stimulating clicks, but when they see the content, they do not find the usefulness and relevance in it. Chances are they will never come back to your site and the chances of a link from another site pointing at this point are zero.

High bounce rate

When your content does not meet the search needs of users, the possibility of a website bounce rate is extremely high. This can tell Google that your page is not satisfying the user’s experience. The telltale sign is rankings and organic traffic dropping over time.

Eat keyword meat

There are quite a few SEO novices who misunderstand that creating a lot of content targeting the same keyword will have a higher chance of ranking on Serps. However, this is one of the old ways of thinking because by repeating the topic, you will confuse the reader as well as make it difficult for Google to identify the content. This leads to keyword cannibalism , as your articles rank for the same search engine query.

How to identify and correct Thin Content

To know if your site has Thin Content issues, you need to diagnose the scope and create an action plan. Here are the steps to help you identify thin content:

Step 1: Crawl the entire site

To crawl the entire website you need to use some support tools like DeepCrawl or Screaming Frog .

Next, you need to collect SEO metrics through Google Analytics and Google Search Console . It will include impressions, bounce rate, conversion rate. Then click the data you just collected into Google sheets, remember to add columns for “main keyword”, as well as the accompanying solution.

With the main keyword column will be the basis for you to evaluate whether your content has provided enough useful values ​​for users or not.

Step 2: Evaluate the article page, main keyword

This is an important step to help you determine what type of Thin Content needs to be fixed. To evaluate you can ask yourself a few of the following questions for more accurate data analysis.

• Do you have multiple articles targeting the same keyword?
• Do you own posts that are not related to your keywords or niche brands?
• Do you have any articles that are too low in word count?
• Which posts get low traffic or low impressions?
• Which category page is having too little content?

If the answer is mostly “yes”, then the article belongs to the Thin Content error.

Step 3: Fix Thin Content error

Once you’ve identified which pages and articles of yours have thin content errors, you need to work on fixing them as quickly as possible. There are 3 common fixes that we regularly apply to our website:

Delete obsolete content that is no longer valid

• These could be articles targeting unrelated, unbranded target keywords
• Content without target keywords has no customer conversion value.
• Outdated content is no longer relevant to the present time, or is no longer of interest to readers.
• Categories are empty, or there are very few posts.

Re-improve the content

You can also fix the Thin Content error by improving the content, specifically:

• Redefine the main keyword relevant to the post.
• Add content that satisfies the user’s search intent.
• Add more stats if available
• Remove unnecessary CTAs and ads.
• On-page SEO optimization .
• Add visual network content such as videos and images that realistically describe the problem you are providing to readers.

Merge duplicate content

You will use this approach when you find that many articles focus on the same topic. Specifically, similar content will eat your keywords, as well as prevent you from ranking high in search results. The best solution is to combine them into a complete article.

For example, you have many articles published on your website that are rated as Thin Content errors as follows:

• What is website SEO?
• Real examples of SEO Website
• Why is SEO Website important in long-term business strategy?
• How to do the most detailed overall SEO Website 2022

Practically all of the above articles should be merged into one comprehensive post.

Conclusion

Above is the most complete content about Thin content in SEO. Hopefully, this information will help you better search engine optimization as well as improve website rankings over time. If there are any unclear issues, please leave a comment right below the article, we will try to respond as soon as possible!