It\u2019s almost impossible to discuss about SEO and not mention the phrase \u2018thin content\u2019, and there is a pretty good reason for that.<\/p>\n
Search engines are constantly crawling the web to find and index new content, to keep their users happy. Webmasters are constantly trying to create new content to bypass their competitors, give search engines more reasons to re-visit their websites and keep their users engaged.<\/p>\n
The fact is, good content is hard to create and thus many webmasters are looking for shortcuts.<\/p>\n
What is the end result?<\/strong> Publishing low quality content for the sake of publishing and not taking into account what users really want.<\/p>\n This in turn makes users unhappy and search engines<\/a><\/strong> get frustrated because their users don\u2019t get what they want.<\/p>\n When we say \u2018search engines get frustrated\u2019, it means that they change their ranking algorithms to get rid of low quality websites from their search results.<\/p>\n When they do so, some websites lose their rankings and traffic because their content is not good enough. And this where the discussion about \u2018thin content\u2019 begins.<\/p>\n Webmasters and SEO professionals are trying to understand what is considered to be thin content, how to identify which pages are conceived as \u2018thin pages\u2019 and most importantly how to fix it.<\/p>\n So, what is really thin content? Does it have to do with word count or is it more than that?<\/p>\n Thin content is content published for the sole purpose of manipulating a page ranking and adds no real value to the user. It is short and not authentic and no special care was taken to make it meaningful and easy to read.<\/em><\/p>\n Typical examples of low quality content<\/a><\/strong> are auto generated pages, doorway pages, scrapped content, keyword stuffed pages or pages that have lines of text thrown on a page without meaning or purpose.<\/p>\n Why all the fuzz about thin content? Aren\u2019t search engines clever enough to identify thin content and just discard it?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not as simple as that.<\/p>\n Reduces the overall quality of a website<\/strong><\/p>\n For starters, when Google is evaluating the quality of a single webpage, one of the things they take into account is how many good quality pages are included in their index from the same website. So, having a website with lots of thin content pages, reduces your page rank and Google trust.<\/p>\n Content is still king, with or without SEO<\/strong><\/p>\n Second, in order to rank high in Google, you need to have great content<\/a><\/strong> that satisfies the search intent. Anything less than that will not get you anywhere close to the first page of Google, no matter what tricks you try to deceive their algorithms.<\/p>\n I have said it many times in the past, \u2018Content is king\u2019. Websites with great content have more chances of ranking high in Google search with or without SEO, while websites with low quality content have no chances at all.<\/p>\n Users don\u2019t like thin content pages<\/strong><\/p>\n Third, even if you manage to get high rankings with thin content, it won\u2019t be of any use. Users will not trust or stay in a website that doesn\u2019t give them what they want and a few lines of duplicate content on a page, is not what they want.<\/p>\n In other words, if you intentionally publish thin content for the sole purpose of improving your rankings, you are just wasting your time.<\/p>\n It will not work. Even if it works now, it\u2019s only temporary. In one of the hundred algorithmic changes that Google is doing on a yearly basis, you will get caught, lose your rankings, imposed a penalty and possibly banned from Google.<\/p>\n Your risk in getting a Google Penalty<\/strong><\/p>\n The changes to the Google algorithm related to identifying and devaluing low quality pages is now part of the on-going Google algorithm. This means that as part of the normal process, the algorithm will check and identify low quality pages and remove them from the index.<\/p>\n Websites that have many low-quality pages may be imposed either a manual or algorithmic penalty.<\/p>\n Hint<\/em><\/strong>: Read this article to find out if your website is penalized by Google<\/a><\/strong> and how to get out of a Google penalty.<\/em><\/p>\n In the past, this was not done on an on-going basis but it was done every few months. The algorithm responsible for fighting low quality pages is known in the SEO community as Google Panda<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Obviously thin content is not the way to go, what does Google want to be happy?<\/p>\n In short, Google is looking for content to satisfy the intent of the searcher<\/strong> so that they keep coming to Google for all their search needs.<\/p>\n High quality content has the following characteristics:<\/p>\nWhat is thin content?<\/h2>\n
Why thin content it\u2019s bad for SEO?<\/h3>\n
What does Google want?<\/h3>\n