Thin Content: What It Is & How To Fix It To Improve Your SEO

Learn how to recognize, avoid, and resolve one of the biggest content blunders you can commit in all of SEO - thin content. We'll walk you through what thin content is, how it hurts SEO, and what search engines say about it. Then, we'll give you three ways to fix your thin content issues. Stay tuned!

What Is Thin Content?

In SEO, thin content is short, unoriginal, and typically offers little to no value to users. Typically, resources in danger of being labeled "thin" are not very comprehensive, and they offer little to no unique content of their own.

Why Does Thin Content Hurt SEO?

The primary reason thin content hurts SEO is because this type of content prevents search engines from seeing your content as rank-worthy. Your whole goal when creating content for your website is to force search engines to see your website as a credible authority in your niche. However, with thin content, search engines will view you as the exact opposite.

In fact, since Google's Panda update, thin content has been consistently penalized in search engines. If any pages on a website are labeled with this type of content by search engines, they will find it impossible to rank, even for the least competitive keywords/keyword phrases.

When Will Thin Content Not Hurt SEO

The only way thin content won't hurt your SEO is if your website is already a titan in your industry in the eyes of search engines. Suppose you already have hundreds of thousands of monthly users, tons of excellent resources, and a great reputation in your industry.

In that case, you can get away with thin content for certain keywords. However, even these types of websites should avoid having thin content.

What Does Google Say About Thin Content?

Google strongly advises against thin content both in their webmaster guidelines and indirectly in various SEO patents. Based on what you can learn in various SEO patents, Google is looking for websites that offer legitimately helpful content to users.

Helpful content is comprehensive content that offers a unique perspective on a topic, provides unique assets, and also is useful for users of all levels.

In addition, the best and most authoritative websites in any industry will have pages that cover every aspect of that industry.

Google's SEO Patents On Thin Content

Context scoring adjustments for answer passages Google patent

While there aren't any SEO patents that directly address thin content specifically, there are several that stress the importance of having quality, full, comprehensive, and helpful content.

Take Google's Context Scoring Adjustments for Answer Passages patent for example. In this patent, they talk about how they go about determining which page deserves to rank for a user's query when compared to all other pages attempting to rank for the same thing.

The patent utilizes a system that assigns a weight to each heading structure in each competing website. In addition to that assigned weight, they adjust that weight according to the content subordinate to each heading throughout that document.

The resource (webpage) that has been deemed most relevant - after the weights and adjustments have been completed - will rank first.

How To Recognize Thin Content

The best way to recognize thin content is by looking at the amount of content on the page. If a page only has a few paragraphs, it is thin content.

Your goal should be to create comprehensive pages that answer every question a user could possibly have while on your page. If your page has 50% of the content that the top competing pages have on theirs, you need to continue to flesh those pages out.

3 Ways To Fix Thin Content & Improve SEO

Below we'll share three ways you can guarantee you'll resolve any issues or even potential issues with thin content.

Creating Comprehensive Pages

If you create comprehensive pages, complete with custom assets (images, videos, infographics, etc.), you'll say goodbye to any threats of having your content labeled as thin by search engines.

The best way to ensure your content is comprehensive is by doing thorough competitive analysis, keyword research, and content planning to ensure you cover every aspect that is relevant to your page.

You never want to have your user leave your page and end up on a competing page just because you failed to answer an important question related to the topic your page covers.

Competitive Analysis

By doing a competitive analysis, you'll ensure you gather everything required to create a more comprehensive resource than any of your competitors. In doing so, you will ensure you are not creating thin content.

Keyword Research

Doing thorough keyword research ensures you avoid creating thin content because you'll ensure you find new aspects of your topic to cover that you likely would've overlooked.

Thorough keyword and competitive analysis combined to help you create comprehensive pages are the best ways to ensure each page you make is a quality resource that will not be considered thin by any stretch of the imagination.