Thin content

Thin content is a basic term in SEO. Thin content is all content of low quality and that doesn’t contribute anything to the user who visits a website, in other words, content deemed useless or irrelevant.

The term thin content was created when Google’s Panda algorithm was launched in 2011. This algorithm was created to prevent poor quality content from being displayed in the first results of searches and this generated a real revolution in the ranking factors of results in Google. SERPS changed radically in many cases.

1. Types of thin content

There are different types of thin content, generally we are talking about pages or URLs that have these peculiarities:

• Very short content. It should be noted that not all short content is thin content, but it is true that it can be considered as thin content if it doesn’t exceed 300 words and is not relevant for visitors.

A relevant content where short but useful information is offered to visitors, even if it is below 300 words is not thin content, but a product card where only the name of the product and its price are included, is thin content.

• Duplicate or plagiarized content. It is perhaps one of the most common case, where content is copied from other websites and published; that will generate problems in Google, as well as with their legitimate creators (legal implications of plagiarism).

Here we are talking about copied content or a technique called spinning: This is a black hat SEO pratice that is based on copying texts and making some changes to try to create an alternate version of the original text, in order to generate a slightly different content.

• Automatic content creation. Google detects automatic content generation, which is created by applications specially developed for this purpose.

These texts usually have patterns that give them away: spelling mistakes, grammatical inconsistencies, unconnected translations, etc.

• Doorway pages. This is when, without any sense, the same keywords and long tails are repeated, with the sole purpose of redirecting traffic to a website without providing any value.

Google also considers as doorway pages those that redirect visitors to another site without the user’s consent (in many cases the user doesn’t even realize that they are being redirected to another url).

2. How to avoid thin content?

It is vital to avoid thin content, because this type of content will affect your SEO strategy and you don’t want to be penalized by Google, do you? Here are some good practices to avoid creating content that could affect your results:

• Expand and rewrite. If you think that some content is not up to par, it is best that you try to rewrite it so that it can regain importance, or try to expand it with updated data and add value to what has already been mentioned before.

Try to add at least 1200 words when publishing content for your website.

• Create original content. It is often said that content is king, in this case it clearly applies. Make sure that your content is unique, of quality, original and that it provides value to your visitors.

It is a job that requires effort, but it will also allow you to become a reference in your sector and increase engagement with your users.

• Don’t forget the design. It is very difficult to stand out among the huge amount of content published, but don’t despair, give your content a visual structure that will help it stand out. Make use of eye-catching images, videos, infographics, tables, etc.

Even the choice of font and its size are relevant, they will allow you to present the content using a more attractive format and stand out from other pages.

• Watch out for duplicate content. Avoid it not only for Google but also to comply with the law. There are many tools that allow you to do this, some of them are: Google Search Console, Siteliner, Plagiarisma and Plagium.