SEO guidelines have been changing over the years. Now, the key to a successful website is less about utilizing keywords and more about relevant content. In fact, Google Panda, the search engine’s ranking algorithm, is designed to sift out websites with thin content. If you want your website to rank well on Google, you’ll need to post high quality content.
Defining & Recognizing Thin Content
Thin content is a phrase used to describe websites that lack valuable information for visitors. These sites rely heavily on catchy keywords and unoriginal content to increase their SEOs, rather than creating new and substantial posts. Low-quality websites regurgitate other sources without adding anything new or constructive. Their webpages are filled with recycled content, doorway pages, as well as links or embedded videos from other sites.
In addition to appropriated content or redirected links, duplicated internal material is considered thin content, too. Copying and pasting text from one page to another or across multiple web platforms will be flagged as weak content.
Duplicated material is common on large websites or companies with numerous sites, which include businesses that have different sites for each location/branch or publishers that run hundreds of sites.
Instances of reproducing information include when similar products repeat the same basic description, or when companies duplicate their bios or shared data across multiple sites. While many assume duplicating content will increase SEO, it actually hurts rankings. Sites will rank higher by posting specialized and distinct content, not by lazily copying for the sake of quantity.
While quality matters, Google also considers thin content to be, literally, thin on words. It’s not enough just to update regularly anymore; posts consistently need to be more than just one or two brief paragraphs. Sites with dense design or intricate layouts that are scant on textual information will be unsuccessful in their SEO campaigns. Webpages that are light on words but heavy on embedded images or ads will see a drop in their rankings, too.
Improving Your Web Content
Since Google is constantly updating their algorithms in order to find and filter out flimsy content, it’s crucial to maintain valuable and high quality content on your website. Avoid thin content pitfalls by checking for duplicates across all your web platforms and creating your own distinguishable and meaty material.
Be smart with your supplementary material by deleting doorway pages, useless affiliated links, or clickable ads that could be considered SEO spamming. Always strive for productive marketing tactics that prioritize valuable information and put the needs of visitors first. Think about the audience you’re trying to target and create content based around what they would want to read.
If creating and maintaining consistently substantial content sounds like a daunting task, you can hire a professional web copywriter to do it for you. An experienced writer can create effective and valuable content for your site, while helping you avoid the poor SEO habits associated with thin content. We’re happy to help you build high quality and relevant content to boost your organic search engine rankings; contact me to learn more: sani@sunnysidesocialmedia.com.