As technology and digital advancement have progressed, our world has also changed tremendously in every possible field around us. And in this evolution, digital marketing and online enterprising have become trendsetters in the commercial and business world. It could be a film museum in Kyoto, an escape room Bangalore, or a diner store in Paris. You can see the effects of digital marketing and technology in many franchises and offline shops.
And when it comes to advertising and generating traffic, content is the top-most aspect responsible for attracting the audience and keeping them engaged. With good content, you can drive interest amongst your target customers and appeal to the interest of the masses while also boosting your SEO ranking and online visibility.
But as the mighty Superman had an evil twin as strong as him, your content also has one. Just like his twin, who was the complete opposite of him and had all of his bad qualities, your content’s evil twin is also the opposite of typical good content and only has its negative features. And that is thin content. Now you might be wondering what is ‘thin content’ and how it is damaging for your online websites and business. Also, do we know what defines good content and what makes content thin on the internet? Right, it’s a bit confusing, and you may find it a little terrifying to hear after how it is inadequate and the opposite of white and good content. But don’t worry because, in this article, we will help you understand thin content and also how it is unhealthy for your SEO.
What is Thin Content
According to Google’s standard definition and rules, thin content refers to content that has little to no informative quality and adds nothing to the user’s online experience. You may usually find them on shallow and low-quality pages on a website where the sources might not be reliable. And it could be low-quality text or a superficial page that does not have any unique or resourceful content or, a website with black hat links and ads cluttered on its display page instead of valuable data.
Google takes no mercy in penalizing websites with thin content and immediately puts their webpage down if it breaches Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Sometimes you may end up creating such content unintentionally on your website while practicing SEO tips to broaden your website’s reach and attract your target audience towards your content.
And while you may achieve a good ranking in a short duration, it will all go down the drain once Google strikes it down as thin content. You lose your SEO ranking on the organic search page, and your website becomes invisible on the internet. And this creates a bad reputation for you as a web manager and your business as a whole.
So what can you do? To get an idea of this matter, let us go through the questions below and their answers.
What are some examples of thin content?
While you can identify thin content due to its lack of resourceful and valuable data, there are times when it might be hard to understand and identify them. Here are some examples of what they look like:
o Duplicate Contents:
Pages with similar keywords are referenced in all of their content. Their blogs usually have matching posts, and as a result, the search engine considers them the same and marks it as thin content.
o Doorway Pages:
These pages only have the target keywords stuffed in them along with low-quality external links and resources.
o Sites crammed with ads:
These pages have plenty of ads as the primary point instead of the content as per the title.
o Auto-generated Content:
Such types of content get auto-generated by an android or a computer for the sole purpose of meeting the content requirement and the keyword necessity insertion rule.
o Content lacking usefulness:
These pages lack any helpful information that the user can find reliable due to its apparent lack of depth in the material.
Why does it hurt our SEO?
1. Reduces backlinks
If your website has thin content, it will affect your user experience and cause dissatisfaction to grow with the content you are uploading. People will not find your work valuable and informative enough for them to revisit your pages or refer it to their acquaintances. And this will cause a drop in your backlinks that will affect your SEO ranking, and Google will quickly push your website down on the internet.
2. More bounce rates
A bounce rate refers to the user going back to the search page immediately after clicking on a title. Google considers it a bad user experience and penalizes the website with higher bounce rates.
3. Lowers the click rates and visiting density
Search engines do not appreciate thin content due to its poor content quality. As a result, once a page is marked as such, Google will make it invisible to the users on the internet by giving it a lower rank and pushing it further down.
4. Prone to penalty
Thin content is liable to a penalty from Google due to its breach of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, for these pages try to get higher ranks and more revenue at the expense of their user’s time and energy. And once you receive a penalty, it is difficult for you to gain back the same ranking and revenue as before because your business is affected in the process.
Although you can recover from a thin content penalty by either editing, deleting, or rewriting the whole content again, the best way to avoid this scenario is by practicing healthy and safe content-creating measures to evade yourself from making any thin content. Use non-shady sites for backlinks, insert high-quality pictures, and write original and somewhat bulky content to deter your pages marked as ‘Thin Content’ by Google. And you can always go through Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to gain more insight into this subject deeply.
Final Words
So this was all about thin content and how it hurts your website’s SEO. We all know how valuable content is, and when we talk about content, it isn’t only limited to texts, but videos, proper images, meta descriptions, and affiliate backlinks. All these combine to give the article content its perfect shape and beauty. So, the more you put in efforts to keep it unique, resourceful, and user-friendly, the more the chances for Google to rank it higher. And as long as you are using honest and sincere means to create original content, your hard work will eventually be rewarded sooner than you think.
