Back in the days of keyword stuffing, low-value sites could rank in the top results on competitive keyword queries. And these keywords have helped companies multiply their profits.

At that time, many business owners, SEO experts, and marketing teams scraped content from value-driven websites and used shady link building tactics to rank. Their content is superior to the original content creators.

This spammy SEO tactic forced Google to release the first Panda algorithm update in February 2011. The Panda update had a simple goal: to prevent low-quality sites from ranking high in the results. search results.

The update penalized the publishing of sloppy content, including duplicate content and poor quality copy that does not provide a suitable solution to the user’s intended search query.

Google continuously releases algorithm updates and now provides EAT (Expertise, Trustworthiness, Trustworthiness) guidelines that every website should follow.

Adhering to EAT principles helps SEOs create valuable content and stay away from Thin Content

Specifically, “Thin content” can include:

1. Duplicate content – ​​Duplicate content (although some content is not duplicate, it is considered duplicate due to technical errors such as not properly redirecting HTTP to HTTPS)
2. Content scraped from another website  – Content scraped from another website
3. Auto-generated content  – ​​Content is automatically created (I embrace high technology, but no tool can replace a human, especially one who is knowledgeable and passionate about the topic)
4. Linked pages have no value
5. Doorway Pages  (also known as bridge pages, portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, etc.) are an SEO term used to refer to websites or subpages that transfer users from the initial request page to other pages. or website with other content)

Any of the above issues classified as “Thin content” can lower your website rankings. Therefore, a content audit is the first step to reverse the current negative rankings to positive.

Many SEO experts only start with technical SEO audits, which are critical to search ranking success. However, testing your content will help you discover what works and what doesn’t.

How to check & analyze Thin content

Let’s take a closer look at how to analyze your site’s current content and diagnose any thin content issues.

Comprehensive inspection

Start by approaching people:

1. Use the site operator’s command for a quick overview of what you’re getting into.
2. Observe how many pages are indexed.
3. Take a quick look at title tags, meta descriptions, and the URL structure being used.

Remember that the website operator’s results are not in order of importance, and sometimes the SERP looks much different from the results of a search query based on a specific keyword.

Now, use the 80/20 principle so you can provide the most value to your upfront customers. Ask business owners what the pages with the highest ROI are and focus on them. Using Google Analytics or a third-party tool, check the top-managed pages. The above issues need attention in any content audit.

Read the content 

Take serious time to actually read the content to see if it belongs to Thin content. The reality is, there are a lot of website owners who have no idea what’s on their website. Of course, this is a big problem because the content you post shows the reputation and quality of the brand you are building.

Focus your attention on the quality and relevance of that particular page (not word count). Long content doesn’t necessarily rank better; it is a matter of quality and relevance. The best content that can be packed into 250 words will deliver more value than a sloppily written 2,500 word article.

Resolve any duplicate content issues

Duplicate content also belongs to Thin content. Two tools that make this job easy are Copyscape and Screaming Frog.

1. With Copyscape , you can enter domains and quickly spot any threats of duplicate content. The issue of duplicate content is always a concern for websites with quality blogs.
2. Another tool is Screaming Frog , which crawls websites and provides data for each URL, from page titles to meta descriptions to other elements (the free version provides 500 URLs, which is usually enough for websites). SMB).

Here you can check for duplicate title tags, which sends a signal about duplicate content to search engines.

Typically, pages with the least amount of text rank the worst. But you can supercharge your content with a strong keyword strategy that helps push that page’s keywords even higher, even faster. Additionally, if you have weak linking sites, work with that affiliate unit to generate volume.

How to fix pages/posts with thin content

Once you’ve diagnosed which pages have thin content, create a priority list based on ROI. Start with the pages that generate the biggest ROI, then work your way down from pages that will generate a higher ROI to pages that are less important.

Based on your budget, you can control the content for each page as you want. Some content may have to be completely removed or completely rewritten.

If you’ve completed a content audit and prioritized fixing 100 pages of thin content, try to make interactions based on that client’s budget. It may take several months to complete this.

Some pages have outstanding content but if they do not use keywords properly, do not have subheadings, and do not have internal links throughout the text, they are all classified as Thin content. Therefore, a dedicated strategy is only effective when prioritizing pages with high to low ROI. There are a number of “thin content” check technologies that send signals to search engines and ways to address them.

1. URLs with www vs. URLs without www : There should only be one preferred URL. There are always unwanted 301 version redirects to the preferred canonical version
2. HTTP vs HTTPS : Same as above, but make sure all internal HTTP links are redirected to the HTTPS version
3. Thin category pages : Some product-based companies have hundreds of category pages, and some may only showcase a few items. You can trim the category itself or prevent it from being indexed
4. Print Pages : If the site offers print-friendly pages, this can create duplicate content due to the creation of print-friendly URLs. Be sure to block print URLs with robots.txt or the robots meta tag
5. Comment pagination : According to Website Hosting Rankings, there are 1.83 billion websites online. Never allow comment pagination on WordPress or any other CMS.