Semalt Explains What Thin Content Is

Content is king, but certainly, not all kinds of content can be considered king. Kingly content refers to high-quality original content well-optimized to rank on Google. Thin content is almost like the direct opposite of that. Thin content refers to the kind of web content that can't rank on Google. Why? It isn't meaningful, original, or relevant and neither does it contain the appropriate keywords. 

Google and other search engines greatly dislike thin content (low quality) content because internet users (website visitors) hate content like that. In an ideal world, web pages would contain nothing but high-quality content that are well-written, search engine-friendly, and easy to read. This is where most websites fail. Here's all you need to know about thin content, why you should avoid it, and how to do so.

When a website has only a few relevant keywords and key phrases, the website can be said to have thin content. It is thin content because Google's algorithms can't pick up the essential keywords that internet users are searching for from that webpage. Key phrases are the words commonly used by your audience to search for products and services. A webpage may contain key phrases such as: "my car," "my office," "my computer," and "my address."

So, what is the big deal about this? Search engines use these keywords as an indicator of the relevance of the site to a searched keyword. The more search-engine-optimized keywords you have, the more likely people will find your site. If there are fewer relevant keywords on your site, fewer people will find your site. 

This will affect your SERPs (search engine results page) and the quality of traffic that you can get. Webpages that contain too low a volume of relevant keywords will only get a low ranking on search engines. Why? It means that your website is not relevant to a particular search query. This will be a big issue for your business, particularly if yours is a saturated niche.

Having excess keywords can also be considered thin content, and it can make your website suffer. Google penalizes sites at times for having too many keywords, particularly if they are irrelevant keywords. 

Since search engines have a way of judging a page's relevance regardless of the use of keywords, you can actually hurt yourself by using too many keywords. This is because Google's algorithm might not know the keywords most relevant to your content. So, you end up ranking for none of those keywords. That's why it's important that your keywords are relevant and used in minimal proportion.

Webpages with poor-quality content will not get enough traction. This is because people are more interested in surfing the web for informative, relevant, and fresh resources rather than reading just another web content without value. 

In this case, without quality content, your web page will be thrown into the 'deep web' or 'spider web' by search engines. And you will not have any chance of building your reputation and authority in your niche market. Thin content is a major problem, especially when your website is an important gateway to your business.

Google always aims to offer its users high value through quality, informative and relevant content. The fact is that people that go on Google to search for information want only resources that would inform them correctly, offer relevant answers to their questions or direct them to the appropriate sources. Well, thin content can't offer all these, and Google is aware of that. So, it de-ranks websites that provide thin content. 

Since websites with thin content have reduced visibility and rank low, people won't see, let alone click them. This is why you need to place quality content on your website at all times, so you stay on the right side of Google.

Thin content hurts your brand/website. Once people associate your website with irrelevant content, you won't get in their good graces. Individuals like that will actively avoid your page and will most likely dissuade others they know from visiting your website. Why? They know no value will be offered. Of course, it also affects your revenue. Why? If people don't like your brand and so don't visit your website, you lose potential sales.

Google tries to provide the best results that match the search intent of the user and offers the user the needed information. If you want to rank high on Google, you have to prove to the search engine that you're providing the relevant and informative resource(s) the user needs. 

Write informative yet enjoyable content (should be search engine optimized), and you'd have Google eating out of the palm of your hands. This isn't possible if the content you post is not extensive, fresh, and relevant, particularly to the intent of the internet browsers. Thin content is the opposite of what Google can showcase to the users as the best search results. Here is what Google wants (which is also information that'll help you avoid thin content).

One way to combat the thin content issue is to provide a good quantity of quality content to users. High-quality drives up the quality score of your webpage. People will generally look for websites that provide them with high-quality content, so it makes perfect sense to produce quality content that will make the user want to visit your site in the first place. This means that the best thing to do is always to provide quality content, no matter what kind of ranking performance you are trying to achieve.

You need to focus on giving your web visitors good information. You need to make sure that the content on your blog is relevant to the topic and that you are delivering it in a complete, clear manner. Search engines are always looking for fresh content, and if you can give it to them, they will love you for it.

As much as possible, you should try to link high-quality content related to your content to whatever content you post. It doesn't have to be just outbound links; you should also link relevant posts on your website to the new content. Firstly, linking other posts related to your posts to your new content gives more credibility to your content. It also gives the users more opportunities to access more information related to your post. Secondly, the presence of high authority links helps Google algorithms rank your webpages higher. Moreover, if you link other posts on your site to your new content, your older content would also continue to gain traffic.

Although high-quality content is always appreciated, it can also be difficult to find good articles that are well-written. The main reason for this is that writing quality content can take time, and most people don't have the luxury of hours upon hours to sit down and write. 

If you want to get around this issue, it's recommended that you outsource the article writing task to someone who has more time. Good content doesn't come cheap, particularly if the writer is competent and well-experienced, but it's worth it. 

Additionally, if you are not very skilled at writing search-engine-optimized content, you will end up hurting your search ranking. But when you outsource the work, you know your content would be audience-engaging while also being search engine-optimized. This is actually why you need to make sure that you hire people who are experts in this area. The content team at Semalt can certainly help you out with this.

You should keep in mind that most search engines are not too fond of using 'duplicate content.' If you think about it, several webpages are like mirrors of each other. This is because the content on a page duplicates that of another page. Of course, this causes problems with the way that the pages rank. If the same information is presented on different pages, the search engines view it as 'duplicate content' and will prevent these sites from ranking highly. 

In fact, Google penalizes websites that duplicate content. So, you should endeavor to run your content through a plagiarism checker to be sure it's free of plagiarism before posting it on your site. Semalt also offers two tools you can use to check the originality of your content and page. They are the website uniqueness checker and the page uniqueness checker.

When you choose keywords for your content, make sure that you choose them carefully. You must ensure that your content contains the relevant keywords in appropriate volumes. Many keyword research tools will tell you which keywords will bring you the most traffic based on data from past and present data and probably your marketing campaigns, depending on the type of tool you use. Also, you should be able to write about your keywords in a way that shows relevance to your webpage content.

The next time you ask yourself, "what kind of content does Google like or how can I avoid thin content," consider all of the above and create search-engine-optimized high-quality content! The more high-quality content you have available to your website, the better your website's performance will be. Don't worry; it isn't as hard as it seems. Once you get started, you'll find that avoiding thin content is very easy. And of course, before long, your website's performance would exceed your imaginations.