In this series, we will detail the usual suspects regarding villainous practices sabotaging your own SEO ranking objectives. First, we’ll dive into the behavior of Suspect #1: Thin Content.
What is thin content? Simply put, it’s any content on your website that doesn’t provide adequate value to your visitors. This could be anything from pages offering very little text to duplicate content across multiple pages.
Not only is this bad for SEO, but it also frustrates users who are looking for quality information on your site.
So, how can you avoid thin content?
Purpose Driven Content
The best way is to ensure that all of your content is well-written and informative. Every page on your site should have a purpose, and every piece of content should contribute to that purpose.
Are you . . .
- Answering a question that your audience is searching for?
- Providing value to go above and beyond by providing more than the searcher is asking for?
- Helping your visitor move to the next step in your program, sales funnel, etc.?
If not, you could have “purpose-thin” content. Ask yourself if it’s something that your visitors would find useful. If the answer is “no”, then it’s time to revise or remove it.
Don’t See Double
Duplicate content is another example of thin content. This happens when the same or very similar content appears on multiple pages of your site.
Not only does this provide a poor user experience, but it also confuses search engines as they try to determine which page is most relevant for a given query.
You may see this on websites that have multiple locations for their business and have created separate pages for each location. The location is different in all cases, however, the content on the page is the same.
To avoid duplicate content, make sure that each page has unique and original content. This could mean rewriting or adding to existing content, but it’s worth it to have quality information on each page of your site.
Think about what makes a particular location unique and write about that.
Too Short To Be Useful
Another common issue is pages with too little content. These pages are often called ” thin affiliate sites”. This is because they’re created for the sole purpose of ranking in search engines and don’t provide much value to the user.
To avoid thin content, make sure that each page has at least 300 words of quality content. This will give you enough space to cover your topic and provide value to your visitors.
For more technical or detailed content, consider a word count of at least 1600 – 2400.
Bulk Up Your Thin Content
The idea for your content is to make it easy to engage with and appreciated by the visitor to your website or blog.
One of the ways to set the table to make the meal more appetizing is to provide imagery or video which correlates well with your content. Infographics are helpful along with well-defined calls to action in the form of buttons.
In each case, you’ll want to make sure these assets are optimized, easy to see, and relevant to your subject matter.
Audit and Fix Your Content
If you’re not sure where to start, consider conducting a content audit. This will help you identify any areas where your content is lacking and give you a chance to improve it.
Thin content is one of the easiest ways to sabotage your SEO efforts, but it’s also one of the easiest to fix. By ensuring that all of your content is high-quality and informative, you can avoid thin content and give your site the best chance at ranking well in search engines.
If you have a backlog of thin content or don’t have any content, to begin with, contact UpLift and we’ll get your content in fighting shape.
