Is Thin Content Hurting Your Rankings? Here's How to Fix It

Are you guilty of using thin content in your marketing?  because yes, it’s still a thing, and also, it’s hurting your rankings more than you think.

Thin content is basically any page that feels like a waste of time. Short, vague, outdated, copied from somewhere else — or written for the purpose of stuffing a few keywords in, without actually helping anyone.

Google doesn’t just want more content. It wants useful content. So if you’ve got a 300-word page that barely says anything or a service page that’s just a bullet list with no real explanation — that’s going to cause a problem between your relationship with Google. 

Common Types of Thin Content

You’ve probably seen (or maybe even written) some of this before: A product page with two sentences and a blurry photo. A blog post that just repeats what every other post says, without offering anything new. Pages created just to rank for specific keywords, but they don’t actually answer anyone’s question. Or, outdated content from five years ago that’s still sitting on your site doing sod all.

Individually, these pages don’t seem like a big deal.

But over time, they bring down your site’s overall authority, because Google starts wondering if any of your content is actually useful.

Auditing Your Content

Start Google Search Console. If you’ve got pages with loads of impressions but hardly any clicks? Then they’re showing up in search, but not compelling anyone to visit.

If you’ve got a high bounce rate, or super short time on page, that’s people clicking in and then clicking out because they didn’t find what they were looking for.

And while word count isn’t everything, pages with just a handful of words are worth getting rid of altogether, unless they’re absolute gold.