Thin words: what is it and why is it important in SEO

What are thin words?

Knowing what thin words are vital for your digital positioning. In February 2011, Google released an update to its search algorithm called Panda. This update was the first in a series of algorithm updates that were aimed at penalizing low-quality websites for their content. This type of content is called thin words. This is the definitive guide to know what thin words are and how to avoid them on your digital platforms.

Although Panda was first released several years ago it has been updated several times since its initial release, the latest update serves the same purpose as the original: Better position websites that have useful and relevant content. And penalize sites that have thin words, since the latter type of content does not offer any value to users.

In this guide, you can find out what is thin words, what makes content thin, and why having thin words on your website is a bad thing. You will also be able to learn some simple techniques that can help you give more value to your content and avoid having to deal with a Google penalty.

Do you know what thin words are?

Thin words are called low-quality pages that do not add value because their content is poor. To know what thin words are, you must bear in mind that there are many different types of low-quality content :

Content that is created automatically and offers very limited or no value at all is classified as thin content.
Spam and ad content is also poor content.
Also copied content or content that is primarily information a product copied from other sources or content extracted from other websites. If you copy content from other websites and make minor changes, it will be considered thin content.
Content with many links is also another rare value, although not all. The original content, of which the links and the affiliate content is only a part and the content that in itself adds value to the people who access it, is not thin words. For example, product reviews, ratings, or comparisons.
Copying reviews from other sites is also poor content.

Definition of Thin words

Thin words are pages or URLs of a website that have low-quality content. Usually, this is associated with little content but the truth is that it is more a question of quality and relevance for users.

For example, a page may have content of only 150 words but that content meets the expectations of users. Therefore, in this case, it would not be thin words.

Therefore, the best way to define thin words is that it is content that does not contribute anything to users.

It does not matter the number of words, here the important thing is that the content is of quality and contribution.

How to search for thin words?

Once you’ve explained what thin words are, it’s time to find out if your brand is creating this type of content. The best way to measure the quality of your content is through user satisfaction. If visitors bounce off your page quickly, you may not be providing the type of content they were looking for.

However, there are also several ways to discover thin words: word levels, whether there is duplication or not, and the value of posts. To know if the content you are generating is being classified as thin words or not, you can carry out these two options:

Copyscape, for example, is a free tool with which you can crawl the web to find any content that has been copied from your domain. In addition, you can also discover if your content has been added, plagiarized by other sites, and added as if it were their original content.

Another option may be to use Google searches to find shared, copied, or duplicate content. The downside of this option is that it must be done manually.

You copy a selection of content that you think has been copied. Do it with content that you consider to have been successful content for your brand.
Paste that content into Google by adding the quotation marks (“”)
Review the results. You will need to analyze the results to determine if the content has been duplicated or copied.

How does the user rate your content?

Taking into account what thin words is, the best way to determine the quality of the content of each brand is to pay attention to the attitude of the user on our website. The best measure to determine the value of your content is user satisfaction.
If users stay on your website for a long time after clicking from search engine results pages, chances are you have high-quality content that both users and search engines like.

If your content offers a relatively low value, there is a possibility that you could be penalized or receive a warning from search engines, including Google, which indicates that your website may be in danger of losing positions in the SERP ranking.

What type of content is far from thin words?

The first thing to be clear about is what type of content is completely different from thin words. Some of the key points that mark the content as quality content are the following:

The use of unique data to provide new content to the user.
The ability to make the user interact with the content to create new value.
Create mixed content types to make it easier for users to understand and read quickly.
A good design and web architecture that facilitates its accessibility from any place and device.
Create a type of content that solves problems or answers questions of really necessary questions. This type of content is very valuable.
Use references or links that support the information that you are giving. In this way, the user will have the option of obtaining more detailed information and you will help them to have more knowledge on the subject.

How to fix your content in thin words?

One of the first steps you should take is looking for external references. Soak up ideas from search engines. Set the quality of your searches as a benchmark. The goal is to create content on your website that is far better than any other example available. Once you identify what valuable content is like, you have to find a way to create it yourself.

Based on what thin words is and why it doesn’t work, you should look for alternative ways to create content. You also need to find new content creation opportunities. Not only do you redirect existing content, but it also offers new as well. Don’t forget to:

Be aware of new statistics and new data that support your content or data with which you can create new.
Follow social media trends to see what your audience needs.
Stay up-to-date with industry changes and update your content based on these innovations. Google, for example, constantly changes and updates its algorithms.
The data that you collect will be vital to support your decisions.
Create Alienated Content Strategies – A blog post is great, but back up this post, for example, with an infographic or video.
Ask your users what they want. At the end of the day, your content is mainly for them and to solve their needs.

Avoiding thin words is synonymous with improving positioning

One of the greatest benefits of SEO is the stability it offers you. Although the traffic of a PPC campaign can stagger depending on the competition or the amount of traffic that a search ranking can generate, if your site is up to par and has good SEO work, you have more options to stay in the top positions search engines.

Avoiding thin words can avoid the effects of constant updates to Google’s Panda algorithm. Also, if your site has high-quality attractive content, your ranking could improve if Google continues to penalize all those websites that do nothing more than publish poor content. Take advantage of these situations to improve your organic positioning.

The best way to avoid thin words is to be unique and special. That is, create content that is yours, valuable and necessary for users. The more unique content you offer on your digital platforms to search engines, the more satisfied your users will be and the higher the value of the keywords that support your content will be.

Make your content more useful and relevant

Do you know what thin words are and have you found that your content is too close to this side? Work to improve it. It’s not difficult to turn it around and turn it into good content. You must create an effective content marketing strategy.

The goal is to make content more relevant and useful to people who access it from search results pages. If your content isn’t unique, for example you’ve stolen a product description for something you’re selling on the merchant’s website, delete it and replace it with new and exclusive content that features your own version of the product you’re selling.

If you are looking to create content marketing strategies that improve your positioning while working on your content, Coobis is your solution. Coobis is the content marketing platform that unites publishers with advertisers.

It is a type of strategy that increases both your visibility and your brand authority. You will gain prestige among your followers if you use influencer marketing strategies.

Types of Thin words and How to Analyze It

Different tools can currently analyze the status of the current content of a website and how to improve it. At HMG we use Botify, one of the tools that, from our point of view, has the greatest capacity to extract the main KPIs that help us to debug these impoverished content.

Template vs Content

Are you providing “pure” content or is the information you show in the URL excessively accompanied by elements of the template? As we have said, each page must contribute individually, each page must show unique information. The more weight we have of the template, of the fixed elements and common to all URLs, the less differentiation we will be providing.

Google continues to prioritize text over other content. Video, images, javascript files today, are not taken into account at the same level as the word, although of course, they contribute to the global of each page. So whether we want to or not, you will have a better chance of ranking a 1000 word page better than a 200-word page.

Unique content

Is part of the content of one page used in others? Is the content of each page unique on the web? This will be another of the basic factors when evaluating the quality level of the content on our page. Eliminating duplicate or similar content will be one of the priority functions for the success of our organic traffic.

How to avoid Thin words?

-Reject the «upload content by uploading it»

This is one of the main problems of the current corporate blog. A marketing tool as attractive as an article container can often be a double-edged sword when not enough resources are allocated for its maintenance. As a result, we obtain content made without effort that will not contribute to the generation of organic visits.

Get away from automatically created content

Another common example is creating automated content through robots. It is a practice that is increasingly obsolete but that is applied in many e-commerce to speed up the uploading of products. Creating unique, keyword-focused product descriptions is essential in organic positioning.

Good content pays

One of the big problems when it comes to generating quality content is the little value that is given within organizations to the work of the writer. If we hire a writing service or freelance writers, let’s make sure that we pay for what their work is worth.

Check your contents

One of the tasks of the SEO specialist resides in analyzing this “poor” content and working hand in hand with the content teams on how to update or debug it in the case of not contributing, Google takes into account in a very positive way that the content is “alive” and actualize in time.

New content, maximum effort

Let us use all the resources of our organizations and agencies to achieve the highest possible quality. We involve editors, SEO specialists, strategists, account managers, department heads, and specialists in the specific field. Our users and especially Google will thank us.

What are thin words in SEO?

Your website is probably one of your best tools to make new customers, your digital showcase is essential, that is why you must keep in mind the quality of the content you publish. The Thin words are the type of content that can be given a different hue, which is contained poor, little,, or uninteresting for your users.

In SEO, thin words are defined as content on your website that does not provide value to users. It can be short, superficial, non-original, duplicate, or low-quality content. As a general rule of thumb, thin words don’t rank well in search engines like Google.

Any content that does not add value to the search engine can be considered scarce. For one thing, thin words mean that there isn’t enough text on your website to satisfy the search engine. On the other hand, it also means that your pages do not have content of sufficient quality to satisfy the needs of the search engine. Either of the two leads to a bad positioning in Google. Nobody likes to appear on the third page of Google, right?

6 types of thin words

1. Content that lacks depth or usefulness

The fact that a web page has a lot of content does not make it good. Similarly, just because a page has detailed information doesn’t mean it deserves a high ranking. High-quality content that deserves to be rated should answer all questions and address any concerns the user may have. That is, the pages are not ‘thin’ when they contain complete content that meets the needs of the user.

2. Duplicate or repetitive content

Duplicate or repetitive content is a strong sign of lower quality content. Single-page website content can be redundant, but you must be careful not to duplicate content across multiple pages of your website. Duplicate content not only affects the readability of users but can also put your site in unpleasant circumstances. Therefore, it is unavoidable to check for plagiarism before posting the content on your site. Using an online plagiarism checker is crucial in this regard. The tool will help you get any type of duplication in writing without requiring any manual effort.

For example, if you have a 1,000-word article that repeats the same information, it can be considered thin words. That’s because it doesn’t provide more value as users read for longer. Search engines aim to give clear and concise answers while offering the option to explain why.

3. Pages with plagiarized content

Plagiarizing content is not a good practice. Repeatedly copying content from other websites can lower the trust of your website and will prevent other partners from wanting to be on your website, terrible for the long-term success of your website.

4. Poor quality covers

The front page is the entry page on your website, this is the page where the entire structure of your website is broken down, so it is probably the most important. That is why there are practices of hiding content from the user on the website to rank higher in Google. All of this manipulation occurs to make the user believe that they have gotten a “good enough” search result. These practices are identified by search engines as deceptive and malicious.

5. Thin words on category pages

Category, tag, or author pages are some of the most common causes of thin words. On many occasions, a lot of tag and category pages are generated that hang from your blog and generate an unsustainable structure on your website, generating a puzzle for search engines. Similarly, in eCommerce, as stocks disappear, products are unpublished, but often tens and hundreds of empty category pages are left.

6. Pages with a lot of ads or pop-ups

Pages with shallow content, full of ads and pop-ups, can be considered thin words. Even if the content is of quality, it can be unsatisfactory for the end-user, with a lot of intrusive ads and pop-ups that throw off the user experience.

Although you cannot generate unique content, you can refer to other articles on the network, writing from your own experience and reflection, as well as adding opinions, comments, and practical cases that can add value.

Thin words are a problem for the SEO of your website and to help you mitigate this, Google Search Console will help you, informing you in case some of your web pages are affected.

Why are Thin words important for SEO?

The thin words itself, that content of low quality or little relevance for the user, does not penalize. The problem comes when a website has a lot of low-quality content and little quality content. That is when the proportion of thin content is higher.

In this case, what it affects is the crawl budget or tracking budget, that is, the time that Google bots dedicate to crawling our website, and this can already have a negative impact on the positioning of our website.

Therefore, the important thing here is to detect that thin words to avoid that the proportion of good and bad content that does not play against us and ends up affecting our SEO.

For website maintenance service contact us.

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