What is Thin Content and Why Does it Hurt SEO?

 

Have you ever visited a website from a Google search that just seems unhelpful? The content itself isn’t very useful. It actually sounds like it was written by a robot, and maybe it was.

Prior to 2011, this happened a lot because people figured out they could game Google’s algorithm by creating any type of content — even if it was low-quality. That’s why Google rolled out a massive algorithm update in 2011 — they wanted to reduce the amount of low-quality content that ranked highly.

Unfortunately, low-quality content still exists, even in 2019. Some website owners think that any content is better than no content, so they create cheap, sometimes automated, low-quality content with the hopes that it’ll rank.

The problem is, this type of low-quality content likely won’t ever rank because Google has categorized it as thin content. Once Google flags a website for thin content, it can be really hard to come back. It’s best to avoid thin content altogether, but there’s still a chance that thin content has ended up on your website without you realizing it.

What is thin content?

Thin content can be best described as useless content. It has no value to the reader — it might even deceive the reader.

From Google’s viewpoint, thin content is the lowest of low-quality. It shows that the content took absolutely no effort to create; it might even be stolen from another content source. Unfortunately, because Google is so secretive about their algorithm, it’s really hard to figure out what ranking signals they use to determine thin content.

The best way to figure out what type of content Google considers to be thin content is by studying Google’s guide to creating high-quality websites. In the guide, Google suggests that high-quality websites should:

• Have original content written by experts
• Not use mass-produced content
• Thoroughly edit the content for readability and grammar mistakes
• Not attempt to game Google’s algorithm with keyword stuffing or other black hat SEO tactics

On the other end of the spectrum, websites with thin content:

• Use content copied and pasted from other websites
• Buy mass-produced content that’s available to any other website owner
• Have typos, grammatical errors, and low readability
• Attempt to game Google’s algorithm with link-building schemes and other black hat SEO tactics