Dealing with thin comment
-
Hi again! I've got a site where around 30% of URLs have less than 250 words of copy. It's big though, so that is roughly 5,000 pages. It's an ecommerce site and not feasible to bulk up each one. I'm wondering if noindexing them is a good idea, and then measuring if this has an effect on organic search?
-
Thanks guys! We'e starting to add more content to each page, looks like the only way!
-
Does your competition have more content for these products?
If so, you need to ramp it up.
Either way, no-indexing them is not going to do any good.
-
Hi Blink
What would you be hoping to gain by de indexing these pages?
-
The size of your site is important. The value these pages have as far as bulking your site up is important. If you no index them, you will significantly reduce the size of your site, which can effect your ability to rank on other pages as well. No indexing them is not best practice, and will cause more harm than good.
These pages aren't hurting your site by not ranking. They might rank for terms you aren't tracking also. The pages probably have some authority and links, getting rid of that will definitely be detrimental.
-
Hi! I agree that they won't rank, but most aren't now anyway. I'm more concerned that they are pulling everything else down. By noindexing them, I can at least see if that is the problem/.
-
If you no index the pages they will never rank. The bots will not be able to crawl them so they will essentially be useless.
Are these product pages? The best way to get content on these pages is through user generated reviews. That is the best way to accomplish adding content without spending a ton of time writing copy.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best structure for paginating comment structures on pages to preserve the maximum SEO juice?
You have a full webpage with a great amount of content, images & media. This is a social blogging site where other members can leave their comments and reactions to the article. Over time there are say 1000 comments on this page. So we set the canonical URL, and use Rel (Prev & Next) to tell the bots that the next subsequent block of 100 comments is attributed to the primary URL. Or... We allow the newest 10 comments to exist on the primary URL, with a "see all" comments link that refers to a new URL, and that is where the rest of the comments are paginated. Which option does the community feel would be most appropriate and would adhere to the best practices for managing this type of dynamic comment growth? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HoloGuy0 -
Site not showing up in search - was hacked - huge comment spam - cannot connect Webmaster tools
Hi Moz Community A new client approached me yesterday for help with their site that used to rank well for their designated keywords, but now is not doing well. Actually, they are not on Google at all. It's like they were removed by Google. There are not reference to them when searching with "site: url". I investigated further and discovered the likely problem . . . 26 000 spam comments! All these comments have been removed now. I clean up this Wordpress site pretty well. However, I want to connect it now to Google webmaster tools. I have admin access to the WP site, but not ftp. So I tried using Yoast to connect. Google failed to verify the site. So the I used a file uploading console to upload the Google html code instead. I check that the code is there. And Google still fails to verify the site. It is as if Google is so angry with this domain that they have wiped it completely from search and refuse to have any dealings with it at all. That said, I did run the "malware" check or "dangerous content" check with them that did not bring back any problems. I'm leaning towards the idea that this is a "cursed" domain in Google and that my client's best course of action is to build her business around and other domain instead. And then point that old domain to the new domain, hopefully without attracting any bad karma in that process (advice on that step would be appreciated). Anyone have an idea as to what is going on here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlistairC0 -
Publishing pages with thin content, update later?
So I have about 285 pages I created with very, very thin content on each. Each is unique, and each serves its own purpose. My question is, do you guys think it is wise to publish all of these at once to just get them out there and update each as we go along? Each page is very laser targeted and I anticipate that a large handful will actually rank soon after publishing. Thanks! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomBinga11250 -
Online household calculator for utility company - SEO thin content issue
Hi - I'm working with a utility company that's produced a calculator for individual households. When you go to their website and type in your address, various household info is pulled across (from various databases) and a calculation is generated on electricity costs/savings per month - the only unique content on each page = numbers. Beyond that, the content on each page is a template. There is actually a unique URL for each household (when you click on your property name a unique results page is generated). I'm worried about thin content penalties - is the best option to nofollow noindex these individual household pages (99% of the site!)???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Dealing with Canonical tag in volusion
Hi We have an ecommerce site where we have some returns/scratch /dented products identical to the original one. The onpage content of the damaged/original is pretty much identical with the damaged just having a describing the damage. I had wanted to make a canonical tag on the damaged product to the original so it would not be a problem of duplicate content but as it is a volusion site we dont have that option - it only canonicalizes back to itself! Any ideas what else I can do - cant really change the content much and I dont really want to deindex it so people find it? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | henya0 -
How to deal with very similar (thin) content by design?
Hello all, I run a website which lists direct contact details (tel. and email.) of organisations. I have 100s of similar pages which are very thin on content (by design). Each page has a couple of lines of somewhat unique content. People find the site useful since it simply tells them which number to dial in order to speak to a real person at any given organisation. They can't easily find the information elsewhere and I believe it satisfies search intent. Am I at risk for being flagged for duplicate / low quality content? Should I add more text simply to add 'unique' content to each page even though it adds no value to users? That doesn't seem right either! Looking forward to hear where you guys stand on this, Many thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nathandh80 -
Dealing with past events
Hi We have a website which lists both upcoming and past events. Currently everything is indexed by google, with no real issues (usually it finds the most up-to-date events) and we have deprioritised the past events in the sitemap. Do I need to go one step further and noindex events which are past or just leave it as-is? They dont really hold much value, but sometimes will have a number of incoming links and social media shares pointing to them. We want to keep the page active for visitors, just wondering about google (there's no real link between past events and future either, so difficult to 'point' to newer version of an event) We have approx 1M 'past' events and growing so its a big change. Also would you keep them in sitemap with lower priority, or just remove them? EDIT: Just seen a Matt Cutts post from 2014 which indicates than an 'unavailable_after' meta tag might be best?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benseb0 -
How to deal with number swaps for organic results?
Hi mozzers, We used to have a proxy URL for our paid search campaigns and we just transferred all of that into the main domain(that ranks organically). Since we were using phone numbers swapping for paid search, I am afraid that it will harm our organic local results as I am seeing phone number swapping. Can the bots distinguish a swap number and a real phone number or will it impact our local SEO results( because of an inconsistent phone number)? Thanks for letting me know!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0