Would you consider this to be thin content
-
I always struggle with these pages I have on my site going back and forth debating what I want to do with them. On one side Google was content, yet at the same time its all about user experience.
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/word-lists/words-that-start-with/letter/h/
I used to have all my words listed on one page which could have been well over 10,000. Now I pagination them as you can see. I debate writing a header of content for these pages, but honestly users just want the words. Get in, get what you need and get out. What is the recommendation on these pages. Should I write content? Should I not?
-
The test will be to see if google will index these pages, if they will rank high enough for anything to pull traffic, and if Google sees them as a Panda problem. I think these definition pages are risky. Go out and look at what the dictionary sites (that rank for anything) have done on their definition pages. There is a lot more content.
================================
On this page, Google sees a one sentence definition and one sentence that uses the word. There is also a lot of characters that Google will not understand.
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/dictionary/word/haboob/
I copied some of the definitions and searched for them in text on Google. The definitions that I checked were found verbatim on over 1000 websites.
The example sentences that use these pages are also not unique. They are found on other websites.
These pages are risky for another reason.
-
Keyword stuffed?
I am referring to the page below.
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/word-lists/words-that-start-with/letter/h/
It is nothing more than a big list of keywords. The links that take you to definition pages. That page is stuffed full of keywords.
the only other text on that page is the title.
That is the second problem with this page. if you run it through a spider simulator you will see that google might not be able to see those words. If you "view source" for those pages you will not see those words.
-
I don't consider the page to be thin, I consider it to be useful! It is worth checking what other people are doing on their list pages and seeing how you rank compared to them. If you are not being penalised it presumably isn't causing a problem.
-
Well good, I'm glad you've not gotten a manual action.
When you say feedback, do you mean user feedback or marketer/designer/developer feedback? If it were me, I'd pay more attention to user feedback. If it is what you said in your initial question that users are getting what they want (just the words, and they are clicking from the Letter H page to the HA, HAE, HAAF, etc. pages), then it would seem to me the page is valuable and useful. I wouldn't worry about Google's view of the page unless I started to see a dip in rankings, traffic, etc.
Speaking of feedback, have you surveyed your users to ask about alternative content for these pages? You could ask your users what other content they may want here to make the page more valuable or unique or authentic for those users during their visit. But I wouldn't put in words or content blocks just to try to make Google happy for fear of the page being "thin" because that could create new problems on its own.
-
Nope never a manual, just getting feedback
-
Can I get a little more info on your statements?
Keyword stuffed? The only thing you could be referring too is the links from each word to its definition, because the only other text on that page is the title.
Which page/word with the definition and sentence example was "thin"?
-
I would call the page that you linked to "keyword stuffed".
I would call the page with the definition and the example sentence to be thin.
Most of the dictionary sites that are able to persist in the SERPs have more content per page.
-
The "thin content" question can be tricky. Google's support article about this says that thin content is a page that doesn't provide users with "substantially unique or valuable content". Their support article about original content talks about the need for "authentic content".
Together, I take to mean you should err on the side of what is good for your users. Content is important, but what is really important is useful content. In you case, it sounds like you are giving visitors what they want - get in, get what you need, get out. That seems like there is value and authenticity there for your users. So long as you continue to see higher rankings, more/steady traffic from Google, then I wouldn't think you should worry.
As well, the other question to ask here if if you have received any manual actions about thin content in Search Console? I'm assuming not since you didn't mention that. But, just wanted to double to make sure you were checking for that.
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
-
Content above the Fold, or Below
Hi, I have an ecommerce site with several categories that I consider good landing pages. In order to get better search results I add content to these pages, usually above the fold, then after the content products are listed. Example:https://www.carburetor-parts.com/Carburetor-Kits_c_568.html I worry that customers get to the page and since they don't see the products above the fold, they move on. Should I be putting content in the footer instead of the header and if so how does that effect SEO? This has been bugging me for a long time. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | MikeCarbs
Mike0 -
Does using Yoast variables for meta content overwrite any pages that already have custom meta content?
The question is about the Yoast plugin for WP sites. Let's say I have a site with 200 pages and custom meta descriptions / title tags already in place for the top 30 pages. If I use the Yoast variable tool to complete meta content for the remaining pages (and make my Moz issue tracker look happier), will that only affect the pages without custom meta descriptions or will it overwrite even the pages with the custom meta content that I want? In this situation, I do want to keep the meta content that is already in place on select pages. Thanks! Zack
On-Page Optimization | | rootandbranch0 -
Should I change PDF content?
Hi everybody, My Website is ranking well for several keywords and long-tail keywords. However, all these visits are going directly to some .PDF guides that exist on our products and information on industry sectors the company is based around. I feel the PDF's are bad simply because they dont offer easy interaction with the rest of the website. I am considering making each PDF into a webpage but am not 100% sure of the pro's and cons of doing so. I will still need to the PDF's accessible for user to download but don't want my new webpages to get tagged as duplicate content. Is it possible to,
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
1 - change the PDF's so they send any link authority to the new webpage
2 - make google aware that I want the webpage not the PDF to be the "ranking" page What is the likely hood of destroying my rank for these keywords on the PDF by making these changes and then not being able to rank the webpage for the same keywords? It would be pointless if I just lost all the traffic lol.0 -
Duplicate content question
Hi I have a site that is run off one CMS system but has 3 different web addresses. One is a comic shop, one is a toy shop and one is a game shop. Now due to the nature of what we are selling some of the products we are selling on both or all 3 of the sites. I was wondering as to whether this would affect my ability to rank in google and if i would be penalised for any duplicate content? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | TheZenAgency0 -
Duplicate content, which seems not to be duplicate :S
After crawling I am used to getting a lot of duplicate content messages in Moz, which are High Priority. I do not know what to do with them, since I believe we tackled all the issues. Main point being the advise to put in a link rel=canonical. An example of a page that accordeing to the report has a duplicate. I do not see how. Can you help with that? http://www.beat-it.nl/4y6hctr24x7wdmr-ml350-p-ic-procaresvc.html duplicate sample http://www.beat-it.nl/modu-hp-a5800-acm-for-64-256-aps.html
On-Page Optimization | | Raymo0 -
What Should I Do With Low Quality Content?
As my site has definitely got hit by Panda, I am in the process of cleaning my website of low quality content. Needless to say, shitty articles are completed being removed but I think lots of this content is now of low quality because it is obsolete and dated. So what should I do with this content? Should I rewrite those articles as completely new posts and link from the old posts to the new ones? Or should I delete the old posts and do a 301 redirect to the new post? Or should I rewrite the content of these articles in place so I can keep the old URL and backlinks? One thing is that I've got a lot more followers than I used to so publishing a new post gets a lot more views, like and shares and whatnot from social networks.
On-Page Optimization | | sbrault741 -
Index Page Content
Mozers, I am of the believe and as a person who puts the utmost emphasis on the index page of any website I am trying to rank, especially with a new domain ... insuring content is relevant, structured, optimized and we have some link juice flowing in. I find once we get the index page ranked, Google's little bots then start to index and rank accordingly the rest of the website ... and we start producing results. We also develop websites (dare I say its where we expertise in) and unexpectantly the client has asked us to carry out SEO work additionally to their web development. Problem lies here, their index page, has absolutely no written content at all, just one large image with a logo (Fashion Website) ...Which I identify as a huge issue as per my explanation is paragraphs one or two. I am sure withe the many more qualified SEO experts and gurus within the SEOmoz community, you have also come across this issue So a few questions, if you don't mind adding advice. 1 - Am I putting too much emphasize on content within the index page, in terms of indexing and actually ranking ...yes I appreciate that terms within the website will be ranked against other pages other than the index page, but will it harm us for having no content at all within the index page 2 - If so, and yes is the answer to above, how do we handle it, we have spoke with the client and he is pretty adamant that he want the index page as is, he has been through out the whole website building process. As suggested, any advice would be really appreciated, its a difficult market to rank within a it is, and i can only see this index page making the task a lot more difficult Cheers John
On-Page Optimization | | Johnny4B0 -
Posting content from our books to our website
Hello, I am the newly appointed in-house seo person for a small business. The founders of our company have written several books, which we sell. But book sales are a small part of our business. We are considering posting to our website some or all of the content of the books. This content is directly relevant to the existing content of our website and would be available for free to all visitors. 1. Is it likely that the traffic and links to the new book pages would improve the search engine rankings of our existing pages? 2. We already have pdf versions of each book we could post, which are formatted nicely. Should we convert these to html to make them more friendly to search engines? 3. Of course, we would have to split each book into multiple web pages, perhaps one chapter per page. How much content could each new page optimally accommodate? 4. Would it be more valuable from an SEO perspective to post pieces of the books over time in a blog format? Thank you very much for your thoughts!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0