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
-
Question about creating content pages for keywords
Good morning, We are trying to rank our India based company which provides the following services
On-Page Optimization | | harshal.khatavkar
Engineering Design Services
Architectural Design Services
MEP Design Services Our target audiences are in the US and UK. Offcource, we are targetting above services keywords on most of our main pages and created dedicated services pages too. But lately, we found out that we are ranking well for keywords like Outsourcing Engineering Design Services, Outsourcing Architectural Design Services, etc... which are actually very very good keywords in terms of closing the leads/inquiries as people are actually looking out for outsourcing but the search count for those keywords is low. (though we closed 2 inquiries from those keywords). These pages we created in past just to increase the content of the website. I really want to give it a try to target those keywords by creating more pages, blog posts, backlinks, etc... My question is if we create more and more pages around those keywords then will it affect the rankings of the pages which are already ranking for those keywords or will the new pages compete against those pages or the new pages will help to boost current pages? We can write good content and blog posts on the outsourcing topic but not sure if we should create new pages or increase the length of the existing pages. Can you guys please help with some directions on this as I really don't want to take the wrong route. Look forward! Regards0 -
Many have stolen our content. Rewrite vs. DMCA content removal?
Hello, We own a medical tourism website and many other sites have stolen (copied and pasted) our content. Our content is more than 2 years old, so we thought we could rewrite the content - but Which is a more wiser decision from you guys' experience? Archive our current content at a different URL and upload a fresh content in the current URL Claim our originality to Google and ask the stolen sites to remove our content. Thank you and appreciate your time.
On-Page Optimization | | joony0 -
Photo Gallery with Duplicate Content and Titles
I have a photo Gallery that is coming up as a lot of Duplicate Titles and Page Content and fixing each photo just isn't possible right now. Should I just block the search engines from indexing them to resolve the errors?
On-Page Optimization | | NeilBelliveau0 -
Index.php getting Duplicate page content.
I am quite new to SEO and have now got my first results. I am getting all my index.php pages returned as Duplicate page content. ie: blue-widgets/index.php
On-Page Optimization | | ivoryred
blue-widgets/ green-widgets/large/index.php
green-widgets/large/ How do solve this issue?0 -
WordPress - duplicate content
I'm using WordPress for my website. However, whenever I use the post section for news, I get a report back from SEOmoz saying that there's duplicate content. What it does is it posts them in the Category and Archive section. Does anyone know if Google sees this as duplicate content and if so how to stop it? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | AAttias0 -
Tags creating duplicated content issue?
Hello i believe a lot of us use tags in our blogs as a way to categorize content and make it easy searchable but this usually (at lease in my case) cause duplicate content creation. For example, if one article has 2 tags like "SEO" & "Marketing", then this article will be visible and listed in 2 urls inside the blog like this domain.com/blog/seo and domain.com/blog/marketing In case of a blog with 300+ posts and dozens of different tags this is creating a huge issue. My question is 1. Is this really bad? 2. If yes how to fix it without removing tags?
On-Page Optimization | | Lakiscy0 -
Content for ecommerce site
How important on site/page contents are for ecommerce site. Keeping in mind the page layout. Its not that important to have page copy/content at all for ecommerce sites If yes, does position of content is an important factor? if putting page copy/content in upper fold of a page then the most important thing which is product itself will have less exposure if putting near the footer of the page, does that seem like doing just for the sake of SEs and ranking. How important internal linking form that content would be compare to left panel links or links at the header of a website Thanks Rick
On-Page Optimization | | RickGa0 -
Percentage of duplicate content allowable
Can you have ANY duplicate content on a page or will the page get penalized by Google? For example if you used a paragraph of Wikipedia content for a definition/description of a medical term, but wrapped it in unique content is that OK or will that land you in the Google / Panda doghouse? If some level of duplicate content is allowable, is there a general rule of thumb ratio unique-to-duplicate content? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | sportstvjobs0