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
-
Each location has their own page, and each location page has their own departments listed with their own pages as well. Each department then has some content such as the NAP, an employee directory, and links to other resourceful pages on the website.
If this is making many pages for each location, then I would worry about them. However, if all of this information is on a single page then you might be fine. If I owned a company like this I would require each location to give me substantive content.
Also, if I "noindex" the pages to start, add some good content then "index" them, how long in your experience has it taken until you saw a considerable increase in traffic/see those pages indexed?
I republished two of my thin content pages last week. These were noindexed for about two years. They were upgraded from two or three sentences and one photo to nearly 1000 words and four or five photos. One appeared in the index about five days later and went straight to #4 for a moderately difficult single word query. That single word query is the name of a software product, the name of some type of "gold" in the minecraft video game and has a lot of competition from .gov and .edu. .
The second one was published about eight days ago and we have not seen it in the SERPs yet. This is an unusually long time for us to wait on a republished page for this site which has a DA of about 80.
The way I would approach it would be to crawl those pages manually in Search Console (RIP Webmaster Tools) once I updated the "index" tag.
I have never done this. I just republish the page.
-
Thanks Andy, I appreciate the response. This was a semi-large project with the main goal of capturing hyper-local leads. I guess once you throw locations into the mix it runs an even bigger chance of being hit due to popular practice of creating a page for every damn city in the country in hopes of ranking locally.
Fortunately we have real locations across the US but I don't want Google to think we're trying to dupe anyone.
Thanks again
Tom -
That's the answer I was expecting. The website I'm referencing has about 4,000 indexed pages, and those 285 may be enough to do some damage.
To give you an example (this mimics exactly what I'm doing), take a business with multiple locations. Each location has their own page, and each location page has their own departments listed with their own pages as well. Each department then has some content such as the NAP, an employee directory, and links to other resourceful pages on the website. Yeah or nay to that?
Also, if I "noindex" the pages to start, add some good content then "index" them, how long in your experience has it taken until you saw a considerable increase in traffic/see those pages indexed? I know that's a site-by-site, page-by-page kind of question but I'm curious to know.
The way I would approach it would be to crawl those pages manually in Search Console (RIP Webmaster Tools) once I updated the "index" tag.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
Tom -
Hi
I agree with the above, you run the risk of getting hit by Panda. If these pages are important to have live to help customers, then surely your priority should be to get good content on their to help your customers / potential customers. If they land on a low quality page with very little content, are they likely to stick around.
I wouldn't put any live until you have the content sorted. I would work out the priority and start there and once the content is good then put live.
There is probably a Panda update around the corner and you don't want to get hit with hit and then you are waiting for Google to release the next version to get out of it.
I wouldnt even run the risk of putting them live with noindex.
Unless of course as said above you have 100,000+ pages of amazing quality content then it probably wont affect you.
Thanks
Andy
-
In my opinion, publishing a lot of thin content pages will get you into trouble with the Panda algorithm. One of my sites had a lot of these types of pages and it was hit with a Panda problem. Most pages on the site were demoted in search. I noindexed those thin content pages and the site recovered in a few weeks.
Here is the code that I used... name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />
Although those pages had thin content, they were still valuable reference for my visitors. That is why I noindexed them instead of deleting them.
Those pages have been noindexed for about two years with no problems. Slowly, I am adding a good article to those pages to reduce their number. I worry that some day, Google might change their minds and hit sites that have lots of thin content pages that are noindexed.
I don't know how big your website is. But I am betting that 285 very very thin pages added to a website of a couple thousand pages will be a problem (that's about what I had when my site had a problem). However, if that many very very thin pages are added to a website with 100,000 pages you might get away with it.
Good luck
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
-
Can a duplicate page referencing the original page on another domain in another country using the 'canonical link' still get indexed locally?
Hi I wonder if anyone could help me on a canonical link query/indexing issue. I have given an overview, intended solution and question below. Any advice on this query will be much appreciated. Overview: I have a client who has a .com domain that includes blog content intended for the US market using the correct lang tags. The client also has a .co.uk site without a blog but looking at creating one. As the target keywords and content are relevant across both UK and US markets and not to duplicate work the client has asked would it be worthwhile centralising the blog or provide any other efficient blog site structure recommendations. Suggested solution: As the domain authority (DA) on the .com/.co.uk sites are in the 60+ it would risky moving domains/subdomain at this stage and would be a waste not to utilise the DAs that have built up on both sites. I have suggested they keep both sites and share the same content between them using a content curated WP plugin and using the 'canonical link' to reference the original source (US or UK) - so not to get duplicate content issues. My question: Let's say I'm a potential customer in the UK and i'm searching using a keyword phrase that the content that answers my query is on both the UK and US site although the US content is the original source.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonRayner
Will the US or UK version blog appear in UK SERPs? My gut is the UK blog will as Google will try and serve me the most appropriate version of the content and as I'm in the UK it will be this version, even though I have identified the US source using the canonical link?2 -
Best to Combine Listing URLs? Are 300 Listing Pages a "Thin Content" Risk?
We operate www.metro-manhattan.com, a commercial real estate website. There about 550 pages. About 300 pages are for individual listings. About 150 are for buildings. Most of the listings pages have 180-240 words. Would it be better from an SEO perspective to have multiple listings on a single page, say all Chelsea listings on the Chelsea neighborhood page? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by having separate URLs for each listing? Are we at risI for a thin cogent Google penalty? Would the same apply to building pages (about 150)? Sample Listing: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/364-madison-ave-office-lease-1802sf Sample Building: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/for-a-new-york-office-space-rental-consider-one-worldwide-plaza-825-eighth-avenue My concern is that the existing site architecture may result in some form of Google penalty. If we have to consolidate these pages what would be the best way of doing so? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Content Publishing Volume/Timing
I am working with a company that has a bi-monthly print magazine that has several years' worth of back issues. We're working on building a digital platform, and the majority of articles from the print mag - tips, how-tos, reviews, recipes, interviews, etc - will be published online. Much of the content is not date-sensitive except for the occasional news article. Some content is semi-date-sensitive, such as articles focusing on seasonality (e.g. winter activities vs. summer activities). My concern is whether, once we prepare to go live, we should ensure that ALL historical content is published at once, and if so, whether back-dates should be applied to each content piece (even if dating isn't relevant), or whether we should have a strategy in place in terms of creating a publishing schedule and releasing content over time - albeit content that is older but isn't necessarily time-sensitive (e.g. a drink recipe). Going forward, all newly-created content will be published around the print issue release. Are there pitfalls I should avoid in terms of pushing out so much back content at once?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewkissel0 -
Trailing Slashes for Magento CMS pages - 2 URLS - Duplicate content
Hello, Can anyone help me find a solution to Fixing and Creating Magento CMS pages to only use one URL and not two URLS? www.domain.com/testpage www.domain.com/testpage/ I found a previous article that applies to my issue, which is using htaccess to redirect request for pages in magento 301 redirect to slash URL from the non-slash URL. I dont understand the syntax fully in htaccess , but I used this code below. This code below fixed the CMS page redirection but caused issues on other pages, like all my categories and products with this error: "This webpage has a redirect loop ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS" Assuming you're running at domain root. Change to working directory if needed. RewriteBase / # www check If you're running in a subdirectory, then you'll need to add that in to the redirected url (http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory/$1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iamgreenminded
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Trailing slash check Don't fix direct file links RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ $1/ [L,R=301] Finally, forward everything to your front-controller (index.php) RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* index.php [QSA,L]0 -
How long takes to a page show up in Google results after removing noindex from a page?
Hi folks, A client of mine created a new page and used meta robots noindex to not show the page while they are not ready to launch it. The problem is that somehow Google "crawled" the page and now, after removing the meta robots noindex, the page does not show up in the results. We've tried to crawl it using Fetch as Googlebot, and then submit it using the button that appears. We've included the page in sitemap.xml and also used the old Google submit new page URL https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url Does anyone know how long will it take for Google to show the page AFTER removing meta robots noindex from the page? Any reliable references of the statement? I did not find any Google video/post about this. I know that in some days it will appear but I'd like to have a good reference for the future. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabioricotta-840380 -
Site less than 20 pages shows 1,400+ pages when crawled
Hello! I’m new to SEO, and have been soaking up as much as I can. I really love it, and feel like it could be a great fit for me – I love the challenge of figuring out the SEO puzzle, plus I have a copywriting/PR background, so I feel like that would be perfect for helping businesses get a great jump on their online competition. In fact, I was so excited about my newfound love of SEO that I offered to help a friend who owns a small business on his site. Once I started, though, I found myself hopelessly confused. The problem comes when I crawl the site. It was designed in Wordpress, and is really not very big (part of my goal in working with him was to help him get some great content added!) Even though there are only 11 pages – and 6 posts – for the entire site, when I use Screaming Frog to crawl it, it sees HUNDREDS of pages. It stops at 500, because that is the limit for their free version. In the campaign I started here at SEOmoz, and it says over 1,400 pages have been crawled…with something like 900 errors. Not good, right? So I've been trying to figure out the problem...when I look closer in Screaming Frog, I can see that some things are being repeated over and over. If I sort by the Title, the URLs look like they’re stuck in a loop somehow - one line will have /blog/category/postname…the next line will have /blog/category/category/postname…and the next line will have /blog/category/category/category/postname…and so on, with another /category/ added each time. So, with that, I have two questions Does anyone know what the problem is, and how to fix it? Do professional SEO people troubleshoot this kind of stuff all of the time? Is this the best place to get answers to questions like that? And if not, where is? Thanks so much in advance for your help! I’ve enjoyed reading all of the posts that are available here so far, it seems like a really excellent and helpful community...I'm looking forward to the day when I can actually answer the questions!! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K.Walters0 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
Which page to target? Home or /landing-page
I have optimized my home page for the keyword "computer repairs" would I be better of targeting my links at this page or an additional page (which already exists) called /repairs it's possible to rename & 301 this page to /computer-repairs The only advantage I can see from targeting /computer-repairs is that the keywords are in the target URL.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0