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
-
After adding a ssl certificate to my site I encountered problems with duplicate pages and page titles
Hey everyone! After adding a ssl certificate to my site it seems that every page on my site has duplicated it's self. I think that is because it has combined the www.domainname.com and domainname.com. I would really hate to add a rel canonical to every page to solve this issue. I am sure there is another way but I am not sure how to do it. Has anyone else ran into this problem and if so how did you solve it? Thanks and any and all ideas are very appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LovingatYourBest0 -
Incorrect cached page indexing in Google while correct page indexes intermittently
Hi, we are a South African insurance company. We have a page http://www.miway.co.za/midrivestyle which has a 301 redirect to http://www.miway.co.za/car-insurance. Problem is that the former page is ranking in the index rather than the latter. The latter page does index occasionally in the same position, but rarely. This is primarily for search phrases like "car insurance" and "car insurance quotes". The ranking was knocked down the index with Penquin 2.0. It was not ranking at all but we have managed to recover to 12/13. This abnormally has only been occurring since the recovery. The correct page does index for other search terms like "insurance for car". Your help would be appreciated, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | miway0 -
All Thin Content removed and duplicate content replaced. But still no success?
Good morning, Over the last three months i have gone about replacing and removing all the duplicate content (1000+ page) from our site top4office.co.uk. Now it been just under 2 months since we made all the changes and we still are not showing any improvements in the SERPS. Can anyone tell me why we aren't making any progress or spot something we are not doing correctly? Another problem is that although we have removed 3000+ pages using the removal tool searching site:top4office.co.uk still shows 2800 pages indexed (before there was 3500). Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
How much content on PDF download page
Hello, This is about content for an ecommerce site. We have an article page that we also created a PDF out of. We have an HTML page that doesn't have anything commercial on it that is the download page for the PDF page. How much of the article do you recommend we put on the non-commercial HTML download page? Should we put most of the article on there? We're trying to get people to link to the HTML Download page, not the PDF.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Duplicate content on the same page--is this an issue?
We are transitioning to responsive design and some of our pages will not scale properly, so we were thinking of adding the same content twice to the same URL (one would be simple text -- for mobile and the other would include the images, etc for the desktop version), and content would change based on size of the screen. I'm not looking for another technical solution (I know google specifies that you can dynamically serve different content based on user agent)--I am wondering if any one knows if having the same exact content appear twice on the same URL will cause a problem with SEO (any historical tests or experience would be great). Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Copying my Facebook content to website considered duplicate content?
I write career advice on Facebook on a daily basis. On my homepage users can see the most recent 4-5 feeds (using FB social media plugin). I am thinking to create a page on my website where visitors can see all my previous FB feeds. Would this be considered duplicate content if I copy paste the info, but if I use a Facebook social media plugin then it is not considered duplicate content? I am working on increasing content on my website and feel incorporating FB feeds would make sense. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
How quickly should I publish a massive backlog of content?
Hello experts! I have a query about publishing a backlog of content. Run a quote requesting website for design. When we first built it, I was not well versed in SEO. However today I know a whole lot more, thanks to SEOmoz mostly. For two years customers have been requesting quotes which are then given to registered designers. The brief provided by the customers is locked away behind a private log in area for designers. There is a ton of unique content there that can't be indexed by Google. Here is my idea: 1. Register a new domain, something like, designjobs.com.au 2. Use Wordpress to publish the briefs submitted by clients. 3. Link each brief to our main website for SEO benefits. However we have over 1000 quote requests dating back over two years. If I published this all at once would Google treat is as suspicious? If so, should I alter the dates and have them published one at a time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | designquotes0 -
Linking to local pages on main page - keyword self-cannibalization issue?
Hi guys, Our website has this landing page: www.example.com/service1/ Is this considered keyword self-cannibalization if on the above page we link to local pages such as: www.example.com/service1-in-chicago/ www.example.com/service1-in-newyork/ www.example.com/service1-in-texas/ Many thanks David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0