Are online tools considered thin content?

[ConvertTown]

My website has a number of simple converters.

For example, this one converts spaces to commas
https://convert.town/replace-spaces-with-commas

Now, obviously there are loads of different variations I could create of this:
Replace spaces with semicolons
Replace semicolons with tabs
Replace fullstops with commas

Similarly with files:
JSON to XML
XML to PDF
JPG to PNG
JPG to TIF
JPG to PDF
(and thousands more)

If somoene types one of those into Google, they will be happy because they can immediately use the tool they were hunting for.

It is obvious what these pages do so I do not want to clutter the page up with unnecessary content.

However, would these be considered doorway pages or thin content or would it be acceptable (from an SEO perspective) to generate 1000s of pages based on all the permutations?

[ConvertTown]

Ah - sorry for my misunderstanding.  So you are leaning towards combining the pages.

So unit-conversion.info has a combined page: http://www.unit-conversion.info/metric.html

When I search for "convert from micro to deci", they appear as number 8.  If I click on their page, it defaults to base and mega, so I then have to change the dropdowns.

The number 1 result for that search is this page https://www.unitconverters.net/prefixes/micro-to-deci.htm - it has Micro and Deci preselected.

unit-conversion.info only has 460 but Unitconverters.net has 50,000 pages indexed by Google.  Despite the "thin content", they still appear number 1 (admittedly, this may be due to other factors).

As far as user experience goes, I would prefer to land on unitconverters.net because I have less things to click.

I guess the art is in finding the sweet spot in being able to give a search result with context without spinning out too much thin content.

Thanks again for your detailed response!

[paupastorlopez]

Hi again,

sorry if I have not expressed myself very well.

In my opinion, you would have only 1 page for each of those tools (with all the conversion options), and along the text of that page (+ title & meta description), there would be optimized the generic keywords like "replace character tool", "replace characters online"... and the conversion specific ones like "replace space with columns", without abusing to avoid keyword stuffing / spam.

The same for the Convert Image Tool, just one page, like this people did: unit-conversion.info with the conversion text tool and all the others.

More pages than that would surely create thin content and would divide the authority between all that pages instead of having all that authory in 1 quality page that optimizes along text and metas the most searched of the conversion options of each tool.

In any case, if you create additional pages for the most commonly searched-for variants (just a few), that could be acceptable as you said.

Greetings!

[ConvertTown]

Yes I was thinking along the same lines - if I create a page for commonly searched-for variants, then that will be an acceptable "thin page".

OK, so if I understand correctly, you would suggest having one generic "replace text" page.  The phrase variants - "replace character tool", "replace characters online", "replace text tool", should appear throughout that same page (not on separate pages).

The following SEPARATE pages would have the find / replace textboxes of the generic converter prefilled (because they are commonly searched for):

• Replace spaces with columns
• Replace spaces with semicolons
• Replace semicolons with spaces
• Replace and with &
  ...and all other common but relevant search phrases

But you would NOT create a separate page for:

• Replace question mark with space
• Replace the letter t with the letter b

Does that sound right to you?

Then for the Convert Image tool, wouldn't it be best (in a similar fashion) to have one generic tool but then the common searches prefilled on separate pages:

• Convert image to image
• Convert Image to GIF
• Convert PNG to JPG
• Convert PNG to GIF
  (and perhaps 100 others)

Each of these tools are different in functionality and will be more helpful to the user if they are prefilled with what they are looking for?

[ConvertTown]

So I guess that is actually my argument - that each tool deserves its own page (if it is something commonly searched for).  The user experience is not as good if they search for "convert spaces to semicolons", then land on a page where they have to also enter a space and a semicolon before they get what they want.  If these are prefilled, surely the user would prefer that.  Will Google realise that users prefer that though?  That is the big question.

OK - if I don't fill the page with spam, then it won't be considered a gateway page.

Thank you for your response.

[paupastorlopez]

Hi

It's a difficult question.

By one side, it would be interesting for the searcher to have directly access to the tool with the exact function they are looking for.

By the other, many functions are very similar and they will surely have very similar content that doesn't provide new interesting information (thin content).

I think you should go for the point between this sides. I mean, you can create many different tools, but tools that group all similar functions.

For example:

Replace Character Tool (you can replace with this any character or text by any other). Here you have an example of this tool: http://www.unit-conversion.info/texttools/replace-text/. In this tool you can moderately optimize all the keywords related to the different functions, by mentioning them on the text, h1-h2-h3, or in the Title / Meta Description. Don't try to optimize all different variants because there are too much. Go for the most searched ones (use Google Keyword Planner or a similar tool to identify them). You should also optimize the variants of "replace character tool" like "replace characters online" or "replace text tool", (important to also use "free" if the tools are free)

The same for image conversion with Convert Image Tool ("online picture conversion" + "free convert img tool"... + most popular img format conversion like "png to jpg conversion tool"), all in the same page.

Hope that helps!

[Corbec888]

Hi there,

My personal recommendation here, if possible, would be to compile all of the tools into one easy to use page. So all of the file converting permutations would be under one page and all of the 'replace' tools will be under another page.

Not only would this be better user experience but also you wouldn't clog up your site with thin pages from the multiple permutations of the pages.

You could of course argue that each tool deserves its own page because technically they each do different things.

What would make any one of these pages into a gateway page is if you bulked them out with a large amount of content that was specifically designed for search engines.

I hope this helps to answer your question