Thin Content

What Is Thin Content?

Thin content refers to webpages with little or no value to users, often lacking depth, originality, or relevance. Examples include duplicate pages, low-quality affiliate content, and automatically generated text.

Google penalizes thin content as it fails to meet quality standards and user expectations.

The goal of any piece of content should be to provide value and help move the reader forward.

Most people who produce thin content are just trying to rank in the Google search results and not actually help their readers.

Here’s why:

Google released the Panda algorithm update in 2011. This update aimed to actively demote websites with spammy and thin content on their sites.

As a result, websites needed to improve the quality of their content and provide a better user experience.

Google still uses these same principles today with their EEAT system.

Examples Of Thin Content

There are many different types of thin content.

Here is a list of the top 6 examples of thin content.

1. Low-Quality Written Content

Low-quality content is just content that is written to rank. It lacks depth of information, often contains poor spelling/grammar and offers no real value.

Having lots of low-quality content on your website can affect the rankability of all your site’s pages.

2. Doorway Pages

A doorway page is a web page designed to rank for a target keyword and immediately redirect to another page on the site.

Most doorway pages are created in bulk and target long-tail keywords that are easier to rank for. Using doorway pages on your site is considered highly unethical and spammy.

It can result in a manual action or a Google penalty for your site.

3. Auto-Generated Content

Auto-generated content is created using algorithms, AI or bots without any human input.

The result is often low-quality content that offers no new or unique insights. Even AI-written content that reads well can be considered thin.

This is because AI can only re-write what has already been published on the internet. It offers no new experience or insights.

4. Duplicate Content

Scraping and copying another website’s content is the fastest way to a Google penalty and getting kicked out of the SERPs altogether.

Duplicate content offers no value at all because you simply copy and paste it from another website.

Google’s algorithm is very good at catching duplicate content.

5. Thin Affiliate Pages

Content created just to sell affiliate products is considered thin content.

Google is not against affiliate links completely…

But your affiliate content should be completely unique, driven by your own real experience and offer unique insights into the product you have written about.

6. Ad-Heavy Pages

Ad-heavy pages exist to show the user as many ads as possible.

This will lead to a poor user experience and Google will demote your rankings in the search results. Ad-heavy pages are easily detectable by all search engines.