Thin Content

In this quick introduction to thin content, you will learn:

• What is thin content?
• Thin content examples?
• Why do low-effort pages don’t rank?
• How to spot thin content pages?
• How to fix thin content issues?

Let’s jump into this!

What is Thin Content?

Thin content is content or web page that has no value for the user.

According to Google, these are the most common thin content examples:

• Doorway pages
• Low-quality affiliate pages
• Pages with little content
• Non-original pages (duplicate content)
• Scraped pages (copied from other websites)

Many confuse thin content with “not enough content”. 

That’s not actually true, keyword-stuffed pages with thousands of words can also be considered thin.

As long as they are not actually valuable for the visitors - they are thin content pages.

Thin Content Doesn’t Solve The Problem

Before diving into how we can fix thin content problems on your Webflow website, let’s fully understand what thin content is.

Let’s start by looking at an example.

Thin Content Example 

Let’s say you typed in “Webflow SEO guide”.

Search engines have to pick the best results that will solve your problem.

And that problem is your search intent. Your search intent is the reason why you typed those keywords in.

And your reason was: you wanted to learn about steps you should take in Webflow that will make your website optimized for search engines. 

That’s your intention behind the keywords you used.

Imagine clicking on the first link and seeing a page with one heading and 30 words on it. Would you be satisfied with this result? Did it solve your problem?

Search engines get billions of searches every day. They have enough data to be good at knowing that hidden intent you have when you are searching for something.

And they can tell when your page is not good enough to match that intent. After all, you would want to get only the best results when you are searching for something, right?

That’s why Search Engines can tell when your web page is thin. 

How to Tell if Your Web Page is Thin?

The word “thin” is a great way to describe the quality of any given page. It’s not bad. It’s not wrong. It’s thin. 

To rank our web page in position one we usually have to do the opposite.

That means, we need to:

• Know keywords and search intents for this page (our goals)
• Know what types of pages and content already ranks for a particular term (competition)
• Know what problems users have and when they need this page (user goals)

After considering all of that - we have to make the best solution for the user, put it all together on one page, and even get recognition from other websites.

To sum up…

Thin Content Refers to Low Effort Pages

Everyone wants to get tons of organic traffic to their website. However, not everyone is willing to invest the time and effort to create the best website out there.

That’s why Google coined the term thin content. It usually means that:

• Pages are automatically generated
• Pages are too similar to other pages
• Pages do not solve a problem for users

That last one is the most important one. Regardless of how pages were created, it has to be the best solution online.

Black Hat Thin Content Tactics

Black hat content is something that you should avoid at all costs.

This includes:

• Autogenerated content on your site
• Scraped other sites and published the same content on yours
• Made low-effort affiliate marketing pages
• Made doorway pages with no or minimal content

These are techniques that you should never use on your website. Even if you might rank temporarily, your site will get penalized after some time.

So if you have some content like that on your site, go ahead and fix it. 

Thin Content in Webflow

With that out of the way, if your Webflow website has been planned only by a design team it’s not uncommon to have some thin content issues.

Especially if you haven’t had a content strategist, copywriter, or SEO on board during website sitemap planning phases. 

To know if you have or do not have thin content issues, just ask yourself - am I ranking for keywords I want to be ranking for? 

If you don’t even show up on pages 3-5 on Google for those keywords after 6-12 months, chances are you do have thin content issues.

There is an off chance that those keywords are very very competitive.

But if none of your pages are ranking even this low based on Search Console data then it might be a thin content problem.

Lean Design? CRO Marketing?

Lean design loves as few words as possible. Google loves all the right words in all the right places.

Marketers love headings that convert. Google loves headings that are easy to understand for first-time visitors.

That’s why if an SEO expert, copywriter, or content strategist never worked on your Webflow website, chances are… All of your content is thin. Or at least most of your content.

How to Find Thin Content Pages?

Type in keywords you want to rank for into Google. Open all results on pages one and two in different tabs. 

Look at your page and compare it to those that are already ranking:

• Is the word count the same? 
• Are all headings similar? 
• Is the user interface similar (page type and content format)? 
• Are there similar amounts of internal or external links?
• Do they have videos? How many images do they have?

If the difference is massive for at least one of these questions, you know that your content is thin.

Meaning you want to rank for something, but you haven’t put enough effort into it.

How to Fix Thin Content Pages?

Do the hard work.

Thin content pages usually happen because of some shortcuts that have been taken by the team. Regardless of whether or not those shortcuts were intentional or not.

To fix thin content pages, do the hard work you skipped earlier.

There are a few things you can do with pages that have thin content on your website:

• Delete the page if it’s not important
• Expand content on the page
• Combine different pages into one (redirect or set canonicals)
• Rewrite or remake the whole page completely

Quick Recap!

Thin content is a term we use to describe pages that don’t solve the problem and have little to none actual value to users.

Thin content issues usually occur because of low effort put into creating content, website structure and value for visitors.

To fix thin content issues, especially if you have plenty of thin pages…

You will need to do the hard strategic and execution work that was skipped before. 

If you really care about your user, their search intent behind their questions or problems, and if you solve it for them… 

You will be most of the way there to having no thin content on your website!