Would you consider this to be thin content
-
I always struggle with these pages I have on my site going back and forth debating what I want to do with them. On one side Google was content, yet at the same time its all about user experience.
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/word-lists/words-that-start-with/letter/h/
I used to have all my words listed on one page which could have been well over 10,000. Now I pagination them as you can see. I debate writing a header of content for these pages, but honestly users just want the words. Get in, get what you need and get out. What is the recommendation on these pages. Should I write content? Should I not?
-
The test will be to see if google will index these pages, if they will rank high enough for anything to pull traffic, and if Google sees them as a Panda problem. I think these definition pages are risky. Go out and look at what the dictionary sites (that rank for anything) have done on their definition pages. There is a lot more content.
================================
On this page, Google sees a one sentence definition and one sentence that uses the word. There is also a lot of characters that Google will not understand.
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/dictionary/word/haboob/
I copied some of the definitions and searched for them in text on Google. The definitions that I checked were found verbatim on over 1000 websites.
The example sentences that use these pages are also not unique. They are found on other websites.
These pages are risky for another reason.
-
Keyword stuffed?
I am referring to the page below.
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/word-lists/words-that-start-with/letter/h/
It is nothing more than a big list of keywords. The links that take you to definition pages. That page is stuffed full of keywords.
the only other text on that page is the title.
That is the second problem with this page. if you run it through a spider simulator you will see that google might not be able to see those words. If you "view source" for those pages you will not see those words.
-
I don't consider the page to be thin, I consider it to be useful! It is worth checking what other people are doing on their list pages and seeing how you rank compared to them. If you are not being penalised it presumably isn't causing a problem.
-
Well good, I'm glad you've not gotten a manual action.
When you say feedback, do you mean user feedback or marketer/designer/developer feedback? If it were me, I'd pay more attention to user feedback. If it is what you said in your initial question that users are getting what they want (just the words, and they are clicking from the Letter H page to the HA, HAE, HAAF, etc. pages), then it would seem to me the page is valuable and useful. I wouldn't worry about Google's view of the page unless I started to see a dip in rankings, traffic, etc.
Speaking of feedback, have you surveyed your users to ask about alternative content for these pages? You could ask your users what other content they may want here to make the page more valuable or unique or authentic for those users during their visit. But I wouldn't put in words or content blocks just to try to make Google happy for fear of the page being "thin" because that could create new problems on its own.
-
Nope never a manual, just getting feedback
-
Can I get a little more info on your statements?
Keyword stuffed? The only thing you could be referring too is the links from each word to its definition, because the only other text on that page is the title.
Which page/word with the definition and sentence example was "thin"?
-
I would call the page that you linked to "keyword stuffed".
I would call the page with the definition and the example sentence to be thin.
Most of the dictionary sites that are able to persist in the SERPs have more content per page.
-
The "thin content" question can be tricky. Google's support article about this says that thin content is a page that doesn't provide users with "substantially unique or valuable content". Their support article about original content talks about the need for "authentic content".
Together, I take to mean you should err on the side of what is good for your users. Content is important, but what is really important is useful content. In you case, it sounds like you are giving visitors what they want - get in, get what you need, get out. That seems like there is value and authenticity there for your users. So long as you continue to see higher rankings, more/steady traffic from Google, then I wouldn't think you should worry.
As well, the other question to ask here if if you have received any manual actions about thin content in Search Console? I'm assuming not since you didn't mention that. But, just wanted to double to make sure you were checking for that.
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
-
Duplicate Page Content - default.html
I am showing a duplicate content error in moz. I have site.com and site.com/default.html How can I fix that? Should I use a canonical tag? If so, how would i do that?
On-Page Optimization | | bhsiao0 -
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery0 -
Impact of rogue keyword in content
I have a page that is optimised - title, URL, content etc for the chosen keywords. However, within the content are some batches of bullet point text that has repeated text throughout. So for example I have 5 instances of my chosen keyword within the content and 24 instances of the two word text within the bullet points. Does this kind of scenario have any impact on ranking?
On-Page Optimization | | MickEdwards0 -
E-commerce site product descriptions and duplicate content
Hi everyone. I'm developing an e-commerce site using Prestashop and concerned about the issue of duplicate content among product descriptions. My main concerns are: If there are 500 or more products and those product descriptions are obtained from a manufacturer or supplier's website hence running into external duplicate content issues. Internal duplicate content is also an issue, if there are multiple similar products and each product has the same description across several pages. What would be the best approach to eliminate the possibility of incurring a duplicate content penalty due to similar product descriptions? I've already considered the suggestion of noindex-ing the complete range of products to help protect from duplicate content penalties and having unique articles written in the site blog discussing products instead linking to certain products on the site. Another consideration I had was noindex-ing all product pages except pages for featured products in the store and rewriting descriptions for a set amount of those featured products regularly (this will still have the problem of internal duplicate content across pages if similar product descriptions are rewritten). The product range is intended to be very large so I'm really seeking an alternative solution from the insane task of rewriting many product descriptions. Any suggestions to make SEO work efficient are very much welcome and appreciated. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | valuepets0 -
Indexed iframed content behind login
Hi, I have a question regarding iframed content. I would like to get my non cms content which is served via an iframe solution (from the same domain) behind a anonymous or personal login indexed by search engines. How can we make this work? I've looked at the following solutions: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.htmlhttp://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/l9n8oGLQRkUBut I would like the content to be crawlable deeper than the just one page (if this is possible using the iframe solution).We could also setup different new pages in our CMS with the same content...Any suggestions?Thanks!Arnout
On-Page Optimization | | hellemans0 -
Duplicate Content- Best Practise Usage of the canonical url
Canonical urls stop self competition - from duplicate content. So instead of a 2 pages with a rank of 5 out of 10, it is one page with a rank of 7 out of 10.
On-Page Optimization | | WMA
However what disadvantages come from using canonical urls. For example am I excluding some products like green widet, blue widget. I have a customer with 2 e-commerce websites(selling different manufacturers of a type jewellery). Both websites have massive duplicate content issues.
It is a hosted CMS system with very little SEO functionality, no plugins etc. The crawling report- comes back with 1000 of pages that are duplicates. It seems that almost every page on the website has a duplicate partner or more. The problem starts in that they have 2 categorys for each product type, instead of one category for each product type.
A wholesale category and a small pack category. So I have considered using a canonical url or de-optimizing the small pack category as I believe it receives less traffic than the whole category. On the original website I tried de- optimizing one of the pages that gets less traffic. I did this by changing the order of the meta title(keyword at the back, not front- by using small to start of with). I also removed content from the page. This helped a bit. Or I was thinking about just using a canonical url on the page that gets less traffic.
However what are the implications of this? What happens if some one searches for "small packs" of the product- will this no longer be indexed as a page. The next problem I have is the other 1000s of pages that are showing as duplicates. These are all the different products within the categories. The CMS does not have a front office that allows for canonical urls to be inserted. Instead it would have to be done going into the html of the pages. This would take ages. Another issue is that these product pages are not actually duplicate, but I think it is because they have such little content- that the rodger(seo moz crawler, and probably googles one too) cant tell the difference.
Also even if I did use the canonical url - what happened if people searched for the product by attributes(the variations of each product type)- like blue widget, black widget, brown widget. Would these all be excluded from Googles index.
On the one hand I want to get rid of the duplicate content, but I also want to have these pages included in the search. Perhaps I am taking too idealistic approach- trying to optimize a website for too many keywords. Should I just focus on the category keywords, and forget about product variations. Perhaps I look into Google Analytics, to determine the top landing pages, and which ones should be applied with a canonical. Also this website(hosted CMS) seems to have more duplicate content issues than I have seen with other e-commerce sites that I have applied SEO MOZ to On final related question. The first website has 2 landing pages- I think this is a techical issue. For example www.test.com and www.test.com/index. I realise I should use a canonical url on the page that gets less traffic. How do I determine this? (or should I just use the SEO MOZ Page rank tool?)0 -
Creating Duplicate Content on Shopping Sites
I have a client with an eCommerce site that is interested in adding their products to shopping sites. If we use the same information that is on the site currently, will we run into duplicate content issues when those same products & descriptions are published on shopping sites? Is it best practice to rewrite the product title and descriptions for shopping sites to avoid duplicate content issues?
On-Page Optimization | | mj7750 -
Duplicate content Issue
I'm getting a report of duplicate title and content on: http://www.website.com/ http://www.website.com/index.php Of course, they're the same pages but does this need to be corrected somehow. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | dbaxa-2613380