How to expand thin content to provide sufficient value and context?

thin-content page

The issue

A page with very little text gives search engines little to rank it for, and visitors little reason to stay. It is hard to tell apart from a placeholder, a tag archive or a navigation page, even when it was meant to answer something.

The cause is usually a template filled with too little: a product with no description, a category with only a list, a location page that changes one word. Word count doesn’t decide whether a page is thin, but a very low one is a reliable sign to look.

Scope

Each page is counted on its own. Probeo counts the words in the page’s body text, leaving out scripts, styles and <noscript> content. Pages built from one template tend to be thin together, so the fix usually belongs in the template.

How to check you have it

In probeo: the page reports Thin content: only N words on page (recommended >= 150). It is a warning, not a verdict: a short page that fully answers a narrow question is fine.
By hand: read the page as a visitor who arrived from search. Ask whether it answers what its title promises without sending you elsewhere.
Across templates: compare several pages built from the same template. If they differ by a name or a number, the template is producing thin pages.

The fix

Add the text the page needs to do what its title says, or stop it being indexed if it has nothing to say.

Write for the reader’s question, not a word count: what this product is and who it suits, what this category holds and how to choose within it. For generated pages, give the template page-specific fields to fill. Navigation, filter and utility pages that will never carry substance are better marked noindex.

Done when: each page answers its own purpose in its own words, or is out of the index, and the check above comes back clean.

Do not

Do not add text just to pass a word count.
Do not reuse another page’s text with minor rewording.
Do not pad the page with repetitive or off-topic text.
Do not assume images or video replace the text.

FAQ

What word count qualifies as thin content?

Search engines don’t publish one. Probeo flags pages under 150 words as a prompt to review them. A 120-word page can be complete, and an 800-word page can still say nothing.

Does adding more text always improve ranking?

No. Text that doesn’t serve the page’s purpose makes it harder to read and adds nothing a search engine can use.

Should every page on the site have extensive content?

No. Structural and navigation pages aren’t meant to be resources. If a page has no substance to offer, consider whether it should be indexed at all.

Can images or videos compensate for thin text content?

Not on their own. Search engines read text to understand what a page covers. A page that is mostly visual still needs text saying what it shows and why it matters.

How does thin content affect the rest of the site?

Each thin page is one more page a search engine crawls and finds little in. Search engines don’t publish a site-wide threshold, so treat a large number of thin pages as a template problem and fix it there.

What if the page is part of a large set of similar pages?

Give each one enough unique text to justify its existence. Where that isn’t possible, consolidate them into fewer pages, or mark the weaker ones noindex.

Which product detects this

Probeo checks this on every page of your site as part of Site Clarity. This page explains one instance; the product tells you every page that has it.