Thin Content And How to Deal With it For Good!

In this article on AllDigiTrends, you’re going to learn what thin content is and how it can hurt, sometimes destroy even your WordPress site.

If you want to rank your site in Google today, you better keep reading…

What is Duplicate Content Exactly- A Simple Definition

Duplicate content is all content (so not just text-based) that is identical or near-identical to other content on the web.

In broader terms duplicate content is also content that provides little to no added value to the user and the web as a whole.

Content duplication is bad for the web because it clutters it so much, but it’s bad for the webmaster too and here’s how it can hurt you.

4 Ways Duplicate Content Hurts Your Organic Performance in Google

#1- Crawl Budget Gets Wasted

Crawl budget is a term that describes how many times per month Google is willing to crawl your property.

Crawl budgets are a necessity because Google doesn’t have infinite time and resources so they have to prioritize what they crawl and when.

What does crawl budget have to do with duplicate content?

If you have too much on-site content duplication, Google might end up crawling those useless pages while missing to crawl your money pages.

And you know how it goes, no crawling=no indexing= no ranking

And even though there are ways to make better use of a crawl budget your site has, it’s best not to put anything to chance.

Suggested resource: Crawl Budget for SEO- The Ultimate Reference Guide

#2- Ranking Signals Consolidation

If you have two identical copies of the same page on the web, for example, one with an https protocol and one with the Http protocol (because you failed to redirect HTTP to https) then when people find that page they could find either of the two.

And if they decide to link to it they could link to either of the two.

And this creates a problem because backlinks are a precious commodity on the market today, and when you do get them you want them to flow to the page you intended to rank.

So this is a case of link equity dilution and in that case, both pages will struggle to rank for other than squat.

#3- Duplicate Content Dilutes PR

That subheadline is slightly misleading.

I should’ve said, “indexed duplicate content dilutes PR”.

It’s because the total authority of your site, what Moz refers to as DA, is divided across all pages indexed in Google.

So any link juice that ends up on a duplicate page is wasted because those can never rank for anything, no matter the link power they possess.

#4- Easier Site Management for You

This isn’t a direct SEO benefit, but it sure is an indirect one.

By having fewer pages in the index you have fewer pages to get bogged down with and you can dedicate more time on what moves the needle the most for your business.

Duplicate Content Examples And How to Deal With Them

#1- Be Careful With WordPress Taxonomies

WordPress taxonomies are tags and category pages. They’re a way for you to thematically interconnect your content across the site.

Categories on a broader level and tags on the narrower level.

It’s a great system and properly used can even boost your SEO.

But the problem is that it is almost never properly used and the taxonomies become a weight that pulls your site down big time.

Categories and tags are duplicate content, clear and simple. They are snippets of text extracted from your articles and accompanied by featured images which are also duplicated from your posts.

For example, the Wealthy Affiliate category, where I keep my money page, (Wealthy Affiliate Review https://nikolaroza.com/wealthy-affiliate-review-scam-or-worth-it/) is indexed because I believe it boosts my site’s relevance for the topic. 

But sometimes I doubt if it’s not hurting my performance in the SERPS…

And I supposedly know what I’m doing with taxonomies.

There’s nothing unique about taxonomies and if we were being cheeky we could say categories and tags are “unique” because they are like a roundup of duplicate content from your posts, and this is what makes them unique.

But let’s not be cheeky; let’s be smart!

Because Google ain‘t got a sense of humor.

How to beat the problem?

Deindex your tags and categories.

#2- Remove Image Attachments

These are notorious for ruining unsuspecting websites.

In 2019 Yoast had an accident when they change something with their popular plugin and it suddenly started to show image attachments in the SERPS

Thousands of sites lost their Google traffic overnight and there was a large uproar.

WordPress by default creates separate and indexable posts for all images in your posts.

So if you have 20 images in a post, then that is 21 posts indexed in Google.

And 95% of those will be just images with no text or any other content. So thin and duplicate too as they are images pulled from the original post.

How to fix?

In your WordPress dashboard go SEO/Search Appearance/Media.

Select “Redirect attachment URL to the attachment itself”

#3- Similar Pages With Little Added Value

Let’s say you have a page on your site targeting the keyword “Best SEO plugin for WordPress”

And that post is divided into two unequal parts:

• Part one (80%) is you explaining the benefits of having an SEO plugin installed on a WordPress site
• Part two (20%) is a Yoast set-up Tutorial

Then you decided to expand a pool of keywords your site ranks for by targeting the Rank Math SEO plugin.

And that second article is similar to the first

• Part one (80%) is you explaining the benefits of having an SEO plugin installed on a WordPress site
• Part two (20%) is a Rank Math set-up Tutorial

All good! What’s the problem?

They’re too similar!

Because Yoast and Rank Math are both SEO plugins you copied the first part and added it in verbatim.

That 80% of other article is not unique and is too much duplicate content

How to beat?

Paraphrase yes; don’t copy in verbatim

#4- You’re Copying Someone’s Work

Google is pretty clear on this.

If you’re doing generic content syndication- you have nothing to worry about.

However, if you’re doing this to manipulate Google then beware.

Here’s a quote:

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.

How to beat?

Limit content syndication and focus on publishing original work

Even if you think you’re not a good enough writer, the key is to practice and you will improve with time.

We all have to start from somewhere.

#5- Your Content Gets Scraped

Nothing to do here.

Google goes by the date published so you will not be in danger. However, If you as the original publisher get outstripped by a scrapper (called link inversion) 

You can just go and file a DMCA complaint.

Does This Stuff Really Work? Will Removing Thin Content Really Help Me Rank?

Yes it does work. But don’t trust my words. Trust the results my friend Mudassur got with his blog BloggingExplained.

Take a look at the improvement he got over one month.

And here’s the case study in case you want to replicate his awesome results.

Conclusion

SEO is complicated.

• Keyword research; 
• creating content 
• building links 
• building relationships
• scaling…

There’s a million things to do and sometimes it’s hard to decide which to do first.

Well, let me help you there.

The first thing, the absolute first is to clean up your site from the ground up

Because If you don’t, you will never rank as highly as you want.

And if you do, you will make your rankings  10x easier and 10x stickier.

Which one of the two choices is more appealing to you?

Let me know in the comment section below.