Thin Content: Meaning and SEO Fixes

Have you ever heard of or seen the term “thin content”? If you have a WordPress website and use the excellent Yoast SEO plugin, then you probably have. The plugin’s “traffic light” system considers word count of pages in whether it awards you a green light or not. It is just one aspect of the tool’s appraisal but it may be important if you’re competing with more comprehensive content.

What is Thin Content?

The term “thin content” is important in the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) community because it refers to content that may not be of sufficient word count to be considered quality content. Google itself doesn’t use the term “thin content” but if copy is not of sufficient length, that may indicate a lack of expertise or authoritativeness from the author.

In 2025, the concept of “thin content” remains a crucial consideration in SEO. While the core principles have evolved, the importance of providing valuable, comprehensive content has only increased, particularly in light of the burgeoning amount of AI-generated content across the world wide web.

Understanding Thin Content in 2025

Thin content refers to web pages that offer little value to users, characterised by:

Insufficient depth or detail
Lack of originality or unique insights
Poor quality or superficial information
Excessive ads or popups that overshadow the content

Google’s algorithms have become increasingly sophisticated in identifying and penalising thin content, and now they focus on the overall quality and user experience rather than just word count. So “thin content” in terms of just word count has been superseded by “thin” meaning a lack in originality, quality, and being minimised in context of other page content. It’s an important nuance to bear in mind when creating content and managing a website.

A Quick History of Thin Content

Back in the the early 2000s there was deluge of what were called “content farms” and “Made for AdSense” (MFA) websites.

Content farms were built at scale to exploit keyword variations and the MFA versions of these were specifically designed to display ads from Google AdSense and monetise the content – the idea being to dominate the search results, capture as many clicks as possible, and benefit from the payments for every ad clicked.

These content farms were notorious for churning out large volumes of low-quality, repetitive content around simple topics to attract search traffic. I even remember one commentator back in the day questioning why one website had dozens of different articles on “how to boil an egg” – each page heading/title was simply a KW variation.

Google got wise to this tactic and launched the Google Panda update in 2011, with the specific aim of reducing the number of low-quality websites in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and improve the overall quality of content shown to users. It was around this time that Google’s then CEO Eric Schmidt famously called the internet a “cesspool”.

The Evolution of Content Quality Standards

Since the 2011 Google Panda update search engines have dramatically improved their ability to assess content quality.

Now, in 2025, there are numerous safeguards in place to try and tackle the issue of low-quality content:

AI-powered algorithms evaluate content based on relevance, depth, and user engagement
There is a huge emphasis is on “E-E-A-T” (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
User intent and user satisfaction play a significant role in content evaluation

So the idea of “thin content” has evolved from merely looking at low word counts to a wider analysis of the quality of individual pages, their authors, and the wider websites.

Best Practices for Content Creation in 2025

So what’s a website owner to do in 2025 to avoid thin content issues and improve SEO performance? Well, as a content creator, content manager, and digital marketer, there are a number of things you can do to ensure that your work is not even being considered as “thin”.

Focus on Quality Over Quantity: While longer content often performs better, the primary goal should be to thoroughly address the user’s query and match the user’s intent.
Provide Unique Value: Offer original insights, expert opinions, or exclusive data to differentiate your content from similar offerings.
Optimize for User Intent: Understand and cater to the specific needs and questions of your target audience – again, match user intent.
Incorporate Multimedia: Enhance text with relevant images, videos, or infographics to provide a richer user experience for your audience.
Regular Content Audits: Use advanced SEO tools to identify and improve or even remove thin content pages.
Consolidate Similar Content: Merge related thin pages into comprehensive, authoritative resources.

By following these six rules of thumb, you can improve your content, your website, traffic, and user engagement.

If you need a website audit to help you identify thin content, then get in touch with me and I can do that for you.

The Impact of Thin Content on SEO in 2025

Just like back in 2011, thin content can significantly harm your website’s SEO performance. Some of the issues that could affect you are:

Decreased domain authority and overall rankings
Reduced organic traffic and user engagement
Potential manual actions or algorithmic penalties from search engines

Identifying Thin Content for SEO

To find thin content on your website you could use your Yoast SEO plugin and look at each individual page, analysing the traffic light system and working on content in the backend displaying the read and orange lights.

This can be really time consuming, and is probably your last resort, so it’s quicker to use advanced SEO crawling tools to analyse page content and word count.

SEMrush has a site audit tool which can identify thin content. Of the issues it flags up you can look at:

Low Text-to-HTML ratio: This can indicate a lot of “code bloat” that means you have more code than copy.
Missing, Empty, Long or Short Titles: Check that your pages’ title tags are in good order.
Missing, Empty, Long or Short Meta Descriptions: Again, check that you’ve got excellent meta descriptions.
Multiple H1 Tags: This can indicate hurried, unedited, or not proofed content creation, even fundamental issues with the website build.
Duplicate Content: Whether it’s titles, descriptions, or H1 tags, duplicates can indicate what is considered “thin” by 2025 standards.

Screaming Frog’s excellent SEO Spider (SFSS) doesn’t have as pretty a dashboard as SEMrush but don’t let that put you off. It’s a hugely powerful tool in the right hands. You can use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to:

Do all the above: SFSS can give you all the data that SEMrush does. Use the numerical values exported to spreadsheets and filtered to give you an idea of what is not working.
Identify Low Word Count: This specific tool shows low word count. Use this data to identify thin content for SEO purposes.

You can even use Google Analytics (GA4) and Google Search Console (GSC) to identify thin content.

Google Analytics: In GA4, you can identify potential thin content by analysing organic traffic patterns. You should look out for unusual dips in traffic that might signal thin content or algorithm changes that have affected you because of what may be considered thin content. Look for high bounce rates, and low engagement, these may indicate that users aren’t appreciating some of your content.
Google Search Console: In GSC you can check the “Security & Manual Actions” tab for any penalties related to thin content. This is Google’s way of directly telling you. I’ve never experienced this, but it’s the first port of call if you’ve lost a dramatic amount of traffic. You can also check the Index Coverage report to identify pages that Google may have trouble indexing due to quality issues.
Bing Webmaster Tools: BWT is a welcome addition to the essential Google tools. Check specifically for Content Quality flags and use the Site Scan tool to look for warnings that may include thin content issues. The URL inspection tool is also great for investigating specific URLs flagged as low quality.

So while there are free and premium tools, you’ll find which ones suit your needs and will have to put in some effort to understanding them and their output. That’s not for this article.

Fixing Thin Content

Now that you’ve identified the thin content for SEO purposes, you can set about fixing it. There’s no prescriptive way of doing this as it depends on exactly what the tools have indicated and every website is different. But as a rough guide you should:

Improve low-quality pages that don’t provide value to users.
Remove some of that low-quality content.
Ensure that all pages in your website, including oft-overlooked product description and category pages, offer unique and helpful information.

The actual fixes you implement will depend on what the tools have said, so:

Make sure titles are relevant and comprehensive. Not empty, not too short, not too long. Titles are the first words in your entry in the SERPs.
Meta descriptions, being a little longer than titles, have more room for text. Again they should not be empty, short or long. Remember that meta descriptions show up in the SERPs so they must be relevant, unique, and draw in users.
Review your page structure and ensure that you have H1, H2, H3, etc. as appropriate. Eliminate multiple tags (Particularly H1s) and make sure they’re relevant and good quality.
Look at the copy on your pages and make sure it’s “good enough”. In fact, make sure it matches the search intent of someone who might have landed there. Once they’ve seen and read your page have their needs been met?
In a competitive environment, your content needs to stand out above all the rest, so make sure that what you have written is head and shoulders above your nearest competitors.

Read your rewritten content. Review your pages again. Relaunch them and monitor their progress. See how they compare to their previous impressions, rank, clicks, and click through rates. If you have access to the advanced tools such as SEMrush’ position tracking, also check their performance against your competition.

Conclusion

In 2025, the focus of content creation for SEO has shifted from the mere word count of thin content to providing genuine value to users. By prioritising high-quality, informative, and user-focused content, your business’ website can improve its search engine rankings and overall online presence. Regular content audits and a commitment to addressing user needs will be key to your continued success in the evolving SEO landscape.

And remember, if you need assistance, as an SEO specialist with 25 years experience, I can help. I can audit your content, make website and content fixes, write or rewrite your content. I can help you build topical authority, and generally make quality changes so that you too can see improvements in crawling, indexing, and ranking.

Call me on 01252 692 765 or send me a message in the contact form.