How to fix thin content
Pages with only a few dozen words rarely rank and often get flagged as low quality. 300+ words of useful text is the usual floor.
Step by step, with screenshots: Soft 404s: pages Google treats as missing even though they return 200 →
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What it is
Thin content is a page with so little useful text that it gives visitors and search engines almost nothing, for example a product page with only a name and a price, or a category page with a heading and no description. Google's term covers any page that adds little value, including copied and auto-generated text.
Google has no minimum word count, and a short page that fully answers the question is fine. In practice, pages meant to rank with fewer than 300 words usually leave out what people came for, such as sizes, delivery, prices or how a service works, and they rarely hold a position against fuller pages.
OK looks like this: each page you want found has enough real, visible text to answer the visitor's question, usually 300 words or more, in HTML rather than inside images. getReport counts the body text and warns below 300 words.
What a passing site looks like
- Word count: passeswarning · −2 ptseffort L
- Every crawled page has at least 300 words of body textinfo onlyeffort L
1. Word count
Why it matters. Pages with very little text give search engines almost nothing to rank and visitors little reason to stay. Google has no minimum word count, but a page meant to rank with under 300 words has usually left out what visitors came for.
- Add text that answers what a visitor came for; for a product, that is the details, sizing and delivery; for a service, what happens and what it costs.
- Keep it in real HTML text, not inside images or loaded only by JavaScript.
2. Thin pages
Why it matters. Pages with very little text give search engines little to rank. Contact and checkout pages are short by nature, so treat this as a list to review, not a list of mistakes.
- For pages meant to rank, add what visitors came for; for a product, the details, sizing and delivery.
- Merge several short pages about the same topic into one fuller page and redirect the others to it.
Questions people ask
What is thin content in SEO?
Thin content is a page that offers little or no value to the visitor: very little text, text copied from other pages or sites, auto-generated filler, or doorway pages made only to rank. Google can rank it lower or not index it at all, and many such pages can weigh on how Google sees the whole site.
What is the minimum word count for SEO?
There is none; Google has said word count is not a ranking factor. Length only matters because a page needs enough words to answer its question. Most pages meant to rank need at least a few hundred words, which is why getReport uses 300 words as a warning line rather than a rule.
Should you remove thin content?
Improve it first if the page has a purpose: add the details visitors need. Merge several thin pages on the same topic into one stronger page and redirect the others to it. Remove or noindex pages with no search value, such as empty tag archives, rather than leaving them to be indexed.
Is there a Google penalty for thin content?
Google can take manual action against sites with lots of thin, copied or auto-generated pages, and you would see it in Search Console under Manual actions. More often there is no penalty as such; thin pages simply do not rank, and Google's systems may value the site less when a large share of it is thin.