Publishing pages with thin content, update later?
-
So I have about 285 pages I created with very, very thin content on each. Each is unique, and each serves its own purpose.
My question is, do you guys think it is wise to publish all of these at once to just get them out there and update each as we go along? Each page is very laser targeted and I anticipate that a large handful will actually rank soon after publishing.
Thanks!
Tom
-
Each location has their own page, and each location page has their own departments listed with their own pages as well. Each department then has some content such as the NAP, an employee directory, and links to other resourceful pages on the website.
If this is making many pages for each location, then I would worry about them. However, if all of this information is on a single page then you might be fine. If I owned a company like this I would require each location to give me substantive content.
Also, if I "noindex" the pages to start, add some good content then "index" them, how long in your experience has it taken until you saw a considerable increase in traffic/see those pages indexed?
I republished two of my thin content pages last week. These were noindexed for about two years. They were upgraded from two or three sentences and one photo to nearly 1000 words and four or five photos. One appeared in the index about five days later and went straight to #4 for a moderately difficult single word query. That single word query is the name of a software product, the name of some type of "gold" in the minecraft video game and has a lot of competition from .gov and .edu. .
The second one was published about eight days ago and we have not seen it in the SERPs yet. This is an unusually long time for us to wait on a republished page for this site which has a DA of about 80.
The way I would approach it would be to crawl those pages manually in Search Console (RIP Webmaster Tools) once I updated the "index" tag.
I have never done this. I just republish the page.
-
Thanks Andy, I appreciate the response. This was a semi-large project with the main goal of capturing hyper-local leads. I guess once you throw locations into the mix it runs an even bigger chance of being hit due to popular practice of creating a page for every damn city in the country in hopes of ranking locally.
Fortunately we have real locations across the US but I don't want Google to think we're trying to dupe anyone.
Thanks again
Tom -
That's the answer I was expecting. The website I'm referencing has about 4,000 indexed pages, and those 285 may be enough to do some damage.
To give you an example (this mimics exactly what I'm doing), take a business with multiple locations. Each location has their own page, and each location page has their own departments listed with their own pages as well. Each department then has some content such as the NAP, an employee directory, and links to other resourceful pages on the website. Yeah or nay to that?
Also, if I "noindex" the pages to start, add some good content then "index" them, how long in your experience has it taken until you saw a considerable increase in traffic/see those pages indexed? I know that's a site-by-site, page-by-page kind of question but I'm curious to know.
The way I would approach it would be to crawl those pages manually in Search Console (RIP Webmaster Tools) once I updated the "index" tag.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
Tom -
Hi
I agree with the above, you run the risk of getting hit by Panda. If these pages are important to have live to help customers, then surely your priority should be to get good content on their to help your customers / potential customers. If they land on a low quality page with very little content, are they likely to stick around.
I wouldn't put any live until you have the content sorted. I would work out the priority and start there and once the content is good then put live.
There is probably a Panda update around the corner and you don't want to get hit with hit and then you are waiting for Google to release the next version to get out of it.
I wouldnt even run the risk of putting them live with noindex.
Unless of course as said above you have 100,000+ pages of amazing quality content then it probably wont affect you.
Thanks
Andy
-
In my opinion, publishing a lot of thin content pages will get you into trouble with the Panda algorithm. One of my sites had a lot of these types of pages and it was hit with a Panda problem. Most pages on the site were demoted in search. I noindexed those thin content pages and the site recovered in a few weeks.
Here is the code that I used... name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />
Although those pages had thin content, they were still valuable reference for my visitors. That is why I noindexed them instead of deleting them.
Those pages have been noindexed for about two years with no problems. Slowly, I am adding a good article to those pages to reduce their number. I worry that some day, Google might change their minds and hit sites that have lots of thin content pages that are noindexed.
I don't know how big your website is. But I am betting that 285 very very thin pages added to a website of a couple thousand pages will be a problem (that's about what I had when my site had a problem). However, if that many very very thin pages are added to a website with 100,000 pages you might get away with it.
Good luck
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
-
One Page Design / Single Product Page
I have been working in a project. Create a framework for multi pages that I have So here is the case
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Roman-Delcarmen
Most of them are single page product / one page design wich means that I dont have many pages to optimize. All this sites/ pages follow the rules of a landing page optimization because my main goals is convert as many users as I can. At this point I need to optimize the SEO, the basic stuff such as header, descriptions, tittles ect. But most of my traffic is generated by affiliates, which is good beacuse I dont have to worrie to generate traffic but if the affiliate network banned my product, then I lose all my traffic. Put all my eggs in the same basket is not a good idea. Im not an seo guru so that is the reason Im asking whic strategies and tactics can give me results. All kind of ideas are welcome1 -
Why has my home page replaced my sub-category page for set of keywords? Happened 2x in last 2 weeks for day or so only to fix itself. What is going on?
Today I noticed a really weird problem. Our LED Step Lights page (https://www.pegasuslighting.com/led-step-lights.html) has been replaced in the search results with our home page. See screenshot below. As I started to research what was going on, I noticed that this same thing must have happened on January 26 and 27 because in my Analytics I can see that our LED Step Lights sub-cat page had a sudden drop in traffic on those two days only to bounce back again on the 28th. See screenshot below. Our LED Step Lights page has had no changes in content, meta information, or anything in months. We have done no recent link building to this page in years. I don't understand what is going on. This is a popular page for us generating decent traffic. I really don't understand what is going on or even how to try and resolve this problem. I checked our Search Console. No messages. No manual web spam actions. Nothing to suggest that anything is going on except for the weird drops in traffic. Has anyone ever seen this happen before? Does anyone have any ideas as to what may be going on? serp-led-step-lights.png organic-traffic-drops.png search-console-led-step-lights.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cajohnson0 -
On Page Content. has a H2 Tag but should I also use H3 tags for the sub headings within this body of content
Hi Mozzers, My on page content comes under my H2 tag. I have a few subheadings within my content to help break it up etc and currently this is just underlined (not bold or anything) and I am wondering from an SEO perspective, should I be making these sub headings H3 tags. Otherwise , I just have 500-750 words of content under an H2 tag which is what I am currently doing on my landing pages. thanks pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Help With This Page
This is page - http://www.kempruge.com/location/tampa/tampa-personal-injury-legal-attorneys/ - is the most important one to my business, and I can't seem to get it to rank higher. It has the second highest authority and links, second only to my homepage (though none are all that impressive) but it is just buried in the SERPs. Granted, I know Tampa Personal Injury Attorney is the hardest keyword for us to rank for, but there must be some way to improve this. I know getting high quality links is an appropriate answer, but I'm looking for anything I can do solely on my end to improve it. However, if anyone has some ways to make the page more linkable, I'm all ears! Please, if you have a second to take a look, I'd appreciate any and all feedback. Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Why are these pages considered duplicate content?
I have a duplicate content warning in our PRO account (well several really) but I can't figure out WHY these pages are considered duplicate content. They have different H1 headers, different sidebar links, and while a couple are relatively scant as far as content (so I might believe those could be seen as duplicate), the others seem to have a substantial amount of content that is different. It is a little perplexing. Can anyone help me figure this out? Here are some of the pages that are showing as duplicate: http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Seth+Green/?bioid=5554 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Solomon+Northup/?bioid=11758 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/?mediatype=audio+books&bioid=3665 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Marcus+Rediker/?bioid=10145 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Robin+Miles/?bioid=2075
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DownPour0 -
Site less than 20 pages shows 1,400+ pages when crawled
Hello! I’m new to SEO, and have been soaking up as much as I can. I really love it, and feel like it could be a great fit for me – I love the challenge of figuring out the SEO puzzle, plus I have a copywriting/PR background, so I feel like that would be perfect for helping businesses get a great jump on their online competition. In fact, I was so excited about my newfound love of SEO that I offered to help a friend who owns a small business on his site. Once I started, though, I found myself hopelessly confused. The problem comes when I crawl the site. It was designed in Wordpress, and is really not very big (part of my goal in working with him was to help him get some great content added!) Even though there are only 11 pages – and 6 posts – for the entire site, when I use Screaming Frog to crawl it, it sees HUNDREDS of pages. It stops at 500, because that is the limit for their free version. In the campaign I started here at SEOmoz, and it says over 1,400 pages have been crawled…with something like 900 errors. Not good, right? So I've been trying to figure out the problem...when I look closer in Screaming Frog, I can see that some things are being repeated over and over. If I sort by the Title, the URLs look like they’re stuck in a loop somehow - one line will have /blog/category/postname…the next line will have /blog/category/category/postname…and the next line will have /blog/category/category/category/postname…and so on, with another /category/ added each time. So, with that, I have two questions Does anyone know what the problem is, and how to fix it? Do professional SEO people troubleshoot this kind of stuff all of the time? Is this the best place to get answers to questions like that? And if not, where is? Thanks so much in advance for your help! I’ve enjoyed reading all of the posts that are available here so far, it seems like a really excellent and helpful community...I'm looking forward to the day when I can actually answer the questions!! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K.Walters0 -
Merging your google places page with google plus page.
I have a map listing showing for the keyword junk cars for cash nj. I recently created a new g+ page and requested a merge between the places and the + page. now when you do a search you see the following. Junk Cars For Cash NJ LLC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars
junkcarforcashnj.com/
Google+ page - Google+ page the first hyperlink takes me to the about page of the G+ and the second link takes me to the posts section within g+. Is this normal? should i delete the places account where the listing was originally created? Or do i leave it as is? Thanks0 -
301 Redirect or Canonical Tag or Leave Them Alone? Different Pages - Similar Content
We currently have 3 different versions of our State Business-for-Sale listings pages - the versions are: **Version 1 -- Preferred Version: ** http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx Title = California Business for Sale Ads - California Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker Version 2: http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx Title = California Business for Sale | 3124 California Businesses for Sale | BusinessBroker.net Version 3: http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml Title = California Businesses for Sale at BusinessBroker.net - California Business for Sale While the page titles and meta data are a bit different, the bulk of the page content (which is the listings rendered) are identical. We were wondering if it would make good sense to either (A) 301 redirect Versions 2 and 3 to the preferred Version 1 page or (B) put Canonical Tags on Versions 2 and 3 labeling Version 1 as the preferred version. We have this issue for all 50 U.S. States -- I've mentioned California here but the same applies for Alabama through Wyoming - same issue. Given that there are 3 different flavors and all are showing up in the Search Results -- some on the same 1st page of results -- which probably is a good thing for now -- should we do a 301 redirect or a Canonical Tag on Versions 2 and 3? Seems like with Google cracking down on duplicate content, it might be wise to be proactive. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. Matt M
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720