Thin content = nonsense? I can see a big opportunity.

12 replies
  • SEO
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Back in 2014, we were sliding down on our SEO. I hadn't really built links properly and didn't really think it was link related but an SEO advised us that google had rolled out thin and dup content penalties so we made some major changes to our site.

Let's say for example, we market 'Hotels'.

We had pages as follows..

page 1 = Hotels in Wembley
page 2 Hotels in Wembley Park
page 3 Hotels in Soho
page 4 = Hotels in Soho Square.

Pages 2 and 4, were near duplicates of their previous ones with some different results.
We were told this was spammy and to remove the pages.

So areas pages, we had about 4000 and culled them overnight, with other changes and lost half our traffic. We weren't sure if this was to be expected, but we hoped that at the next Panda update we would see a surge when google realised our site was cleaner.

Result?.. **** all at the next update.

No change and traffic declining.. We started link building last year organically and finally saw a difference but we are at a fraction of our organic visibility that we used to be.

We have 3000 pages now against the 35,000 we used to have.

Now, and on the other hand, I have noticed a competitor rise and rise. According to ahrefs, their traffic is at 9,000 compared to my dismal 400. Their link portfolio is stronger, probably slightly better optimised site, but I noticed something very interesting today..

They don't have hotels on i.e. 'Sesame Street'. Let's say sesame street is a legit street in London and not a place where overgrown yellow birds talk to a fading celebrity.
This website has a page that reads:

Hotels on Sesame Street.

.. now when you go onto that page, you see results 'close by' but nothing on that street. Every result as you go down the page has proximity to Sesame Street,

i.e. 2.1 miles from Sesame Street

3.4 miles from Sesame Street

So they have got some sort of relevance there.

I think they have done this 100's if not 1000's of times over. This goes against everything I thought I knew about panda so I'm so confused as to why they are ranking so well with this. Any thoughts?
#big #content #nonsense #opportunity #thin
  • Profile picture of the author Benjamin Ehinger
    Probably not much direct competition for the phrases "Hotels on Sesame Street" assuming it's not from the show with the guy in the trash can and the large yellow bird...lol.

    I write quite a bit for the real estate industry and we deal with this all the time with local agents just putting up listings for a specific neighborhood. They get good ranking, but as soon as another agent moves in with listings and 400 to 500 words of good content, they take over the ranking....sometimes takes a bit if they are brand new and don't have much SEO.

    My guess, if you were to do content and a similar type of page, you'd be able to rank right behind them and above them, in some instances.

    I would have told you from the very beginning, every one of your pages has to be unique. It's very possible and I do it all the time for a couple of SEO companies (not working with hotels specifically).

    With good linking, strong content (minimum 400 words, probably better at 500 or even longer) you can gain ranking and keep it. Without good content, like your competitor, you typically gain ranking due to a lack of serious competition.

    Of course, it could just be dumb luck. Google can be fickle sometimes.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Benjamin Ehinger View Post

      They get good ranking, but as soon as another agent moves in with listings and 400 to 500 words of good content, they take over the ranking...


      Complete nonsense, not even remotely realistic.

      You're a writer, ok, so what. The majority of the web could care less about articles, let alone a magic number (500).

      You could write a billion words and a decent followed link profile from a competitor would crush it in the SERPs.

      Lets be real. - Dr Phil
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      • Profile picture of the author Benjamin Ehinger
        Simply not true. Again, if you put two sites with the exact same like profile head-to-head, the better content/user experience wins every single time.

        "majority of the web could care less about articles" this is utter bs right here.

        Simply put, if the web didn't care about article, why is that what is getting shared all over social media and what google is ranking? Makes no sense.
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  • Profile picture of the author KulaShaker1
    Hi Benjamin

    Well this is the interesting point...
    They have got 400 to 500 words on each page, but its pulling 'hotels' from nearby so you could argue that each paragrah isnt actually unique (as it already appears on site) however, they are kind of giving the user what they need as they display nearby hotels..
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    • Profile picture of the author Benjamin Ehinger
      It's all about the user experience they are delivering. Great content, great images and providing EXACTLY what the person searched for will rank you higher every single time.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    The whole "you need to have 500 words of unique content" stuff is utter rubbish.

    You're seeing it with your own eyes.

    The only people who will tell you that you need to have 500 words of completely unique content on every page you want to rank are writers (because it is in their best interest to keep the orders coming in) and lousy SEOs.
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    • Profile picture of the author Benjamin Ehinger
      This isn't true. Google has made it very clear that more content, as long as it's well written, on topic and makes sense for the page, WILL rank better.

      If you put two sites with the EXACT backlinks and the EXACT SEO profile head to head in the Google algorithm and one has 500 well-written words per page, while the other has 1,000, the one with more content will get ranked higher.

      It's not just writers saying this. I work closely with about a half-dozen very good SEO companies and have for the past 5 to 7 years. ALL of them recommend more words compared to less, as long as they are not just words and actually fit with the theme.

      The thinking that you can "get away" with fewer words will only lead you to have to redo your content when Google decides to change their ranking factor again and look for a larger average word count per page. They have raised this with just about every major update and it's smarter to do it right the first time than to wait until Google kicks you down the list to do it right.

      " Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google's search results. The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words."

      That quote came from an article on an SEO site, not a writers site.

      Here's an article from Niel Patel that also backs up longer content.

      Okay, I am done making my point. Everybody will make their own choice, but for my money, I'd go with longer content now. Of course, I also told people to stop keyword stuffing years ago when that was working and look what happened to all those crappy websites that didn't care about anything but ranking high.

      When we stop pandering to exactly what we think Google wants and we start paying attention to what our readers/users want, we will get the ranking and won't have to worry about the changes Google might make.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by Benjamin Ehinger View Post

        Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google's search results. The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words."
        That data is crap. Correlation, not causation. They did nothing to analyze the external and internal links or any other factors.

        It could also just be people who are writing longer articles are also working harder to acquire good links.


        Originally Posted by Benjamin Ehinger View Post

        That quote came from an article on an SEO site, not a writers site.

        Here's an article from Niel Patel that also backs up longer content.
        Brian and Neil are biased. They are marketing to a crowd that believes that kind of nonsense, so they feed their followers what they want to hear.

        Both are very good marketers, but most of their SEO advice is not very practical (or in some cases even true to be honest).
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  • Profile picture of the author jamie3000
    From what I've seen thin content does still work for very low competition keywords. I mean, what should Google serve up a thin but relevant page or a fat but irrelevant page. Also people's definition of thin can vary greatly.
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  • Profile picture of the author Benjamin Ehinger
    I am going to add my final thoughts here and then I have do be done with this thread for right now.

    Unless you have an incredible amount of domain authority, you need something else to rank well. Very few websites can rank without good content and I don't say that in hopes that I will get orders or keep the orders coming in. I say that out of experience and out of watching sites with crappy content gain ranking just to lose it nearly as fast as they gained that ranking.

    If you want to rank well today, do whatever you want with your little 300 words of content and your backlinks that don't come in naturally.

    If you want to rank well soon and sustain your ranking, deliver the content your readers/users want, make it so good others link to it and let everything happen naturally.

    Old SEO habits of paying for links and building a link profile to rank crappy content don't work and won't work in the future. There is no 500-word minimum, but there are plenty of ways to beat out your competition by having better (usually longer) content with natural link building and social sharing.
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  • Profile picture of the author KulaShaker1
    Hi Mike/Yukon

    Thanks for the responses..
    So just to clarify, do you see any problems if I copy this technique my competitor is doing?
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by KulaShaker1 View Post

      Hi Mike/Yukon

      Thanks for the responses..
      So just to clarify, do you see any problems if I copy this technique my competitor is doing?
      They are likely ranking well because of a good link profile and relevant content. Not the length of the content, but the relevancy of it.

      So yeah, if you are going to copy those ideas, I see nothing wrong with it.
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