struck me the other day while reviewing a client project with one of our SEO analysts that the old problem of "lightweight content with little or no added value." Since then, Google has only increased the importance of quality content. An unconfirmed update in early February and the March 7 Google Fred update both targeted low-quality content. Sites that were affected by Fred included content-focused sites with heavy ad placement, according to reports from Barry Schwartz.
These sites “saw a 50% or more drop in organic traffic from Google overnight.” Algorithms aside, Google has an army of people manually reviewing sites for signs of quality. Periodically, Google releases its Quality Rater Guidelines, a document used to train these quality company employee list raters to spot low-quality versus high-quality content. I unconditionally recommend that you read this entire document from Google! Search engines clearly intend to continue to reduce their quality tolerance. Recent updates and penalties further underscore the need for websites to fix flimsy content without delay.
“You can't afford to ignore thin content on your site and expect to survive. -Bruce Clay Click to tweet Lightweight Content Solutions Identifying lightweight content on a site is crucial to SEO health, but it's only the first step. Once thin content is diagnosed on your site (whether through a Google manual action notice or an SEO audit), you need a strategic plan to fix it. And if you're not sure, your content is probably low quality, too terse, or probably both. The trick is knowing WHICH strategy is right for solving your unique situation. T