Thin content, and what to do about it
A page with very little text gives a search engine almost nothing to match against a query. Thin content is one of the most common reasons a perfectly good local business never appears in results.
What counts as thin
There is no official word count. ppclift flags pages under 200 words of visible text because, in practice, a page below that threshold rarely contains enough to answer a real question.
Word count is a symptom rather than the problem. The real issue is a page that does not fully answer what the visitor came to find out.
Why it matters
Search engines match queries against the words on a page. A page with 40 words can only match a handful of searches, however good the business is.
Thin pages also convert poorly. A visitor who cannot find prices, service areas or availability usually leaves rather than phoning to ask.
How to fix it
- Write out the questions customers actually ask before they buy, then answer each one on the page.
- Add the specifics that generic copy leaves out: suburbs served, hours, call-out fees, brands carried, how long a job takes.
- Replace stock marketing language with concrete detail. 'Servicing Ballarat, Sebastopol and Wendouree since 2009' does more work than 'quality service you can trust'.
- Consider whether several near-empty pages would be stronger as one substantial page.
Common mistakes
- Padding with repeated keywords rather than adding real information.
- Putting the content in an image, where no search engine can read it.
- Loading the text with JavaScript after the page renders, which many crawlers and most AI assistants will not see.
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