Thin content is about coverage, not word count
A tool told me some pages are too short, so I added words. They still do not rank. What was I supposed to fix?
Which checks surface this
- low-content — a page with very little text content relative to what it is trying to rank for
- low-text-html-ratio — pages where the response is mostly markup rather than readable content
- no-h2-h3 — no subheadings, so the page has no visible structure for its subtopics
- semantic-html — content not marked up in a way that groups the page into sections
Check ids: low-content · low-text-html-ratio · no-h2-h3 · semantic-html
A concrete example
A category page that only lists product names still offers nothing to someone deciding between them — regardless of how many words are on it.
FAQ
- How long should a page be?
- There is no universal number, and we would not invent one. The useful question is whether the page answers the sub-questions someone searching that phrase would ask.
- Is adding paragraphs harmful?
- It is not harmful, it is just not the fix. Repeating existing points increases length without increasing coverage.