What Is Low Quality Content? How to Deal with It?

John Muller, Web Analyst at Google very well explained the low quality content and how one can deal with it to helping you gain SEO benefits in the recent past webmaster meets. In this blog post, I will cover all those details. Moreover, I will talk about some SEO tips based on my more than 12 years of experience as an SEO Specialist.

What is low quality content?

According to multiple resources shared by Google itself, there are different traits of the content which define if it is low quality content or not. Let me share major traits of low quality content:

• Vague language, which does not reveal the meaning of the content
• Unnaturally stuffed keywords which produce unnatural content
• Duplicate or plagiarized content
• Spun content
• Content with grammatical mistakes, broken sentences, etc.

If your webpages have any of the above-mentioned traits, then you have low quality content, which is also known as thin content.

Why should you care about thin content?

There are multiple reasons to care about it, but I am going to share major which make a huge difference to your business:

• Website visitors cannot read and comprehend content. Thus, you do not get new sales inquiries or reader loyalty.
• Googlebots will identify that it is thin content and thus, you will not get any benefit from SEO marketing.
• If many webpages on a single site are having thin or low quality content, then you may get penalized by Google Panda Algorithm penalty

Read Google Panda Algorithm Update in Detail

Thus, to leverage the real benefits of having a digital presence with a website and gain real advantages from your website marketing campaigns, you need to take firm steps.

Before we get into details, let’s see the causes of low quality content.

How your website got low quality content?

Well, reasons are obvious, but still, let me list it out for you as I am sure there will be some surprising and never thought before reasons behind it:

1. You have copied content from other sites. Even if you copy different paragraphs from different websites, Google can detect that. Even a single copied line gets detected by Google and you need to face consequences. However, it does not mean that you cannot use quotes, proverbs, etc., which often needs to be used as it is. All you need to do is give the required credit to the author or source.
2. Your content writer does not have the required command over the language.
3. Your website has multiple writers and some of them are not experienced in content writing or do not have command over the language.
4. You accept comments from users and these users might be copying content or might not have good command over the language.

What can be the solutions?

There are simple and straightforward solutions to deal with it. Let me share it with you in detail.

1. Webpage and blog writing for the website must be done by experienced SEO writers

Any content that gets published on the website has to be written by an experienced SEO content writer. It means the writer must have knowledge of SEO standards and best practices and she must have prior experience of SEO content writing. Even you can write SEO content if you have the required knowledge and experience. For example, all blog posts and webpages on this site, Digital Marketers India, are written by me, Ashvini Vyas.

2. Never copy content

Anyways copied content gives no benefits. On the contrary, it can bring Google penalties. Thus, the best way is do not copy content.

3. Filter content

If you accept content from guest writers or comments from public users, then you have to moderate content and comments to make sure all content on the site is of good quality with correct English, grammar, and relevant information. Do not allow thin or low quality content to be part of your site.

That is it.

One more bonus tip:

If your webpages are not ranking on the top positions for the targeted keywords or if some of the webpages are not having high traffic, then it does not mean they have low quality content. Of course, you can run different digital marketing campaigns to boost ranks of low performing content.

Hope you received the required information about thin or low quality content.

If you have any questions or want to hire an experienced SEO content writer, contact us.