You open Search Console and find a long list of pages marked as crawled but not indexed. Some of them you do not even recognise: tag archives with a single post, an empty category, attachment pages for old images, a few service-area pages that someone created years ago with the same three paragraphs each. Meanwhile your best service pages are not doing as well as you hoped.
These are typical examples of thin content: pages that exist on your site but give a visitor little or nothing of value. This post explains what Google treats as low quality pages in general terms, where such pages usually come from on a small WordPress site, how to find them, and how to deal with each kind by improving, merging or keeping them out of search. Duplicate addresses are a related but separate issue, which our WordPress duplicate content guide deals with.
What “thin” means in practice
Thin does not simply mean short. A brief page that fully answers a simple question is fine. A page is thin when someone who lands on it finds nothing worth their visit: no real answer, no original information, nothing they could not get faster elsewhere.
Google’s guidance on helpful content and its spam policies describe several patterns, in general terms:
- Pages with little or no original substance, such as a heading and a line of text, or a template with almost nothing filled in.
- Doorway pages, made to rank for a set of similar searches, often near-identical apart from a place name or keyword, that funnel visitors elsewhere.
- Scaled, low-value pages, produced in bulk by any method, mainly to attract search traffic rather than to help anyone.
- Copied or lightly reworded content from other sites with nothing added.
- Thin affiliate pages that repeat product information from the merchant without adding anything of their own.
The common thread is value to the reader. Google’s systems try to show pages that satisfy the search, and a site with many pages that do not can find its stronger pages affected too.
Where weak pages come from on a small business site
Most small businesses never set out to publish low-value pages. They accumulate, often through default WordPress behaviour or old marketing advice.
Tag and category archives
Every tag and category creates an archive page. A site that adds a new tag for every post ends up with dozens of archives holding one post each. They offer nothing that the post itself does not. Our guide to handling category and tag pages for SEO covers the settings.
Attachment pages
Older WordPress setups and some themes create a separate page for every uploaded image. Each holds one picture and perhaps a title. Recent WordPress versions handle this differently for new sites, and SEO plugins such as Rank Math and Yoast offer settings to redirect these pages to the image or the parent post.
Near-empty pages
Placeholder pages created during the build and never filled in, “coming soon” pages, empty categories, old event pages for events long past, and author archives on a site with one author.
Location and keyword variant pages
Pages for each suburb or each slight variation of a service name, written from a template. These are the pages most likely to be treated as doorways.
Old, short blog posts
Brief posts from years ago that announced something, linked to an external article, or covered a topic in a paragraph. Several of them may circle the same subject without any one answering it.
Thin product pages
In online shops, products with only the manufacturer’s one-line description, or variants given their own near-identical pages.
How to find thin content on your site
- Check Search Console’s page indexing report. Look at pages listed as crawled but not indexed, or discovered but not indexed. These are not always weak, but many weak pages end up here. Each status is explained in our guide to pages Google has left out of its index.
- Look at the Performance report by page. Pages with no impressions over a long period are worth reviewing.
- Browse your own archives. Visit your tag list, category list and author pages. Count how many have only one or two items.
- Search your site in Google. Typing site: followed by your domain gives a rough view of what Google holds. Look for pages you did not expect.
- List your pages in WordPress and sort by date. Very old, very short pages are candidates.
- Read the suspects. For each, ask: if a customer landed here from a search, would they be glad they did?
What to do with each kind of weak page
There are four main options. Choose based on whether the page has a reason to exist.
| Option | Use it when | How |
|---|---|---|
| Improve | The topic is worth a page and people search for it, but the page does not answer it | Rewrite it to answer the question properly, with real detail |
| Merge | Several weak pages cover parts of the same topic | Combine into the strongest page, then 301 redirect the others to it |
| Noindex | The page is useful to visitors on the site but not as a search result | Set it to noindex in your SEO plugin and keep it for navigation |
| Redirect or remove | The page has no purpose at all, such as an attachment page or a forgotten placeholder | Redirect to the most relevant page, or remove it if nothing fits |
Improving
Treat the page as if you were writing it fresh. What question does it answer? Answer that question fully, with the details only your business knows. If you cannot think of anything useful to say, the page is probably better merged or removed.
Merging
Pick the page with the best address and any existing visibility. Move the useful parts of the others into it, rewrite so it reads as one piece, then redirect the old addresses to it. Update internal links so they point straight at the merged page.
Noindexing
A noindex setting asks search engines to leave a page out of their results. That suits tag archives, thank-you pages, internal search results and similar pages that help navigation but are not answers in themselves. Rank Math and Yoast both offer noindex settings per page and per archive type. Do not noindex pages you want people to find through search.
Preventing low quality pages in future
- Use a small, fixed set of categories and add tags only if you will use each one repeatedly.
- Do not publish placeholder pages. Keep drafts as drafts until they are ready.
- One page per real topic. Before creating a page, check whether an existing one already covers it.
- Avoid template-driven location pages unless each has genuinely different content.
- Review old pages on a schedule. Each year, look at pages with no impressions and decide what to do with them.
Avoiding thin pages is part of planning content around real questions, which the guide to content marketing for small business sets out. For the wider set of online marketing services a small business might use, the overview explains where each fits.
Frequently asked questions
Will deleting weak pages make my site look smaller to Google?
Site size is not a goal in itself. Removing or merging pages that offered nothing usually makes the remaining pages easier for Google to understand. Redirect removed pages with any links or visits to the most relevant remaining page, so nothing useful is lost.
Is a short contact or about page considered low quality?
No. Contact and about pages have a clear purpose, and visitors expect them to be brief. The concern is pages that pretend to answer a search but do not. A contact page with accurate details, a map and opening hours does its job well.
How long after cleaning up should I expect to see a change?
It varies with the size of the site and how often Google crawls it. Changes are usually gradual rather than sudden. Track the improved and merged pages in Search Console over the following months, and judge by impressions and clicks on the pages that remain.
If you suspect your site has a pile of weak pages but do not know where to start, our content writing services include reviewing what is already published and deciding, page by page, what to improve, merge or take out of search.
Next in this series: Headings for SEO: How to Structure H1, H2 and H3
