Front Desk SEO: Identifying, Fixing, and Avoiding Thin Content

When you review the SEO performance of your hotel’s website, are you happy with the results? If you are failing to rank for many of your targeted keywords, the source of your issues may be thin on-page content. In order to achieve a successful digital marketing strategy, thin and weak content must be avoided at all cost and improved wherever it exists.

How a Panda Changed the Internet

Back in 2011, Google rolled out an update to their algorithm by the name of “Google Panda.” Panda caused an upheaval in the SEO world, and many of the practices that emerged as a result are still considered standards for SEOs today. Google regularly makes new updates to their ranking algorithm, and the changes made by Panda are still a major determining factor between what ranks on the first page of their results and what does not.

Google Panda primarily addressed the issue of thin, low quality content on websites. Many large scale brands still worry about the effect thin and duplicate content has on their sites, and they take careful (sometimes drastic) steps to avoid it.

“What is thin content and how can we avoid it?” still comes up with many Blue Magnet clients today. Thin content – and duplicate content – are issues that relate heavily to the quality and helpfulness of the information on your website and need to be addressed when working on a hotel’s independent website.

Google had a very good reason for targeting and penalizing sites with thin and duplicate content. Back in the early 2000’s, many websites were using short, spammy pages to quickly reach the top of search results without putting forth much effort to provide valuable information for users. By updating their algorithm to prefer robust and unique content that fulfills searcher intent, the big brains over at Google made it more difficult, and sometimes impossible, for low-effort and low-value pages to reach the top of search results.

A problem that can arise is that some content creators have not identified the thin content on their sites. Even though they want to provide genuinely useful content, they are being held back by issues they are not fully aware of. Considering the goal of your website is to rank well on Google and help users see that your hotel is their ideal travel option it is vital for you to avoid those thin content flags that can hold you back.

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