Thin pages with 2–3 sentences of body copy lose ranking competitions against competitors who answer the query more completely — Google's Helpful Content system explicitly targets shallow pages and can demote the entire site, not just the offenders. Listing pages that show only titles and dates leave the crawler nothing to rank, so category and archive URLs stay stranded on page 3+ of results indefinitely.
Medium because thin content suppresses rankings sitewide under Helpful Content but does not directly deindex pages.
Expand each content page to at least 300 words of original body copy that fully addresses the topic. For listing templates, render an excerpt or summary for every item rather than title-only rows. Update the page component so the main content area carries substantive text alongside any structured UI.
// app/blog/[slug]/page.tsx
// Render at least 300 words of original body content alongside the H1
<article>{post.body}</article>
ID: marketing-advanced-seo.content-optimization.content-depth
Severity: medium
What to look for: Count all content pages. For each, estimate the word count of the main content area (excluding navigation, header, footer). Enumerate pages with fewer than 300 words. Examine content page components for text content patterns. This is a structural proxy check, not a word count tool. Look for indicators of thin content: (1) content pages primarily composed of navigation, headers, and footers with minimal body copy (the main content area has fewer than 3-4 paragraphs or content blocks), (2) template pages where the body content is a single short paragraph, (3) blog/article listing pages that show only titles and dates with no excerpt or summary text.
Pass criteria: Content pages have substantive body content — multiple paragraphs, or a mix of text, structured data, and descriptive copy sufficient to answer a search query. At least 90% of content pages should have at least 300 words of original content.
Fail criteria: Content pages have minimal body text (a single short paragraph, or primarily navigation/CTA elements with no explanatory content). Blog/article listing pages show no excerpt or preview text.
Skip (N/A) when: The project is a web app, dashboard, or tool where pages are primarily functional interfaces rather than content (no blog, no landing pages, no documentation). Signal: no content-focused route patterns detected.
Cross-reference: For heading quality on these pages, see heading-keyword-quality. For duplicate content handling, see duplicate-content-handling.
Detail on fail: "Thin content pattern detected. Example: /features page contains only 2 short sentences of body copy plus navigation elements. Content pages need sufficient depth to compete in search."
Remediation: Search engines assess content quality partly by depth and completeness. A page that answers a question fully tends to outrank a thin page on the same topic. For each content page, aim for enough text to fully explain the topic — typically 300 or more words for informational pages, more for competitive queries. If a page covers a narrow topic thoroughly, that is fine; the concern is pages that are clearly incomplete or serve as navigation placeholders.
// app/blog/[slug]/page.tsx — ensure sufficient content depth
// Each blog post should render at least 300 words of original content in the main body