Avoiding Google penalties and being a "Thin Affiliate"
What is a Thin Affiliate Site?
A thin affiliate site is a website that offers no valuable information. For example, a store with just a list of products or advertising banners. This is a phrase used by Google to label a site that they don’t believe deserves good rankings.
Websites with no unique content, auto blogging sites, sites with “spun” content etc. are all classified as Thin Affiliate sites.
How to Avoid being a Thin Affiliate?
If you do not want your site to be labelled as a Thin Affiliate, you need to add value to your store. In order to do this, you can add unique content. This is where liking the subject or knowing a little about it can help.
It makes it easier to write content for something that you love, have knowledge of or are interested in learning about. If you don't want to write the content yourself, you can opt for a content writing service or use the AI content generation features in FreshStore.
When it comes to content, don't copy it directly from other websites. Add informative articles and something that customers can benefit from. Answer their concerns and questions or make them think about something.
You can add video or content reviews, product comparison charts, or anything you feel will add value to your store.
Content-to-Page Ratio
It is helpful to think about the number of unique content pages you have in your store compared to the total number of pages.
If you have many thousands of products in your store but only three unique pages of content, then this ratio is very low.
The lower the ratio, the less likely it is that Google will rank your store.
Making a Good First Impression
Don’t launch your store until you have a few pages of unique content. You only get one chance to give Google a good first impression.
Further Reading
Our guide on populating your store has great advice on avoiding Google penalties by keeping your store lean:
https://guides.freshlabs.group/article/505-populating-your-store