Focus on Creating Fewer Stronger Pages Rather Than Splitting Them Up
John recommends focusing on having fewer, stronger pages rather than splitting up longer pieces of content into separate pages to target different queries.
A Small Proportion of Thin Pages Is Not an Issue
Thin content is a normal occurrence on websites and shouldn’t be considered a critical issue if it only impacts a small proportion of pages e.g. large news publishers may have some shorter articles which still provide unique content.
A Small Proportion of Thin Content Pages is Fine
Thin content pages can be a natural part of a site, like on category pages, and isn’t an issue with Google providing it is a small proportion of a site’s pages.
Microsites Can Be Seen as Doorway Pages
Microsites often look like a collection of doorway pages. If you are looking to build these microsites up in the long run then this might be an option, but if they don’t have value beyond driving traffic to another site, then microsites aren’t recommended for search and should be noindexed.
Google Tries to Figure Out Full Content When Encounters 206 Response Code
For pages returning the 206 response code (don’t have full content), Google follows that response code and tries to figure out the full content of the page so they can index it. Google doesn’t do anything special for this 206 response code, they try to follow the HTTP standards.
Doorway’ Pages May Result in a Manual Penalty
A large number of thin pages, with boilerplate content and nothing unique except for a few changed keywords, may be considered doorway pages which could result in a manual penalty from the spam team.
Manual Action Penalties can be Applied to Thin, Spun or Aggregated Content
Thin content penalties can be applied to sites manually by the web spam team where the entire site seems to be thin, ‘spun’, or aggregated from other sources without any unique additional value.
Google Considers Amount of Unique Content Per Page and Number of Pages with Unique Content
Google looks at how much text on each page is unique, and how many pages have unique content.
Return 404 or Noindex for Empty Pages
Google prefers you to return a 404 status or add a noindex for empty pages, like category pages with no items listed, even if temporary.