I audited a website last week. They’d been publishing faithfully for years—weekly ministry notes, event announcements, occasional updates. Nothing ranked.
The problem? Google flagged 73% of their pages as thin content.
Before you panic and start counting words on your own site, here’s what you need to know: thin content has nothing to do with word count.
What Thin Content Actually Means
Thin content is any page that provides little or no value to readers.
A 200-word contact page with your address, hours, and map? Not thin. It completely serves its purpose.
A 2,000-word blog post that restates what ten other sites already said, padded with fluff to hit a word count target? Absolutely thin.
Google’s helpful content guidelines ask one question: “Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?”
If yes, it’s thin. The length is irrelevant.
John Mueller from Google stated this explicitly: “Word count is not a sign that a page is thin content.” Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, reinforced this point: “The best word count needed to succeed in Google Search is … not a thing.”
The difference is value, not volume.
A 150-word devotional that delivers a genuinely original spiritual insight is valuable. A 150-word devotional that paraphrases a Bible verse with generic commentary adds nothing.
That’s the distinction Google’s algorithms are making in 2026.
Why This Matters Now
Google’s December 2025 and March 2026 Core Updates fundamentally changed the content landscape. SEO analysts across the industry observed that first-hand experience and original insights increasingly separated winning content from losing content. Generic content from non-experts saw dramatic declines.
I watched sites from multiple industries that had ranked well for years lose 40-60% of traffic overnight. The common denominator? Hundreds of thin pages dragging down their entire site.
Raptive’s analysis of their creator network found a clear pattern, sites with fewer shallow pages maintained stability, while sites where large percentages of content fell below 500 words experienced significant volatility.
The takeaway isn’t “make everything 500+ words.” It’s that volume of low-value pages hurts your whole site. As Raptive summarized, “Great pages can’t save a weak site, but weak pages can hurt a strong site.”
One excellent guide to your food pantry program can’t overcome 50 outdated event announcements and two-sentence ministry stubs. Those weak pages actively damage your strong content.
What Thin Content Looks Like (And What It Doesn’t)
Here’s the pattern I see repeatedly on faith-based sites:
Thin: A product page with just an image and price. Or worse, copied Amazon descriptions.
Fix: Write 300 words explaining who needs this resource, what problem it solves, and why you recommend it.
Thin: “Philippians 4:6 tells us not to be anxious. We should trust God. Amen.”
Not thin: The same verse with historical context (Paul writing from prison), Greek word study, personal testimony, reflection questions, and practical application.
The second one might be 500 words. But it’s the depth that matters, not the length. For an example of how to take a biblical topic and add genuine depth, see my post on biblical hospitality—it goes far beyond surface-level treatment to explore what Scripture actually demands of us.
Thin: “Youth Ministry – Wednesdays 6pm in the gym.”
Not thin: The same information plus who it’s for, what you do, safety measures, parent testimonials, and connection to your church’s mission. That’s 300-400 words of value.
Not thin at all: Your contact page with address, hours, phone, email, and map. Even if it’s only 100 words. It completely serves its purpose.
See the difference? It’s not about word count. It’s about whether the page fully serves the reader’s need.
How to Find Thin Content on Your Site
Google Search Console tells you directly. Go to Page Indexing and look for “Crawled – currently not indexed.” That means Google looked at your page and decided it wasn’t worth indexing. If this number is growing, you have a quality problem.
In Google Analytics 4, check for pages with engagement time under 10 seconds and bounce rates above 70% (high bounce rates often signal low-value content, though context matters).
The simplest test? Read your shortest pages and ask: “If I searched for this topic on Google, would this page fully answer my question, or would I need to search again?”
Be honest. Your readers will be.
Three Ways to Fix Thin Content
Every thin page needs one response – expand it, consolidate it, or delete it.
Expand when the page gets traffic, has backlinks, or covers a topic central to your mission.
Don’t just add words. Add value. That weak Philippians 4:6 devotional becomes valuable when you add Paul’s prison context, Greek word study, three practical worry-management practices, personal testimony, and guided prayer. You’ve transformed thin into useful.
Consolidate when multiple pages compete for the same keywords.
You have eight posts: “Prayer for Anxiety,” “Prayer for Fear,” “Prayer for Worry,” “Prayer for Stress.” Pick the strongest URL, combine the best content into “The Complete Christian Guide to Overcoming Anxiety: Prayers, Scripture, and Practical Steps,” and 301 redirect the rest.
Delete when pages have zero traffic for 12+ months or when content is completely outdated.
Use a 301 redirect to relevant content if it exists. Use 410 Gone if it doesn’t. Ask: “Will anybody miss this if it’s gone?” If no, remove it.
What About Text-to-HTML Ratio
You’ve probably seen this SEO warning: “Low text-to-HTML ratio detected.”
Here’s what Google says about it: nothing. John Mueller stated explicitly that text-to-HTML ratio “makes absolutely no sense at all for SEO. Zero. Nada. Zilch.”
It’s not a ranking factor. But extremely low ratios often indicate technical bloat—excessive code from page builders, unminified scripts, ad widgets—that can slow your site. And slow sites do affect rankings.
Treat it like a check engine light. If an SEO tool flags it, investigate whether you have performance issues worth fixing, but don’t chase an arbitrary ratio.
Your Competitive Advantage
Here’s what faith-based content creators have that AI and content farms don’t. Genuine expertise and first-hand experience.
A pastor who’s counseled grieving families for 15 years has insights no AI can generate. A nonprofit director who’s served homeless populations for a decade knows implementation details that don’t exist in training manuals. A missionary who’s lived cross-culturally can write about biblical hospitality with unmatched authority.
That’s your advantage. Use it.
Don’t just list Bible verses about prayer. Share the prayer practice that sustained you through your daughter’s cancer. Explain what you learned about lament during deployment. Describe how your understanding changed after leaving a toxic church.
For example, when I wrote about Bible verses on immigration, I didn’t just compile a list of verses. I explored the Hebrew word ger, connected Old and New Testament themes, addressed modern applications, and challenged comfortable assumptions. That’s the difference between a thin Scripture list and valuable biblical content.
That’s first-hand experience. That’s expertise. That’s the kind of content industry analysts observed gaining ground in recent Google updates.
For churches: Transcribe your sermons. One credentialed pastor’s sermon demonstrates experience, theological expertise, pastoral authority, and organizational trustworthiness simultaneously. It’s worth more to Google than ten AI devotionals.
For nonprofits: Your program outcomes, beneficiary testimonials, and impact data are unique assets no competitor can replicate. “Served 347 families in 2025” with real stories is impossible to classify as thin.
Once you’ve identified your unique expertise, diversify how you share it. For guidance on creating different types of valuable content, see my post on blog content variety.
The Bottom Line
Google’s 2025-2026 algorithm changes reward genuine expertise and penalize mass-produced content. For faith-based creators, this is good news.
You’re not competing against content farms anymore. You’re competing on experience and authority—both of which you actually have.
Stop publishing many thin pages. Start publishing fewer, deeper ones.
Consolidate overlapping devotionals. Expand ministry stubs. Delete outdated content. Invest time in your About page and ministry descriptions—they’re E-E-A-T powerhouses.
Your personal expertise and lived experience are your competitive advantage. Share insights gained through ministry, study, suffering, and spiritual growth. That’s the content Google’s systems surface now.
Your thin content isn’t a death sentence. It’s just pages that need fixing, consolidating, or removing.
Start with your Google Search Console Page Indexing report. Find “Crawled – currently not indexed” pages. Pick the top 10. Decide: expand, consolidate, or delete.
Then do it again next month.
You don’t have to fix everything overnight. But Google’s algorithms aren’t getting more lenient—they’re getting sharper at detecting content that wastes people’s time.
For more guidance on creating content that serves readers while meeting Google’s standards, see my post on how to write blog posts that rank on Google.
The algorithms are finally catching up to what’s always been true: authentic, helpful content from real people with genuine expertise beats mass-produced filler every time.
About the Author
Hope Turner holds an MA in Biblical Studies from Dallas Theological Seminary and works as an SEO/AEO Manager at a marketing agency in Tampa. She writes at graceinthemargins.com about faith, justice, and what it costs to follow Jesus in a world that makes following expensive. Hope volunteers helping purpose-driven organizations reach the people they’re called to serve. She’s the author of Beyond Comfort: A Devotional on Loving Your Neighbor, available on Amazon.
Connect with Hope on LinkedIn.