What makes content low value?

[emmab21]

So after reading a post about how to weed out low level content I'm worrying about a fair amount of content on our website.

So let me see if I've got this right; if a page (or pages) has a high bounce rate and a low number of linking domains then Google potentially sees the page as 'low value', correct?

There are a lot of pages on our site that have pictures of widgets, and the main keywords that result in people coming to those pages are 'pictures of #*$! widget'. On average people stay on the page for about 2 minutes and then leave, resulting in high exit and bounce stats.

I have looked at backlinks to these URL's and there are hardly any, but if people are landing on the info they need and then leaving surely the content isn't poor? However people that come to these pages rarely result in conversions, should I be suggesting getting shut of these pages?

[tedster]

A page with a 2 minute time-on-page is a positive signal. IMO, that's not a problem like a nearly instantaneous click-back would be. A "shallow" content page (Panda's target) would not keep visitors engaged for two minutes.

Did these pages lose search traffic for you after Panda, or are you concerned for the future?

[emmab21]

I'm concerned that this content will have a knock on effect, although I have not seen any change in traffic volumes yet. To be honest these pages where added many years ago purely for additional content vaguely based around the subject of our product offering in the hope it might bring in inbound links. I'm fairly confident that we don't get sales as a result of this additional content and there are only 1 or 2 links at the very most to each page. I'm thinking with the way things are heading it's only a matter of time before content like this is 'outed'.

[TheMadScientist]

I have looked at backlinks to these URL's and there are hardly any, but if people are landing on the info they need and then leaving surely the content isn't poor?

You are correct. You might be interested in our most recent little bounce rate discussion, here: [webmasterworld.com...]

I'm so bleeping tired of hearing about bounce rate as a factor I don't feel like posting about it any more, except to say if anyone tells you bounce rate as a whole is a factor like they have some great knowledge of Google and search engines, please feel free to laugh...

[emmab21]

OK so a couple of weeks on and I am noticing our ranking dropping slightly and in turn traffic. So I have spent many an hour number crunching visitor numbers and backlinks to identify what pages could be offending. But the question remains as to what makes content low value? There are roughly 45 pages on our site that have over 1000 backlinks each (home page has over 35000).

But over 1800 of our pages have less than 100 links (right down to 0) I'm not sure what the cut off point should be for moving pages off site. Does anyone have a theory on this?