Most of Google's website penalties are fairly straightforward. But there's one that has the potential to be confusing, and cause serious trouble for webmasters who don't know how to properly address it. The thin content manual penalty, introduced just last year, is one that removes websites from search results on the basis of their content adding no value to the online landscape.

But what is thin content, exactly? And how can webmasters who receive this penalty take actions to get their sites ranking again? In this post, I'll define thin content, explain the penalty, and provide ways that you can recover from it - or avoid it, if it's something you haven't yet encountered.