On-Page & Content · 3.16
Comprehensive Topic Depth
Answering the whole question someone's actually asking, not just a narrow slice of it — a page about "homes for sale in [town]" that only shows listings, with nothing about schools, transport, or price trends, is answering less than half the real question.
Why this matters
The customer’s side
If a page only partly answers what they came to find out, they leave and go find the rest of the answer somewhere else — meaning you've done the work of attracting them, then lost them because they couldn't find the information they were looking for.
The search engine’s side
Thin pages rank worse, even when everything else is optimised
Google assesses how fully a page satisfies everything a searcher likely wants to know — a thin page ranks worse even if technically well-optimised otherwise.
See it happen
Same page, same question. One of these actually finishes answering it.
“Houses for sale in [town]” — thin
Answers a fifth of what they actually came to find out.
Same page — comprehensive
Covers what the top-ranking competitors cover, and then some.
How to check yours
Method 1 — Build a competitor gap checklist
the thorough version — slower, but gives you a genuinely specific list of what's actually missing.
- 1.Pick one specific page or topic to test — for example, your "houses for sale in [town]" page.
- 2.Search that exact phrase (or a close variant) in Google.
- 3.Open the top 3-5 ranking pages, not just the first result.
- 4.For each one, list out every distinct subtopic they cover — schools, transport links, price trends, local amenities, an FAQ section, whatever's there.
- 5.Build a simple checklist: every subtopic you found across all of them down one side, then tick which ones your own page actually covers.
- 6.Anywhere you have a gap is a real, specific thing to fix — not a vague "make it longer."
How to fix what you find
Direct gap-filling
add dedicated sections covering whatever the checklist revealed was missing — schools, price trends, financing for buyers, yield and compliance for landlords — written using your own real local knowledge.
Original data competitors can't copy
pull genuinely unique information — actual sold-price history for the street or area (free via the Land Registry), or your own agency's real data on how quickly properties in that area typically sell. Depth nobody else can easily replicate.
Video, transcribed into text
record yourself walking through the topic — a short area tour, or a "what to know before buying here" chat — then get it transcribed and added to the page as written content. Genuine depth, plus a video asset you can reuse elsewhere.
Bring in a genuine local expert
a mortgage broker, solicitor, or surveyor you already work with contributes a short, real section — "what a local mortgage broker wants you to know about buying in [town]." Authentic expertise most competitors won't have, and it can build a referral relationship on the side.
A real FAQ section, built from real questions
use the actual questions clients have asked you over time, or pull from the keyword research methods covered earlier in this course, to build an FAQ section addressing genuine, common gaps.
Keeping on top of it
Competitors keep adding content too, so "thorough" today can look thin again within a year — worth a comparison check quarterly.
How Reyse handles this
Done With You
we run the competitor comparison and tell you exactly what's missing, with options for how to fill it.
Done For You
we research, source, and write the missing depth directly — including chasing the original data and expert contributions where relevant.