Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is the best strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?
-
RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales; and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years.
We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings that older than 2years that do not generate any sales. What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items?
Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.
-
James, I would still make these as out of stock.
If these products don't get any organic search or traffic anyway, it is ok to re-direct them.
The message above was for established products that have been indexed by Google over a long period of time.
Please le the know if you have any questions. Also, if someone answer the question to your satisfaction you should mark the comment as a good comment
-
These are not out of stock products. These are items that don't sell and have not sold in years; We have listings older than 5yrs and do not have any sales at all.
You would mark them as out of stock?
-
Hi Cole
These are not out of stock products. These are items that don't sell and have not sold in years; We have listings older than 5yrs and do not have any sales at all.
You would mark them as out of stock?
-
I have countless clients that get HUGE traffic form products that they have "discontinued"
You worked so hard to get those products to display on Google, why would you throw away all of your traffic with a 301 redirect to a different product causing high bounce rates or even worse taking your visitors to a discontinued product page.
I would simply put an "Out of Stock" notice on that product and have related products below to direct your customers to similar products or maybe an add to waitlist, so if you decide to bring the product back you have immediate customers.
Amazon is a perfect example. For the most part, they do not delete or remove products. If you search a product that is no longer in stock at Amazon it will say out of stock, still allowing you to see multiple reviews on that product or other sellers offering similar products.
-
Hey,
If a product is out-of-stock temporarily, best practice is to link to alternative products, for example:
- Newer models or versions.
- Similar products from other brands.
- Other products in the same category that match in quality and price.
- The same product in different colours.
This provides a good service to customers and helps search engines find and understand related pages easier.
If a product is out-of-stock permanently there are three main options.
1: Product returns a 410 (or 404) Not Found status.
Google understands 410 and 404 Not Found pages are inevitable, but the problem with creating too many of them is it reduces the time search engine crawlers will spend visiting the pages that actually should rank. If this option is implemented, ideally there should be signposts to related products on the Not Found page.2. 301 permanently redirect old product to existing product (e.g. newer version or close alternative).
A dynamically generated message should clearly display on the page e.g. “Product X is no longer available. This is a similar product/the replacement product.”This option is recommended if redirect chains can be minimised, e.g. if product turnover is high the following could happen in a short timeframe:
- Product 1 no longer exists and gets 301 redirected to Product 2.
- Product 2 no longer exists and gets 301 redirected to Product 3.
- Now a redirect chain exists: Product 1 redirects to Product 2 which then redirects to Product 3. Product 1 would need to be updated to redirect to Product 3, without the intermediate redirect to Product 2.
3. 301 permanently redirect old product to parent category. A dynamically generated message should clearly display on the page e.g. “Product X is no longer available. Please see similar products below.”
As categories are likely to change less often than products, this is potentially easier to implement than option 2.
-
I'd 301 redirects from the discontinued lines to the main section pages, so
https://www.domain.com/product-type/a-red-sweater
would redirect to
https://www.domain.com/product-type/
-
Can't speak for everyone, but i had this same thing come up with our eCommerce website. We added a feature to our eCommerce store that allowed us to "discontinue" the product. Meaning that we removed the product from being searched or listed in our store. However, if you visited the page by direct URL the product page would load and say discontinued and display a list of related products in hopes the customer would not bounce.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why to add a product id in the url
Hello ! shop.com/en/2628-buy-key-origin-the-sims-4-seasons/ Why will people use a product id in the link? Is there any advantage like better ranking or else?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kh-priyam0 -
Does ID's in URL is good for SEO? Will SEO Submissions sites allow such urls submissions?
Example url: http://public.beta.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online It's our sites beta URL, We are going to implement it for our site. After implementation, it will be live on travelyaari.com like this - "https://www.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online". We have added the keywords etc in the URL "VRL Travels". But the problems is, there are multiple VRL travels available, so we made it unique with a unique id in URL - "13555". So that we can exactly get to know which VRL Travels and it is also a solution for url duplication. Also from users / SEO point of view, the url has readable texts/keywords - "vrl travels online". Can some Moz experts suggest me whether it will affect SEO performance in any manner? SEO Submissions sites will accept this URL? Meanwhile, I had tried submitting this URL to Reddit etc. It got accepted.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Opinion on Gotch SEO methods & services
I would love to get you all's take on Gotch SEO. I am gearing up to link build for a site in the next several months, and have been reading up from sources other than Moz, in preparation. (Need to re-read Moz's guide, too, but I have already read it last year) I'm reading Gotch SEO's main link building method articles right now, and am wondering what you all think. Do you think they have a good approach and are generally reliable? Likewise, has anyone used their service for getting a link? What was your experience? Or if you haven't used the service, any quick takes on it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | scienceisrad0 -
How to make second site in same niche and do white hat SEO
Hello, As much as we would like, there's a possibility that our site will never recover from it's Google penalties. Our team has decided to launch a new site in the same niche. What do we need to do so that Google will not mind us having 2 sites in the same niche? (Menu differences, coding differences, content differences, etc.) We won't have duplicate content, but it's hard to make the sites not similar. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Unique page URLs and SEO titles
www.heartwavemedia.com / Wordpress / All in One SEO pack I understand Google values unique titles and content but I'm unclear as to the difference between changing the page url slug and the seo title. For example: I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About I've noticed some of my competitors using url structures more like "www.competitor.com/san-francisco-video-production-about" Would it be wise to follow their lead? Will my landing page rank higher if each subsequent page uses similar keyword packed, long tail url? Or is that considered black hat? If advisable, would a url structure that includes "san-francisco-video-production-_____" be seen as being to similar even if it varies by one word at the end? Furthermore, will I be penalized for using similar SEO descriptions ie. "San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Portfolio" and San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Contact" or is the difference of one word "portfolio" and "contact" sufficient to read as unique? Finally...am I making any sense? Any and all thoughts appreciated...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | keeot0 -
Does IP Blacklist cause SEO issues?
Hi, Our IP was recently blacklisted - we had a malicious script sending out bulk mail in a Joomla installation. Does it hurt our SEO if we have a domain hosted on that IP? Any solid evidence? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Would having a + plus sign between keywords in meta title have an effect on SEO?
I have seen one of my clients' competitors do this in their meta title and it got me a little intrigued... I understand that google uses the + sign as an operator in adwords, and to a certain extent, as a search tool, but would it help or make any difference to the SEO in the meta title/data (eg. 'SEO+Marketing+Services')? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LexisClick10 -
Off-page SEO and link building
Hi everyone! I work for a marketing company; for one of our clients' sites, we are working with an independent SEO consultant for on-page help (it's a large site) as well as off-page SEO. Following a meeting with the consultant, I had a few red flags with his off-page practices – however, I'm not sure if I'm just inexperienced and this is just "how it works" or if we should shy away from these methods. He plans to: guest blog do press release marketing comment on blogs He does not plan to consult with us in advance regarding the content that is produced, or where it is posted. In addition, he doesn't plan on producing a report of what was posted where. When I asked about these things, he told me they haven't encountered any problems before. I'm not saying it was spam-my, but I'm more not sure if these methods are leaning in the direction of "growing out of date," or the direction of "black-hat, run away, dude." Any thoughts on this would be crazy appreciated! Thanks, Casey
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CaseyDaline0