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
-
Best practices for retiring 100s of blog posts?
Hi. I wanted to get best practices for retiring an enterprise blog with hundreds of old posts with subject matter that won't be repurposed. What would be the best course of action to retire and maintain the value of any SEO authority from those old blog pages? Is it enough to move those old posts into an archive subdirectory and Google would deprioritize those posts over time? Or would a mass redirect of old blog posts to the new blog's home page be allowed (even though the old blog post content isn't being specifically replaced)? Or would Google basically say that if there aren't 1:1 replacement URLs, that would be seen as soft-404s and treated like a 404?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David_Fisher0 -
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
Rosemary0 -
Should I submit a sitemap for a site with dynamic pages?
I have a coupon website (http://couponeasy.com)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shopperlocal_DM
Being a coupon website, my content is always keeps changing (as new coupons are added and expired deals are removed) automatically. I wish to create a sitemap but I realised that there is not much point in creating a sitemap for all pages as they will be removed sooner or later and/or are canonical. I have about 8-9 pages which are static and hence I can include them in sitemap. Now the question is.... If I create the sitemap for these 9 pages and submit it to google webmaster, will the google crawlers stop indexing other pages? NOTE: I need to create the sitemap for getting expanded sitelinks. http://couponeasy.com/0 -
Bad for SEO to have two very similar websites on the same server?
Is it bad for SEO to have two very similar sites on the same server? What's the best way to set this up?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
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 -
Site being targeted by hardcore porn links
We noticed recently a huge amount of referral traffic coming to a client's site from various hard cord porn sites. One of the sites has become the 4th largest referrer and there are maybe 20 other sites sending traffic. I did a Whois look up on some of the sites and they're all registered to various people & companies, most of them are pretty shady looking. I don't know if the sites have been hacked or are deliberately sending traffic to my client's site, but it's obviously a concern. The client's site was compromised a few months ago and had a bunch of spam links inserted into the homepage code. Has anyone else seen this before? Any ideas why someone would do this, what the risks are and how we fix it? All help & suggestions greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance. MB.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MattBarker0 -
How Is Your Approach Towards Adult SEO?
I would like to know how SEOMoz community members approach adult SEO. How do you approach a project when you get one (if you do it that is). If you dont do adult SEO, why do you not do it? Is it because it's much more difficult than normal SEO or do you not want to associate yourself with that industry?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConversionChamp0