Dealing with Dead Pages on an Ecommerce Site
-
Hello everyone!
I'm working on a project for a small jewelry store. They have a store in North Carolina and an ecommerce site (on Shopify - which I loathe!). I'm not exactly an SEO expert, but the client likes the way I handle social media and I know enough to get them much farther down the road than they are now.
The big problem is that most everything sold is handmade and one of a kind. So, the site has LOTS of dead links. I'd love everyone's suggestions on how to:
- Best avoid this in the first place as new products are added and promoted via Facebook, Twitter, blog posts and so on
- Suggestions for managing the sold items - I don't think it seems wise to leave them up as "SOLD"
The site is http://www.laurajamesjewelry.com
I'm grateful for your assistance! And look forward to sharpening my SEO skills.
~Robin
-
We don't have the unique products that you do but here is the policy we follow:
- For Non-book items that we quit carrying we either 301 redirect to a similar item or to the main category for the product along with a message on the screen that the item isn't available but here is another idea.
- For book items that go out of print we leave the item up but have a pop-up telling the customer the item is out of print and we either link to another edition, format or related category.
- For annual items we have just decided to keep reusing the same sku and changing the details. Why waste all the link juice that may be gained each year by discontinuing an item that hardly changes from year to year but expires each year? For all of our past yearly items we are now 301 redirecting them to our permanent sku.
-
Thanks everyone for the responses. Perhaps leaving them up is the best way to manage it. I have to talk with my client and better understand how she works. I hate having all these pages removed, especially as I pump up the social sharing and, hopefully, add ratings and reviews. Then we'd be deleting plenty of search juice.
-
Hi Robin.
If an item is created, images of the jewelry are taken and the product is listed for sale? The question is, when the item sells doesn't that product page still have value? I would think you should keep the page so potential buyers can view products which have been made. A customer could request a similar item be made. If that is the case, keep the pages, mark the item as sold and offer links to similar products or a custom order link.
If the desire is to only sell items presently in inventory, you can 301 old links to similar pages. If there is a link to a 1 carat diamond ring, find the most similar item or category on your site and redirect the link to that page.
-
I don't think it seems wise to leave them up as "SOLD"
Don't make them dead links. Instead, create a portfolio of past work. These pieces might attract links, they might inspire sales, they will showcase craftsmanship and style.
Remove the price and any sales yada yada... and then add when the piece was made and a little more information about it.
You might not need a separate page for each one... maybe a gallery of emerald earrings or diamond pendants?... a big long page of beautiful work... Lots of visitor will scroll down that page and decide... "I want one like this but with a ruby"
-
You bring up a really interesting question. When you say dead links I assume they just lead to nowhere. Ideally you would 301 Redirect (which will pass most of its value to another page therefore keeping some of that SEO steam you have built up) to a page that allows the user to continue to search for similar or related products, keeps them on site with out scaring them away with a "File Not Found" error on their page, etc... I am not familiar with Shopify so I am not sure if its possible. Might be helpful if you were to post one of these links so that we can all take a look at it and work it out as a team.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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 is my inner pages ranking higher than main page?
Hi everyone, for some reason lately i have discovered that Google is ranking my inner pages higher than the main subfolder page. www.domain.com/subfolder --> Target page to be ranked
Technical SEO | | davidboh
www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus ---> page that is currently ranking Also in the SERP most of the time, it is showing both links in this manner. www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus
-----------www.domain.com/subfolder Thanks in advance.1 -
How do I redirect old html pages to new site?
Im seeing in my Google search console some of my old html pages. I never redirecting them and now they get 404 errors. Below is my current htaccess file, how would I changed it so that any html page i.e. intercallsystems.com/index.html forwards to my new site intercallsystems.com ? I have about 5 html pages that I want to redirect. Thank you for the help! Rena Currently my htaccess says: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | palila
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress0 -
How to deal with duplicate pages on Shopify
Moz is alerting me that there's about 60 duplicate pages on my Shopify ecommerce site. Most of them are products. I'm not sure how to fix this since the coding for my site is in liquid. I'm not sure if this is something I even need to be worried about. Most of these duplicate pages are a result of product tags shopify sites use to group products you tag with characteristics that the user can select in the product view. here are a couple URLS: https://www.mamadoux.com/collections/all/hooded https://www.mamadoux.com/collections/all/jumpers https://www.mamadoux.com/collections/all/menswear
Technical SEO | | Mamadoux0 -
Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?
I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing? Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?
Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster0 -
Problem with duplicate pages due to mobile site.
Hey everyone, We've got an issue where our current shopping cart provider (Volusion) allows us to use canonical and rel="alternate" links, however the canonical links are forced on our Desktop as well as mobile pages. When they should only be on the mobile pages. You can view what I mean at the below two pages: http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/fgd400-sensaphone400-p/fgd400.htm https://www.absoluteautomation.ca/mobile/Product.aspx?ProductCode=FGD400 Does anyone have any ideas in terms of working around this?
Technical SEO | | absoauto0 -
Linking shallow sites to flagship sites
We have hundreds of domains that we are either doing nothing with, or they are very shallow. We do not have the time to build enough quality content on them since they are ancillary to our flagship sites that are already in need of attention and good content. My question is...should we redirect them to the flagship site? If yes, is it ok to do this from root domain to root domain or should we link the root domain to a matching/similar page (gymfranchises.com to http://www.franchisesolutions.com/health_services_franchise_opportunities.cfm)? Or should we do something different altogether? Since we have many to redirect (if this is the route we go), should we redirect gradually?
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions0 -
Is optimising on page mobile site content a waiste of time?
Good Morning from dull & overcast 2 degrees C wetherby UK 😞 Whilst Ive changed markup for seo purposes on desktop versions I would like to know if the principles of optimising on page content ie modifyting <title><h1> is exactly the same for <a href="http://www.innoviafilms.com/m/Home.aspx">http://www.innoviafilms.com/m/Home.aspx</a></p> <p>Whilst the desktop version of innovia films ranks well for the terms the client requested some time back now their attention is focusing on the mobile site but I feel a bit confused and I'll try my best to explain...</p> <p>Is it not totally redundant to "Optimise" a mobile site content as when i search via google on a smartphone i'm seeing the SERPS from the desktop version and when I click on a snippet the mobile site just piggybacks on the back of the listing anyway.</p> <p>Put another way is it not a royal waist of time tinkering with mobile site on page content for long as Googles SERPS on a smartphone are exactly the same as on a desktop ie they are not too seperate entities.</p> <p>Or am i totally wrong and you could optimise a mobile for a completely different term to its parent desktop version.?</p> <p>Tried to explain this the best i can, my head hurts... :-(</p> <p>Any insights</p> <p>welcome :-)</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Ranked on Page 1, now between page 40-50... Please help!
My site, http://goo.gl/h0igI was ranking on page one for many of our biggest keywords. All of a sudden, we completely fell off. I believe I'm down somewhere between page 40-50. I have no warning or error messages in webmaster tools. Can anyone please help me identify what the problem is? This is completely unexpected and I don't know how to fix it... Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Prime850