Should I implement 301 Redirects vs 410 in Removing Product Pages?
-
I manage an ecommerce site and had a question about 301 redirects vs 410 when removing product pages. What we have in place now is a 410 because we have removed products that are no longer available and the content itself no longer exists. In all my research, SEO Best Practices is to have a 301 in place. Should we replace our 410 with a 301 redirect or keep it?
-
hi there!
I want to add a bit more of difficulty on this topic. What would you guys do if your products are renewed every year, so product A in 2014 is product B (almost the same as the previous) in 2015, and then B will eventually become C in 2016.
How would you guys avoid the 301 chain?
any suggestion?
Thanks!
rafa
-
Thanks Wissam for your prompt feedback! We do have similar pages we can redirect them too and right now, when the visitor gets the 410 page, we are giving them the option to search our site or go to our home page. I will check into the # of inbound links.
-
Thanks Peter for your prompt feedback! I will look at your Moz link further. Right now, when the visitor gets the 410 page, we are giving them the option to search our site or go to our home page.
-
if the product have a relevant substitute then you can utilize the the 301. but if the product don't have a relevant substitute then 404/410 is the right of doing it.
i might rethink intelligently if the product have too much inbound links to it ... but this is case by case situation.
-
Hi Lori
A 410 code it technically correct in the context you are using it, but for SEO purposes you are better to do something with links that are going to the pages you are currently returning 410 codes for.
If you have a page that relates in some way to the page you have removed, then create a 301 redirect and send the requests to the similar page.
If no similar page exists, you could just redirect to the home page. In some cases though in those circumstances it could be worthwhile sending the link to a custom 404 page similar to the one Moz use as you can see for my invalid page query: http://moz.com/404. Rather than use a 301 redirect in those circumstances, this type of response can be a good opportunity to engage with the visitor to try to guide them to the information they are looking for. The Moz 404 page is a good example of that.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
How can i discover how many of my pages have been indexed by google?
I am currently in the process of trying to produce a report for my corporation and this is a metric that i cannot seem to find on OpenSiteExplorer. Could anyone help?
Industry News | | CF20150 -
Changing Domains - How much link juice is lost with 301 redirect?
My company is thinking about rebranding and moving over to a new domain. While we dont have a lot of backlinks, we do have some very valuable ones that we hate to lose. That being said, I think we are in such an infancy that the backlinks we have shouldnt prevent us from rebranding if thats what we choose to do. I am just trying to get an idea of how moving to a new domain will effect the domain authority if we redirect all the pages? Is the best thing to do simply re-direct, or should we reach out to our most valuable links and let them know the domain/link has changed and hopefully they change their link to us? How much is lost by simply 301 every page? We are getting around 70 organic clicks per day and would rather not start from zero again 🙂
Industry News | | DemiGR0 -
Is anyone else looking into ARIA Roles vs HTML5 Markup and Schema.org
Hi im investigating the pros/cons of the Aria Roles, HTML5 Semantic Markup and Schema.org. For those not in the loop: HTML5 Semantic Markup = Semantic Structure Layout. (i.e. Header, Footer, aside (sidebar) Nav) Aria Roles (WAL-Aria)- Defined for Screen Readers Schema.org - Microdata I went gung-ho with some dev costs accounted for to push the new marekup schema. My devs being really good pushed back and in doing further research I have found that there is indeed some underlying complexities surrounding how we structure and markup these pages. A lot of the HTML5 Semantic Stucture code seems to lack adequate purpose, like it was recommended in 2004 (oh wait it was). Schema.org makes sense in the larger realm given in SEO land we love the search engines, although Schema.org vs. Facebook Open Graph. The ARIA attributes look great and work for screen readers (so I am supportive of pursuing) but do they offer and SEO benefit. I would love to get the communities thoughts in general and or thoughts on ignoring HTML5 Semantic markup and just putting in Schema.org tags. Is anyone else going through the same issues? Regards, Phil
Industry News | | AU-SEO1 -
How to go about removing bad/irrelevent links?
We have been made aware of a series of irrelevant links on some rather dodgy sites. http://www.designerdogstop.com/level-static/http://www.bestfirepits.net/some-of-the-best-vacations-for-families/2010/05/05/ http://whatcigarsdoismoke.com/cigar-lighters/cigarette-cigar-2/ http://dollfuss.org/build-bear-hawaii/ Absolute rubbish im sure you will agree. These links must surely be causing our link profile some damage. They are currently wordpress sites with no means of contacting the authors. What ways and means are there of removing these negative pages and links? Cheers all, any help appreciated.
Industry News | | TimHolmes0 -
Will Search Engines implement timestamps?
We continuously receive comments on our partners' websites which are obviously spam from a third world country trying to build backlinks that some SEO firm outsourced. Out of curiosity, and what I've added to my prayers at night is for the search engines to apply an algorithm update to discredit comments posted under a certain time frame to help identify spam, and these garbage practices. Do you think something like this would happen? My most important thought is...how can we compete with companies that are doing these practices trying to get that quick buck? Look, we want to play the game with the highest ethics and morals and not "cheat" the system because we know a "work around". Thoughts...
Industry News | | cyberlicious0 -
Google Products / Google Shopping
My client has a site with products a lot of which are so similar in function that for usability reasons we have combined some products on the same pages. We want to get into Google Shopping, but on the face of it the Google feed seems to want unique urls per product. I guess we could have products on the same page then have single pages as well, though that could generate duplicate content. We could also try pointing several products to 1 URL, does anyone know if this would work? Or can anyone suggest any work arounds? Justin
Industry News | | GrouchyKids0 -
Do "big" SEO companies remove links after termination of service?
Or worded differently: Has anyone heard of "big" SEO companies removing links after termination of service? I have a client who isn't particularly happy with the SEO he's getting from a big Aussie SEO firm, and he wants to terminate, however they've built thousands of links for him and he's a little concerned they might all get pulled. Has anyone heard of this happening, or; Do you think this is a legitimate concern? I think its physically possible to remove backlinks like this because it seems the SEO firm in question is building links by using other client's websites. I also wonder if they might have large content farm style sites where they place links for clients which might be quite easy to take down. Please discuss!
Industry News | | CheapGames990 -
How to remove a Google algorithmic penalty
My site has a Google penalty. I seem to be stuck in the 64th position for a Google search for my sites name. All my keywords that I used to rank well for are now well above the 60th search place in Google. I have resolved the issue I recieved the penalty for and I have asked Google for reconsideration. That has been about 3 months ago. The penalty is still firmly in place. I was wondering if anyone else has had a Google algorithmic penalty removed and if so how did they accomplish this?
Industry News | | tadden0