Best practice for a website where the publications (catalogues) expire frequently
-
Hi guys,
Hope to find some smart SEOs around here and where I can to contribute to the community!
I wanted to share an issue we are having with our website, which is focused on the promotional flyers of the supermarket chains. These are often valid for a short period of time and then expire. So it makes no sense to keep them but also, if we delete them, that would create a lot of 404s or something.
So how do you think it is the best way to go around this problem? should we delete them? or when deleted to redirect the dead pages to the homepage? or keep them in an archive live site.com/brand/archive/ ?
Thank you so much for any opinions, much appreciated!
Best
-
I think Anthony's idea on this is a good one and would be worth considering. I guess it depends on how many of these you have rotating at any one time and how many URLs you therefore have to maintain.
My thought on it would be to create a custom 404 page for your site that is a more pleasant landing page than regular 404 pages are. It could provide a nice apology that the content the link took them the person to is no longer available and show a number of anchored links for where the visitor may like to go to next, e.g. where to view other promotional flyers or other pages on the site which may be important to the visitor.
By doing that you provide a better visitor experience. Here are the recommendations from Moz's page on HTTP status codes. I think these make a lot of sense:
----------------------------- When visitors reach 404 pages, they should be given navigational options so they do not leave the given site. Web optimized 404 errors pages should contain:
- notification that the user has reached a page that does not exist
- a search box
- a easy to understand navigation system so the user can potentially find what they were orginally looking to access
- a link to the home page
-----------------------------
I hope that helps,
Peter -
I think this assessment is spot on. I think the superior strategy would what you mentioned at the end. If you updated the content continuously I believe you would create the most value for the user.
-
Hi-
This is a common problem for many websites, think Job Postings or Real Estate.
There are a few ways to handle it, and you have to decide what is best for your business. As of now, it sounds as if each flier is living on it's own unique URL on your site. Here are the scenarios for that set-up.
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, let them 404 when removed
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, archive them
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, redirect all back to parent subcategory/store page
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, selectively redirect pages to subcategory/store page if you know there are external links pointing at it
What I wonder is if you could just update the content and keep the URL the same.
website.com/store-name/weekly-flier
This would allow you to continuously build links to the same page and build it's authority and ranking ability over time. You could still choose to archive it if you wanted, but I wonder if that would have value for any of your users.
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
-
Should I change my website urls?
We're translating our website in a few languages (FR / DE / JP) using subdirectories. So our website will have the following urls www.brand.com/en
On-Page Optimization | | dcalexandra
www.brand.com/fr
www.brand.com/de
www.brand.com/jp I would like to change the url structure of a few pages from www.brand.com/section/feature-name to www.brand.com/feature-name Is it a good idea to do this now since we're adding the subfolders and these are anyway new urls in google's eyes?0 -
Changing url (permalink) structure of website??
Currently I'm working on SEO of one website www.mocomi.com. I want to change url (permalink) structure of entire website which has more than 5000 pages. Currently website have structure of http://mocomi.com/tenali-raman-the-kings-condition/ Which I want to change it to http://mocomi.com/fun/stories/tenali-raman/tenali-raman-the-kings-condition/ Likewise I want to change entire website permalink url structure to make site architecture more SEO friendly. Which means I'am going to add only categories & subcategories before actual link. Kindly guide with following questions which I need to move forward with this step. How much is it worth to change URL structure? Checklist or factors I need to consider while making this decision? Is it a good practice to change URL's of entire website at once or Should I change it in Parts? How much time it takes google to rank those urls again? Which are the best practices to do so?
On-Page Optimization | | Mocomi1 -
Title tag terminology on website
Hi,
On-Page Optimization | | KasperGJ
I own a website (www.maleribasen.dk), which i'm currently making SEO on. The site actually ranks pretty good, top 1-2 on important searches. The title tag on the frontpage (and lots of other pages too) are "Maleribasen.dk - Buy and sell paintings" (translatated from danish - Maleri means painting). I'm thinking of changing the titles to "Buy and sell paintings | Maleribasen.dk" And then try to use the convention "| Maleribasen.dk" on every other title page. Sometimes use "Buy and sell paintings | Maleribasen.dk" as convention when title is too small. Like the overview of articles would be something like "Articles - Buy and sell paintings | Maleribasen.dk" A specific article would be "How to paint using oil painting | Maleribasen.dk" What do you guys think?0 -
Amazon powered e-commerce website automatically generates page titles. Is there an alternative?
Greetings fellow Mozzers, So the product pages pick up the product name and convert it into the page title by default. The development company says this is an Amazon limitation and we can't set custom page titles for product pages. Is this the case? The official documentation from Amazon does not seem to suggest so. Would greatly appreciate any feedback from the community. Thanks, Rishad.
On-Page Optimization | | RishadShaikh0 -
What are the best eCommerce sites from an SEO perspective?
We're working hard on improving our website right now, and would love to get the community's examples of the best eCommerce sites out there, from an SEO and a general customer-centric design perspective...
On-Page Optimization | | reddogmusic0 -
Site Architecture: How do I best Optimize for Similar Keywords?
Hello Moz Community! I'm really struggling trying to decide on an improved site architecture. I run an online proofreading & editing website. This leaves us targeting many different niche keywords. For example: blog editing/proofreading, essay editing/proofreading, book editing/proofreading, resume... you get the point. I feel like editing & proofreading are similar enough to target on the same page(s). However, the issue is that I'm also having to deal with what I'm calling derivative keywords. For example, when I try to optimize for 'essay editing/proofreading', I also have to think about: paper editing, paper editor, paper correction, edit my paper, etc. I would have no problem optimizing the page for 'essay editing' in the title, H1, etc. and then targeting these words as secondary keywords within the body text, etc., however, I keep thinking 'a large slice of a small pie is better than a small slice of a big one.' You see, the keyword 'essay correction' has only about one-third the monthly searches as 'essay editing', but it is 50% less competitive. The same is loosely true for the rest of the 'derivative' keywords. I'd have no problem building specific pages for these derivative keyword groups, however, I'm very concerned how this would effect my site from a user experience perspective. I don't want to have a master "services" page with links to book editing, resume editing, essay editing, etc. and then also show paper editing, essay correction, etc. To me, this would be confusing... "What's the difference between essay editing and paper editing?". Any guidance is much appreciated. This has got my head spinning! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | TBiz0 -
Best article about internal linking structure?
Hi! Could you please recommend me a good and deep article about best practises in internal linking structure? I need to rethink the structure of a big site (lucky me it's very hierarchical) and I would like to have a look at some great articles about this to consolidate some ideas and have some new ones. I've read some but I would like some recommendations 🙂 Some articles about information architecture would be appreciated as well! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | jorgediaz0 -
What is the best practice for changing a url of an existing page
I a looking through the on-page SEO reports in SEOmoz for one of my sites. It suggests that I change the url of a particular page to match the desired search term I want to rank for. In this case it is a site for a local business and the url is example.com/testimonials. when it probabaly should have instead been example.com/city-business-reviews. I have just a couple links to this page and I'm stuck towards the bottom of page 1 in the SERPs currently. Questions... 1. Should I change the url to include the exact keyword term I want the page to rank for? 2. If yes, what is the best method to ensure that any existing link juice to the current url is retained? Would I change the url, then create a new page with the old url and apply a 301 redirect to point it to the new page? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | fastestmanalive0