Discontinued Products
-
We have a medium/large ecommerce site that imports manufacturer products every year (or when new products come in/out) We are trying to decide what to do with the discontinued product pages.
As we are using shopify we do not have an option of custom404 error pages so we cannot use this. We also cannot do a 30 redirect with a custom message as to why they are being redirected so dont like that idea. What we were thinking of doing was leaving the page with its content and adding a message that the item has been discontinued and a few similar products listed below with an option of clicking on a link to go up a level to the category/subcategory of that products brand.
My question is:
Should we noindex/follow these pages when they go out of stock so search engines don't continue to index them.
Should we add the tag:
(we do not have advance warning so it would be at the time that we update the listing to say item is no longer available)
My concern with doing the above and leaving it to be indexed is that google may regard these pages as soft 404 if the bounce rate gets very high - as users will not be staying very long on the page.
Any advice would be very much appreciated!
-
http://www.apelectric.com/6241-Generac-Guardian-Series-14kW-p/6241.htm
This is the code I used:
-
Thanks for your response - you are the first one I found who uses it - can you give me an example of a page you've used it on so I can see how you did it? Do you think its a problem to do it in bulk and to only do it once the item is actually discontinued - we get updates from the company of lists of items which are discontinued so its a lot at a time and without much prior warning!
-
I do use it. Whether or not it is a good or bad thing I can't really tell you. In my opinion, it is the best practice because it gives both the searcher and the engine the optimal information and provides the best experience for both. I use the discontinued tag on the pages that I don't 404.
-
Thanks for all your responses. Sounds like everyone thinks keeping the page and just displaying a message that the item is discontinued with alternative suggestions is the best idea which is what we were thinking of doing.
However, noone has answered regarding google's discontinued tag- has anyone used it? Is it recommended or not?
-
Hi there,
I work for a rather large supply company as well. When we have large items go out of stock we repurpose existing pages to advertise new pages. If it is a small product, like a part or something, we 404 the page.
This is an example of a repurposed page: http://www.apelectric.com/6241-Generac-Guardian-Series-14kW-p/6241.htm
404 errors are not a negative thing per say. Of course you don't want hundreds of them because it creates a negative user experience. If a product is truly discontinued, it is better to let the searcher and the engine know that. No following the pages isn't the best idea because it can prevent traffic from getting to your site. We have about 87 404 pages and they have not influenced our organic rankings. I don't recommend 301 redirecting product pages because it can be misleading to the searcher. For example, we rank really well for the Generac 6241. I wanted to 301 that URL to the replacement model, but if someone types in Generac 6241 and lands on Generac 6461, they are probably going to bounce right off the page. That is not good either. One thing I have done in the past is redirect the product page to a related category page. So, the Generac 6241 could have been redirected to the Air Cooled Generators page. I think this was the better way to do it however.
If a page has value, and can be used as a way to direct traffic to another source that is my favorite way to handle discontinued products. At the end of the day, a $15 part doesn't justify the amount of time it will take me to redesign the page, so I let it become a 404 error.
This is a video from Matt Cutts at Google on how they handle 404 pages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oya9Pl7ukNo
-
As per Moosa's response, I would agree that leaving the products in place is the best option. Would you rather have these pages none existent to search? or would you rather have them available where serps and users can still find them.
If a user can still find them you can then try to upsell from a discontinued item or cross sell to another variant. This way you have a second bite at the cherry and have the chance to still convert a sale. If nothing is available you may miss out on these additional opportunities.
Simply make sure that you demonstrate effectively that the item is not longer available, but these other products may help.
-
In your given scenario the best idea is to leave a message a t the top of the page that the product is discontinued and for new products take them to the new products page. Leaving them no follow or follow is up to you.
- If you will leave them follow with a custom message that will take them to a relevant page will help decrease the overall bounce rate of the website.
- If you no-follow them it slowly and gradually will be no index from the Google and the traffic that was coming from search engine to those pages will be discounted.
If I would be at your place, I would have designed the powerful message with bright color at the top of the page and will leave them follow as this will allow some of the traffic on that page to move to other areas of the website.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Ctr question with home page and product pages
do you believe that the advantage of targeting a search term on the home page is now worse off than before? as I understand it ctr is a big factor now And as far as i can see if two pages are equal on page etc the better ctr will win out, the issue with the home page is the serp stars cannot be used hence the ctr on a product page will be higher? I feel if you where able to get a home page up quicker (1 year instead of two) you still lost out in the end due to the product page winning on ctr? do you think this is correct?
Algorithm Updates | | BobAnderson0 -
Duplicate Content on Product Pages with Canonical Tags
Hi, I'm an SEO Intern for a third party wine delivery company and I'm trying to fix the following issue with the site regarding duplicate content on our product pages: Just to give you a picture of what I'm dealing with, the duplicate product pages that are being flagged have URLs that have different Geo-variations and Product-Key Variations. This is what Moz's Site Crawler is seeing as Duplicate content for the URL www.example.com/wines/dry-red/: www.example.com/wines/dry-red/_/N-g123456 www.example.com/wines/dry-red/_/N-g456789 www.example.com/wines/California/_/N-0 We have loads of product pages with dozens of duplicate content and I'm coming to the conclusion that its the product keys that are confusing google. So we had the web development team put the canonical tag on the pages but still they were being flagged by google. I checked the of the pages and found that all the pages that had 2 canonical tags I understand we should only have one canonical tag in the so I wanted to know if I could just easily remove the second canonical tag and will it solve the duplicate content issue we're currently having? Any suggestions? Thanks -Drew
Algorithm Updates | | drewstorys0 -
The evolution of Google's 'Quality' filters - Do thin product pages still need noindex?
I'm hoping that Mozzers can weigh in with any recent experiences with eCommerce SEO..... I like to assume (perhaps incorrectly) that Google's 'Quality' filters (formerly known as Panda) have evolved with some intelligence since Panda first launched and started penalising eCommerce sites for having thin product pages. On this basis i'd expect that the filters are now less heavy handed and know that product pages with no or little product description on them are still a quality user experience for people who want to buy that product. Therefore my question is this...
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO
Do thin product pages still need noindex given that more often that not they are a quality search result for those using a product specific search query? Has anyone experienced penalty recently (last 12 months) on an ecommerce site because of a high number of thin product pages?0 -
Product descriptions & category pages
Hi I wanted to ask if anyone knew how much, if at all, product page titles/descriptions affected the rankings of the category page they're linked from? I am looking for ways to improve the ranking of category pages, but we don't want to put too much content which overshadows the product listings. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
Multiple products with legitimate duplicate descriptions
We are redeveloping a website for a card company who have far too many products to write unique descriptions for each. Even if they could I don't think it would be beneficial to the user. However they do have unique descriptions for each range which is useful for users viewing an individual card. Which is better practice: a) Ignore the duplicate content issue and supply the user with info about the range b) Provide clear enticing links to find out more about the range which will leave the individual card page a little void of content. Many thanks
Algorithm Updates | | SoundinTheory0 -
Could we run into issues with duplicate content penalties if we were to borrow product descriptions?
Hello, I work for an online retailer that has the opportunity to add a lot of SKUs to our site in a relatively short amount of time by borrowing content from another site (with their permission). There are a lot of positives for us to do this, but one big question we have is what the borrowed content will do to our search rankings (we normally write our own original content in house for a couple thousand SKUs). Organic search traffic brings in a significant chunk of our business and we definitely don't want to do something that would jeopardize our rankings. Could we run into issues with duplicate content penalties if we were to use the borrowed product descriptions? Is there a rule of thumb for what proportion of the site should be original content vs. duplicate content without running into issues with our search rankings? Thank you for your help!
Algorithm Updates | | airnwater0 -
How much posting product links to Social Media affect your ranking? Any use ?
Google has Google Plus. Facebook has partnership with Bing. How much social media affect your ranking ?
Algorithm Updates | | rahijain0