Ecommerce site product link. How to handle a link that doesn't exist.
-
Suppose we have this product A, and we just have a single item for this. When the item is sold out we do not want to show it on the website saying "out of stock". Instead we would like to remove the product from out store which will now result in a url that doesn't exist.
And google webmaster tool and Moz analytic will show them as page not found after they crawl over the site. Should i be generating a new sitemap.xml and update ?
How do i handle those pages that don't exist anymore ?
Thanks
-
Hi,
So you have a few options.
1. Create a non-product page that list similar items and an no-longer available. This gives the users a notice they arrived at the right page but were too late. Along with actionable options it may convert into sales of similar items.
2. 301 the url to the parent category, this is a flat out redirect and maybe the easiest to setup but I don't like the user experience it provides, it does give the benefit of passing the link juice back to the parent.
3. Meta Tag NoIndex this is a pretty much a search engine only fix, it doesn't pass the link juice anywhere but prevents errors from getting to search engines and crawlers.
You can read more about my thoughts and some other opinions on a similar question posted last week here:
I hope this helps and good luck,
Don
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
-
Will noindex pages still get link equity?
We think we get link equity from some large travel domains to white label versions of our main website. These pages are noindex because they're the same URLs and content as our main B2C website and have canonicals to the pages we want indexed. Question is, is there REALLY link equity to pages on our domain which have "noindex,nofollow" on them? Secondly we're looking to put all these white label pages on a separate structure, to better protect our main indexed pages from duplicate content risks. The best bet would be to put them on a sub folder rather than a subdomain, yes? That way, even though the pages are still noindex, we'd get link equity from these big domains to www.ourdomain.com/subfolder where we wouldn't to subdomain.ourdomain.com? Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | HTXSEO0 -
Sudden drop in traffic since website redesign – can't spot double firing sessions pre-update
Hi all, We launched an updated website around mid-April and have seen a long-term drop in unique page views and sessions since then. Between 25-35%. Page views returned to normal within a month, however. In terms of acquisition, we've not lost referrals or direct traffic, just organic sessions. I haven't seen any significant Google updates except for 'Fred' but that was in March (pre-website update). We did have to do some 301s and fix up an HTML and XML sitemap, etc, post launch – but that's been in place for a while now so shouldn't still have such an effect? We are also struggling with load speed at the moment, working on this at the moment. Didn't think this had a such a significant impact on ranking however. We've lost mostly non-UK traffic, especially USA. We're actually climbing rankings for a lot of new keywords I'm targeting, so I can't see how our SEO has been hampered. Frustratingly, I wasn't using Search Console or Moz Pro before this update, so can't compare much in the way of keyword traffic (I know I feel very silly now). I don't know if it's a reporting issue (I wish it was). I mean we had both GTM and GA tags on the website (I didn't know this until I looked into it) but these were present post website-launch. And I haven't found enough double firing sessions or page views to suggest we used to be getting double figures anyway. Before this, we were ranking brilliantly and getting more organic traffic than ever. All the best,
Reporting & Analytics | | landport0 -
What are all the 5's in SEO Queries in Analytics?
Every small business client has the same thing. 5 impressions for keywords, row after row, every single month. Why exactly 5 and why month after month the same thing? I see this in every local business I work in - and for very important phrases! It's gotten to the point that I think those are fake and I just look at the impressions that have numbers great than 5. Obviously I have to get their impressions up, but what am I to believe about these?
Reporting & Analytics | | katandmouse0 -
Lost rankings after disavowing links
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0 -
Google Analytics VS target="_blank" internal links: How much wrong is it?
I am working on an e-commerce website, and our CEO is sure that having target="_blank" in internal search result is boosting the conversion (not sure, but it's not an issue at the moment). The problem is that Google Analytics sees all URLs visited from search results as entrances/direct visits, hence the Booking Funnel Tracking does not work as it was supposed to. Is there any way to recover the tracking? Or we shall get the rid of target="_blank" attribute?
Reporting & Analytics | | apartmentGin0 -
Are organic search visitors always seen as organic in origin, even if their return to the site is direct?
Many of our conversions occur in a customers second visit to the site. Often, a customer will arrive at our site, submit a finance application, leave, and return at a later date to checkout. We are interested in tracking how many of our checkouts come from customers who originally found our site through an organic search result. If a customer enters the site through organic search, leaves, and returns later through an email link or directly entering our URL, will G analytics show that customer as direct or organic origin? Cheers, Ben
Reporting & Analytics | | WSPL0 -
Why we shouldn't use AWstats to measure marketing efforts?
and what are the disadvantages of awstats compared to Google Analytics?
Reporting & Analytics | | esiow20130 -
Why isn't Google showing the first keyword result in Analytics anymore?
Just checked my Google Analytics traffic sources under organic search and it dosen't display the first keyword, it says "not provided" is there another way of determining the #1 organic searched keyword that my site was found under?
Reporting & Analytics | | Randog0