Removing Out of Stock Items from an E-Commerce website
-
I have a dilemma.
We have over 500 out of stock items that are still listed on our ecommerce website. I'm thinking it would be a good idea to leave them up because they are all considered content by google, and the keywords might drive traffic.
On the other hand, the customers might be disappointed if the items are out of stock (we don't restock our sold out items), and many times, they will not lead to a conversion if the customer is looking for something very specific.
Considering all these factors (and some unmentioned ones), my main question is: If I remove content, does that make all of the other content on our website stronger by having more pagerank and link juice flow to them, or do I hurt our rankings?
-
If you have more pages that all contain links to the same pages (e.g. category pages) then more link juice will be flowing to those category pages. I wouldn't just remove the content, at least 301 redirect the old products to a category page, or a newer version of that product if appropriate - include a message on the new page explaining that the product they searched for is out of stock, but we suggest this/these alternative(s), or something like that. If you don't want to 301 them, you could just have links on the out of stock pages to new item or category pages.
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
-
My Website stopped being in the Google Index
Hi there, So My website is two weeks old, and I published it and it was ranking at about page 10 or 11 for a week maybe a bit longer. The last few days it dropped off the rankings, which I assumed was the google algorithm doing its thing but when I checked Google Search Console it says my domain is not in the index. 'This page is not in the index, but not because of an error. See the details below to learn why it wasn't indexed.' I click request indexing, then after a bit, it goes green saying it was successfully indexed. Then when I refresh the website it gives me the same message 'This page is not in the index, but not because of an error. See the details below to learn why it wasn't indexed.' Not sure why it says this, any ideas or help is appreciated cheers.
Technical SEO | | sydneygardening0 -
Multilingual website
My website is https://www.india-visa-gov.in and we are doing multilingual. There are three options 1. TLD eg india-visa-gov.fr (French) india-visa-gov.de (German) 2. Subdomain eg: fr.india-visa-gov.in (French) de.india-visa-gov.in (German) 3. Folders https://www.india-visa-gov.in/fr/ (French) https://www.india-visa-gov.in/de/ (German) We have tried the 3rd option but need to know whether its better or not for the long term health from SEO. Does the MOZ DA carry better in Subdomain or TLD or Folders? What does MOZ recommend to maintain DA? Thanks
Technical SEO | | amitdipsite150220200 -
How to remove number of products in your Google SERP?
I want to remove number of product appearing in search result. Sharing the screenshot as reference. ecrUriH
Technical SEO | | RaviM0 -
Is the content on my website is garbage?
I received a mail from google webmasters, that my website is having low quality content. Website - nowwhatmoments.com
Technical SEO | | Green.landon0 -
Website Pop up
I want to install a pop up on my site for collecting email addresses. I use nopcommerce as my platform. I was quoted a price to custom develop it but thought there might just be a simple plugin. I can find them for wordpress but that is all. Does anybody have experience with this?
Technical SEO | | katazoom0 -
Canonicalization Issue | E-commerce
Hey everyone! How are you doing? I spent this week trying to solve some technical issues on my website. However i am having trouble with Duplicate Content. I came to the conclusion that canonicalization is a great solution to this problem, however, i am having trouble implementing it. The duplicate problem arises from the fact that for each product i have several colors or different attributes. For example. I have the category "Construction Clips" and then links to "Color" in which the user can choose White or Sandstone. The content is almost identical for both of them, the only thing that changes is the color. This scenarios repeats many times throughout my webcommerce site. And is throwing me off many Duplicate Content errors. I cannot use the canonicalization in the White or Sandstone page, because is a product page, it doesnt let me add or change anything on the header. http://aceromart.com/Clip-Glamet-Blanco.aspx I dont intend to rank well on most product pages, my priority is that i dont want duplicate errors on my website. What is the best solution for this conundrum? Regards!!! In advance, i thank you for your opinions!
Technical SEO | | JesusD0 -
Sudden drop in website ranking
Since past 2 week my website www.micromaxtablet.in is experiencing sudden drops in the site ranking. I can understand this regression in the site ranking is not because of Goggle Panda update, and their is some other reason. Kindly let me know what could be the other possibilities, and plz also suggest how to get it fixed. Keyword for which the site had the best rankings (in top 3) was "micromax tablet". Now it shows on the second page in the google search and to make it worse, it's losing its position almost every second day.
Technical SEO | | nishant9110 -
How best to optimise a website for more than one location?
I have a client who is a acupuncturist and operates clinics both in Chester and Knutsford in Cheshire the site performs well for Chester based terms such as "Chester acupuncture" this is the primary location the client wishes to focus efforts on but would also like to improve rankings for the Knutsford clinic and area. I have setup local places pages for each clinic and registered each on different local directories. Both clinic addresses are placed on each page of the website and have a map to each on the contact page. Most of the on-page SEO elements such as page titles, descriptions and on-page keywords mainly focus on the term "Chester" over "Knutsford" is it advisable to target both locations in these page elements or will local search have an effect on this and will reduce/ dilute overall rankings for Chester clinic? I haven't setup and separate page for each clinic location as this might help in terms of SEO for improving ranking for both locations but from a user point of view it would just duplicate the same content but for a different location and also would create duplicate content issues. Any advice/ experience on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0