Best way to handle redirection for products that come in and out of inventory.
-
We have a large volume of products that rotate seasonally. From an SEO perspective we are looking for the best method on how to handle these issues.
Currently when crawler or user encounters a URL to a product that is no longer in inventory we are looking at two things. One, the request comes in and send a 200 to a page that says ITEM NOT FOUND. Option 2, is simply send them to a 404.
The product may or may not be put back into production. What is the best method to handle this?
-
Thank you Rob for taking the time to answer. Much appreciated. That's pretty much the direction we started with. I kind of look at it like an internal search. When an internal search is made for a product that doesn't exist, they get returned to a 200 and static item not found page. So we are moving forward this same method.
Our next step is to reduce 8k 404s a week we get!
-
It really does depend on the product and type of site for sure.
-
I agree here, but with the Panda updates this past year, just having pages up won't really do much. You'll need to improve the user experience to build on the page.
I would build on the page, but look to improve the landing pages of the products that are either no longer available, or the pages that are or will still be online but with products that are not available 'at this time'.
Bring in social media, product landing pages, perhaps a posting 'comment' section for customers to review the products (to offer some user generated content), alongside other features like customized descriptions (don't copy the supplier site), features about the history of the product, the origin of it.. etc..
If it's no longer available, redirecting to a products page of similar relation will help keep the client on the site - while also offering various products of similar needs for their use.
Do all this - I and I see a win-win for you
-
I would simply keep those pages live at all times
I keep seasonal pages up... and have found that they creep up the rankings over the years. Next season they are more valuable.
-
Really depends on the products you're selling. I do like Rob's answer about keeping the page live and offering an alternative or capturing an interest list. You still want the sale or to create the lead so providing some sort of call to action is key if these are significant.
If the product is never coming back, I'd def redirect to a close match or a parent category.
-
You definately don't want to use a 404 error code, so avoid that at. There would be a lot of 301 redirects after that as Google isn't a big fan of 404 pages and it doesn't help your 'user experience'.
Because your product pages (individually) might be gaining links and resources/mentions/social mentions, etc, from customers as they find products, a 404 would produce a loss in valuable inbound linking juice into the domain.
I would simply keep those pages live at all times, but build on the pages/products description, history, talk about it's features, etc, keep those deeply seeded and index'd pages in the domain. Then when they come back online (if they do) ir provides users excellent content about the product and in parallel works with thier user experience.
If the product after time doesn't return, then just work to find a solution for those specific pages. Perhaps a directory of 'out of date products' that visitors could reference if they were looking or searching for something in particur on that site - and offer an alternative (if available) to them in it's place?
Hope this helps a little. Rob
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
-
Redirecting an Entire Website?
Is it best to redirect an old website to a new website page by page to like pages or just the entire site all at once to the home page of the new site? I do have about 10 good pages on the site that are worth directing to corresponding pages on the new site. Just trying to figure out what is going to preserve the most link juice. Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | photoseo10 -
SEO URLs: 1\. URLs in my language (Greek, Greeklish or English)? 2\. Αt the end it is good to put -> .html? What is the best way to get great ranking?
Hello all, I must put URLs in my language Greek, Greeklish or in English? And at the end of url it is good to put -> .html? For exampe www.test.com/test/test-test.html ? What is the best way to get great ranking? I am a new digital marketing manager and its my first time who works with a programmer who doesn't know. I need to know as soon as possible, because they want to be "on air" tomorrow! Thank you very much for your help! Regards, Marios
Technical SEO | | marioskal0 -
Redirecting homepage to subdirectory
Any issues with 301 redirecting a site's homepage to the English version subdirectory? Example: Original homepage: www.mysite.com New homepage: www.mysite.com/en/ The site is very old and very authoritative and trusted with lots of traffic.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Not sure which way to go or what to do?
Hi there, I have been a pro member of SEOmoz for a while now but this is my question in the forum and although I have looked through so much helpful information I was wondering if someone could give me some further advice and guidance? I have a 3 year old ecommerce website personalisedmugs.co.uk which until May 2012 had some excellent growth, we then lost around 50% of traffic due to reduced organic rankings in google. We then noticed a further drop again in September. From researching information I believe this drop was from the penguin update and EMD update? Since these updates we have: *Stopped working with a company in India whom was looking after SEO for us for 18 months redeveloped/designed website and upgraded software version constantly refreshed website with content as we always have done Modified internal anchor text (this did seem keyword rich) My next steps I believe before giving up 😞 is checking our links coming into website? Is anybody able to please help me with regards to our links or point me in the right direction. I have no idea where to start or what do now? Someone may see something really obvious so any help or guidance is greatly appreciated to assist me in gaining some UK organic rankings back. Kind Regards, Mark
Technical SEO | | SparkyMarky0 -
Redirecting 404
Hi. I'm working on a wordpress site, which got some old deleted pages indexed and now shows a 404 (also in the results) As these old pages earlier got content and probably also some links pointing towards it, what would then be best practice to do? Should i make an 301 redirect? Make the 404 noindex?
Technical SEO | | Mickelp0 -
What is the best way to fix legacy overly-nested URLs?
Hi everyone, Due to some really poor decisions I made back when I started my site several years ago, I'm lumbered with several hundred pages that have overly-nested URLs. For example: /theme-parks/uk-theme-parks/alton-towers/attractions/enterprise I'd prefer these to feature at most three layers of nesting, for example: /reviews/alton-towers/enterprise Is there a good approach for achieving this, or is it best just to accept the legacy URLs as an unfixable problem, and make sure that future content follows the new structure? I can easily knock together a script to update the aliases for the existing content, but I'm concerned about having hundreds of 301 redirects (could this be achieved with a single regular express in .htaccess, for example?). Any guidance appreciated. Thanks, Nick
Technical SEO | | ThemeParkTourist0 -
Redirect or not to redirect
We are rebuilding a website and try to get rid of errors. The content remains exactly the same but we correct the code and make it load faster. The site has quite many backlinks and I can't decide whether to remove .html endings from the urls and 301 redirect to the new ones or leave them with the older ending. If I remove the endings how much of the link juice will be passed? Anyone any idea?
Technical SEO | | sesertin0 -
Are asp redirects permanent?
I need to redirect a windows-hosted domain with permanent (301) redirects so as to preserve most of the link juice. I would be using asp page-level redirects, as there are only about 50 relevant pages. Are these as effective as linux-based 301 redirects in conserving link juice?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0