What to do with non-existing products (removed products)?
-
Hello,
I'm selling unique products - only one of a kind of each product.
This means that whenever a product is sold, it is removed from display.In order not to upset Google by keep removing indexed pages I created a "sold items" page which links to all of the removed products.
The problem is (or maybe it's not a problem) is that I got to the point where I have more "sold items" then existing items (and the list keeps adding up).
What should I do with the non-existing items?
Was I correct?---------------------------------------- ADDED INFO ---------
The way the site is built is that I have main category pages and each of them is showing a large amount of products. Most of these products got indexed by Google. Each product has its own unique URL (Products do not return...)
Once a product is sold it does not come up in the product categories - I only have a general "sold items" in the footer that shows all of them (with a lot of pagination).
Since the products are rapidly changing, i thought it would upset Google to have a hundred 301 redirects in each week or two.
Since the products are very similar to one another (only different measurements / colors etc.), I thought of having a link from a sold Item to a similar available item so if Google will direct someone it will probably be to the available product.
The problem is that the sold items are now 4 times more than the number of available items... I don't think that a store should display 2008's t-shirts on 2012...
Another problem that may rise with so many products is that I'm afraid that the one type of product that is being sold much more often will take charge at the end on the entire site since I will end up with 8,000 sold items of this product, 1000 sold items of other products and 1000 available misc products... this might also start causing duplication problems as the products are quite similar.
Should I stop with the "Sold" products and use 301's?
Thanks
-
Creating 301 to non-existing products is easy (technically speaking) - are you sure that it not considered a bad thing by Google? (pages keep being removed).
Thanks again
-
301 it to the most appropriate substitute. I think it'll be easier to manage your redirect list than to juggle so many pages. You should see the impact in analytics, especially if you are tracking eCom and/or goals. Bounce rates will probably come down and time on page go up. Good luck on this.
-
Dear Chas,
You are actually correct - Google often sends people to the sold items pages and while I assumed that they will look for a similar product - they actually bounce! This is why I thought that if I will add a one way link from a sold Item to an available item Google will direct them to the available item.
About redirection - I can do that but it will be lots of redirections - products are rapidly changing.
Maybe I really should simply remove a product completely when it is sold (make it unreachable from the website - no links to it at all) and have a 301 on it and call it a day... What do you think?
-
True, if the more desirable goal is building page authority rather than selling product. "Sold out" or "out of stock" invites a bounce.
Both could be achieved with a link to a like product from the sold out page, but from a real world eCom standpoint asking product maintenance staff to insert contextual links in product copy is to invite errors or indifference - most platforms have a user friendly redirect mechanism.
-
see update on top. Thanks
-
see update on top. Thanks
-
Hi Chas,
If a product is likely to come back in the future, I'd strong suggest against redirecting the product at-all. Simply leave it to build authority whilst inactive but do display a message saying that it’s not available for purchase.
-
As SEOconsult noted, knowing a little more about the nature of your products would be helpful. I'll make an assumption that these products, while unique, have a relationship or similarity with other products you have. You could judiciously use 301 redirects (or possibly a 302 if you expect the non-existent item to eventually reappear). This is especially important if an item has acquired an external link. Eventual kill the 301 when the SEs have cleansed their index of it.
Situations like this are very common for eCom retailers - 2011 Fall Sweaters are no longer relevant (or available) - but for a good UX you'd want a searcher who found you (your sweaters) through a SERP to be redirected to a similar product (2012 Spring Sweaters).
Having a page of sold items may do you better service as a means of demonstrating credibility to potential customers as a trusted purveyor who has sold many items of XXXXXX. As for upsetting Google by removing indexed pages, quite the contrary - by removing pages and using redirects, you're telling Google come back frequently, this site is dynamic and changes often, therefore it is current and more relevant than a static, unchanging site.
-
Hi there,
Would you be able to give us an example URL (if you don't want to mention the URL in-case this page ranks for the site, perhaps you could link to a pastebin.com page containing a URL)?
Do the individual products have their own URL?
If so, I wouldn't worry about having a page for "sold items", unless of-course that's the only section of the site that mentions the said products.
Without looking at the site, I'd expect there to be categories within the site and within the categories there would be products and each product would have it's own individual page. If that's the case, there should be no need for a page listing "sold items". I'd suggest that the sold items are kept within the category that they're meant for so that they're still linked to internally; perhaps at the bottom so that the active products are at the top and the inactive are at the bottom?
If you could explain how the site works a little further (or provide a URL, I'll be able to give you a more relevant answer).
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
-
Category Page - Optimization the product's anchor.
Hello, Does anybody have real experience optimizing internal links in the category page? The category pages of my actual client uses a weird way to link to their own products. Instead of creating diferents links (one in the picture, one in the photo and one in the headline), they create only one huge link, using everything as anchor (picture, text, price, etc.). URL: http://www.friasneto.com.br/imoveis/apartamentos/para-alugar/campinas/ This technique can reduce the total number of links in the page, improving the strenght of the other links, but also can create a "crazy" anchor text for the product. Could I improve my results creating the standard category link (one in the picture, one in the photo and one in the headline)? Hope it's not to confuse.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody15569049633980 -
SEO impact of mouse over text on product page
Hi, we recently improved our product page to show more color options, like this http://www.prams.net/knorr-baby-voletto-sport-pram-stroller-reversible-seat-green-a?inref=home-left In order to improve the seo, we expanded our rich snippets the following way we added all color options, skus and prices as "items offered" we are showing the highest and lowest price range and eliminated the base price https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/ Google now shows the price range in the rich snippet. The questions is: as the user see the original color, the price and the sku only when mousing over the small images. We are worried that this could be treated a "hidden text". Does anybody have experience in this matter or a way a to solve it better? Thanks in advance Dieter 8WthtQY
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco0 -
How to handle brand description on product pages?
Hi Mozzers, Hope you're doing good. I have a content placement related question. Assume, I have 1000 products of brand A, 1000 of brand B, and so on. Now, if I want to put brand specific 200-words description on each of these product pages. I'm creating duplicate content across the site by putting absolutely same brand description on these product pages i.e brand A description on first 1000 pages, brand B description on next 1000 products and so on. Looking for an expert advice around placement of content here i.e how can I add brand description on product pages and avoid duplicate content penalty? Any help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _nitman0 -
Is it best to have products and reviews on the same URL?
Hi Moz, Is it better to have products and reviews on the same or different URLs? I suspect that combining these into one page will help with rankings overall even though some ranking for product review terms may suffer. This is for a hair products company with tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of reviews. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Shopify Product Variants vs Separate Product Pages
Let's say I have 10 different models of hats, and each hat has 5 colors. I have two routes I could take: a) Make 50 separate product pages Pros: -Better usability for customer because they can shop for just masks of a specific color. We can sort our collections to only show our red hats. -Help SEO with specific kw title pages (red boston bruins hat vs boston bruins hat). Cons: -Duplicate Content: Hat model in one color will have almost identical description as the same hat in a different color (from a usability and consistency standpoint, we'd want to leave descriptions the same for identical products, switching out only the color) b) Have 10 products listed, each with 5 color variants Pros: -More elegant and organized -NO duplicate Content Cons: -Losing out on color specific search terms -Customer might look at our 'red hats' collection, but shopify will only show the 'default' image of the hat, which could be another color. That's not ideal for usability/conversions. Not sure which route to take. I'm sure other vendors must have faced this issue before. What are your thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | birchlore0 -
Can I use rel=canonical and then remove it?
Hi all! I run a ticketing site and I am considering using rel=canonical temporary. In Europe, when someone is looking for tickets for a soccer game, they look for them differently if the game is played in one city or in another city. I.e.: "liverpool arsenal tickets" - game played in the 1st leg in 2012 "arsenal liverpool tickets - game played in the 2nd leg in 2013 We have two different events, with two different unique texts but sometimes Google chooses the one in 2013 one before the closest one, especially for queries without dates or years. I don't want to remove the second game from our site - exceptionally some people can broswer our website and buy tickets with months in advance. So I am considering place a rel=canonical in the game played in 2013 poiting to the game played in a few weeks. After that, I would remove it. Would that make any sense? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
Can Bundling Products Help eCommerce SEO?
We currently have over 13,000 products on our site. SeoMoz reports many duplicate pages, which are items that are very similar (different size, application, sku, etc.). Would it be prudent to create a bundled product that has one page, one description, a set of images and a table with add to cart buttons for all of the different products on that page? (called a bundled product in Magento). Then create 301 redirects from all of the individual pages and categories to the relevant new bundled product.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iJeep0 -
Too many on page links - product pages
Some of the pages on my client's website have too many on page links because they have lists of all their products. Is there anything I should/could do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0