Quantity of products
-
I have an e-commerce site that sells around 1,500 SKU's.. but there are some huge categories that we really never sell anything in.
I'm thinking of deleting a lot of underselling products. When I put it like that of course, you'll probably agree - but I'm hesitant because I have to wonder what Google will think of my site going from (say) 1,000 products and unique URL's to 500.. or lower. Removing that many URL's, products and product categories worries me that we may be viewed as a smaller store and have a negative impact.
What effect would you expect from removing a lot of products? Who has done this?
-
Hi James, I don't think removing unsuitable products would be considered negative. Do each of these product pages have unique content? Do they rank? I would guess that a phased and gradual approach would be the right way to do it. Mash
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 'complete guide' is cannibalising my main product page and hurting rankings
Hi everyone, I have a main page for my blepharoplasty surgical product that I want to rank. It's a pretty in-depth summary for patients to read all about the treatment and look at before and after pictures and there's calls to action in there. It works great and is getting lots of conversions. But I also have a 'complete guide' PDF which is for patients who are really interested in discovering all the technicalities of their eye-lift procedure including medical research, clinical stuff and risks. Now my main page is at position 4 and the complete guide is right below it in 5. So I tried to consolidate by adding the complete guide as a download on the main page. I've looked into rel canonical but don't think it's appropriate here as they are not technically 'duplicates' because they serve different purposes. Then I thought of adding a meta noindex but was not sure whether this was the right thing to do either. My report doesn't get any clicks from the serps, people visit it from the main page. I saw in Wordpress that there's options for the link, one says 'link to media file', 'custom URL' and 'attachment'. I've got the custom URL selected at the moment. There's also a box for 'link rel' which i figure is where I'd put the noindex. If that's the right thing to do, what should go in that box? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool0 -
Is using part of a meta description already on your site for another product considered duplicate?
I'm writing meta descriptions for this site, trying to keep them different, however, for two product types, I want to add the same info I added in the other likeminded product's meta descriptions. Is this ok as long as it's not the whole sentence or am I really to rewrite the same info another way, which is hard for " quick shipping available for x amount of colors ". Any Advice?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
How big is the problem: 404-errors as result of out of stock products?
We had a discussion about the importance of 404-errors as result of products which are out of stock. Of course this is not good, but what is the leverance in terms of importance: low-medium-high?
Technical SEO | | Digital-DMG0 -
Duplicate Content Issues on Product Pages
Hi guys Just keen to gauge your opinion on a quandary that has been bugging me for a while now. I work on an ecommerce website that sells around 20,000 products. A lot of the product SKUs are exactly the same in terms of how they work and what they offer the customer. Often it is 1 variable that changes. For example, the product may be available in 200 different sizes and 2 colours (therefore 400 SKUs available to purchase). Theese SKUs have been uploaded to the website as individual entires so that the customer can purchase them, with the only difference between the listings likely to be key signifiers such as colour, size, price, part number etc. Moz has flagged these pages up as duplicate content. Now I have worked on websites long enough now to know that duplicate content is never good from an SEO perspective, but I am struggling to work out an effective way in which I can display such a large number of almost identical products without falling foul of the duplicate content issue. If you wouldnt mind sharing any ideas or approaches that have been taken by you guys that would be great!
Technical SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Is My Boilerplate Product Description Causing Duplicate Content Issues?
I have an e-commerce store with 20,000+ one-of-a-kind products. We only have one of each product, and once a product is sold we will never restock it. So I really have no intention to have these product pages showing up in SERPs. Each product has a boilerplate description that the product's unique attributes (style, color, size) are plugged into. But a few sentences of the description are exactly the same across all products. Google Webmaster Tools doesn't report any duplicate content. My Moz Crawl Report show 29 of these products as having duplicate content. But a Google search using the site operator and some text from the boilerplate description turns up 16,400 product pages from my site. Could this duplicate content be hurting my SERPs for other pages on the site that I am trying to rank? As I said, I'm not concerned about ranking for these products pages. Should I make them "rel=canonical" to their respective product categories? Or use "noindex, follow" on every product? Or should I not worry about it?
Technical SEO | | znagle0 -
Is it a good idea to use an old domain name for a new product
Hi guys, I have a domain name XYZ.com which hosts the site of a technology service company as of now. The company however didn't do well and shut down a few years ago. Now, that company wants to launch a new set of technology products and wants to use the same domain name. Is it a good idea. The issues that I can see here are: 1. Google has previous pages indexed 2. There are a couple of subdomains totally irrelevant to the business. like employees.xyz.com there. 3. Can the previous indexing be completely undone. Regards, Mayank
Technical SEO | | mayanksaxena0 -
Best URL Structure for Product Pages?
I am happy with my URLs and my ecommerce site ranks well over all, but I have a question about product URL's. Specifically when the products have multiple attributes such as "color". I use a header URL in order to present the 'style' of products, www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-LIST and I allow each 'color' to have it's own URL so people can send or bookmark a specific item. www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-ANCH1 www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-WRCH1 I use a rel canonical to show that the header URL is the URL search engines should be indexing and to avoid duplicate content issues from having the exact same info, MP3's, PDF's, Video's accessories, etc on each specific item URL. I also have a 'noindex no follow' on the specific item URL. These header URLs rank well, but when using tools like SEOMoz, which I love, my header pages fail for using rel canonical and 'noindex no follow' I've considered only having the header URL, but I like the idea of shoppers being able to get to the specific product URL. Do I need the no index no follow? Do I even need the rel canonical? Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | dianeb1520 -
Separate websites for 2 products in the same business?
I have a business that sells art. There are 2 distinct types of art on offer. In many cases, someone who is interested in Type A may also be interested in Type B. Most search competitors that sell Type B, only sell Type B. As a result, they have a dedicated site for type B art. Would I be better off separating my business into 2 dedicated websites or keeping them combined? The site currently ranks reasonably well due to content, age and has some decent inbound links. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Peter.
Technical SEO | | peteraitken0