Old Product Pages
-
Hi
Issue: I have old versions of a product page in the Google index for a product that I still carry.
Why: The URLs were changed when we updated this product page a few years ago. There are four different URLs for this product -- no duplicate content issues b/c we updated the product info, Title tags, etc. So I have a few pages indexed by Google for a particular product. Including a current, up-to-date page.
The old pages don't get any traffic, but if I type in google search:
"product name" site:store.com then all of the versions of this page appear.
The old pages don't have any links to them, only one has any PA, and as I said they don't get any traffic, and the current page is around #8 in google for its keyword.
Question: Do these old pages need 301 redirects, should I ask google to remove the old URLs? It seems like Google picks the right version of this page for this keyword query, is it possible that the existence of these other pages (that are not nearly as optimized for the keyword) drag it down a bit in the results?
Thanks in advance for any help
-
I would consider asking yourself what the value of those extra product pages are to the user? If your primary, properly optimized page provides the best user experience then I would definitely 301 redirect the old URL's.
It's very likely that although those extra product pages are in the index they don't actually get traffic b/c they never turn up in the SERPs unless you are performing an advanced site: search.
Redirect the traffic via 301, don't worry about telling Google anything, they will remove the old URL's once they read the 301. If you have any external followed links to the old pages you may want to reach out to the webmasters to request they link to the new page before you do the 301.
I highly doubt these old pages are dragging down your results for your properly optimized page but if they aren't providing any value or getting traffic then your time is better spent optimizing elsewhere.
Best!
-
I would add 301 redirects as a best practice even if they don't have any juice to pass on to the new links. Just make sure they are being redirected to a similar relevant page or a page that makes sense.
Also, the way you're searching is not going to be how a consumer searches, so to see if these older pages are currently hindering your keyword strategy (I'm assuming you might be worried that two pages would be jockeying for one term?), perform a search as your customer would using the keyword only.
If you see these old pages in the search results and they're ranking higher than your newly optimized pages (which would better serve the customer), then you might have an issue only as it relates to conversion and bounce rate.
I would strongly recommend you 301 the old 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
-
Will redirecting a logged in user from a public page to an equivalent private page (not visible to google) impact SEO?
Hi, We have public pages that can obviously be visited by our registered members. When they visit these public pages + they are logged in to our site, we want to redirect them to the equivalent (richer) page on the private site e.g. a logged in user visiting /public/contentA will be redirected to /private/contentA Note: Our /public pages are indexed by Google whereas /private pages are excluded. a) will this affect our SEO? b) if not, is 302 the best http status code to use? Cheers
Technical SEO | | bernienabo0 -
Can i use "nofollow" tag on product page (duplicated content)?
Hi, im working on my webstore SEO. I got descriptions from official seller like "Bosch". I got more than 15.000 items so i cant create unique content for each product. Can i use nofollow tag for each product and create great content on category pages? I dont wanna lose rankings because duplicated content. Thank you for help!
Technical SEO | | pejtupizdo0 -
How come only 2 pages of my 16 page infographic are being crawled by Moz?
Our Infographic titled "What Is Coaching" was officially launched 5 weeks ago. http://whatiscoaching.erickson.edu/ We set up campaigns in Moz & Google Analytics to track its performance. Moz is reporting No organic traffic and is only crawling 2 of the 16 pages we created. (see first and third attachments) Google Analytics is seeing hundreds of some very strange random pages (see second attachment) Both campaigns are tracking the url above. We have no idea where we've gone wrong. Please help!! 16_pages_seen_in_wordpress.png how_google_analytics_sees_pages.png what_moz_sees.png
Technical SEO | | EricksonCoaching0 -
Product Pages Outranking Category Pages
Hi, We are noticing an issue where some product pages are outranking our relevant category pages for certain keywords. For a made up example, a "heavy duty widgets" product page might rank for the keyword phrase Heavy Duty Widgets, instead of our Heavy Duty Widgets category page appearing in the SERPs. We've noticed this happening primarily in cases where the name of the product page contains an at least partial match for the desired keyword phrase we want the category page to rank for. However, we've also found isolated cases where the specified keyword points to a completely irrelevent pages instead of the relevant category page. Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, or have any ideas as to what may cause this to happen? Let me know if more clarification of the question is needed. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ShawnHerrick0 -
How can I change the page title "two" (artigos/page/2.html) in each category ?
I have some categories and photo galleries that have more than one page (i.e.: http://www.buffetdomicilio.com/category/artigos and http://www.buffetdomicilio.com/category/artigos/page/2). I think that I must change the tittle and description, but I don't how. I would like to know how can I change the title of each of them without stay with duplicate title and description. Thank you! ahcAORR.jpg
Technical SEO | | otimizador20130 -
Wordpress Archive pages
In the SEOMOZ site report a number of errors were found. One of which was no or duplicate meta desctions on certain blog pages. When I drilled down to find these i noticed thosepages are the wordpress autocreated archive pages. When I searched for these through the wordpress control panel through both pages and blogs they were nowhere to be found. Does anyone know how to find these pages or are they not something I need to worry about?
Technical SEO | | laserclinics0 -
Duplicate page content
hi I am getting an duplicate content error in SEOMoz on one of my websites it shows http://www.exampledomain.co.uk http://www.exampledomain.co.uk/ http://www.exampledomain.co.uk/index.html how can i fix this? thanks darren
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Is it better to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Is it better for SEO to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Technical SEO | | CustomOnlineMarketing0