What should I do when there is no more stock for a product (e-commerce) ?
-
I´ve several clientes with magento, wp and brazilian Vtex.... usually when a product is out of stock the system allow you to delete or desallow but you will create a 404 erros. There is a plugin to redirect disallow products to home os a personalized page... looks good.
But I´ve just realized when you edit the name (and url) of a product it creats automatic redirect of the product...
Now I´m wondering never delete or disallow a product page anymore.... always edit with a new product so the redirect can send some PR to the new produtc....
Sounds too stupid or make any sense?
-
In this particular case is a female clothing company that provides new stuff each 3 months, they never repete the products!-)
Thanks for all the answers and I think I wlll customize and improve the user experience by implementing a dynamically-generated message via cookies during a 301 redirect. This would result in users who have landed on expired products receiving a message letting them know that the original product they were seeking is no longer available. This enhances the user experience because it informs users on why they are being redirected.
As I´m working with magento I will try to find a ready to go solution as a plugin but If I don´t, I will make my own and send to the forum !-)
Many Thanks !-)
-
Stephanie Chang wrote about this topic on the Moz blog at http://moz.com/blog/how-should-you-handle-expired-content as well, and that could give you some ideas too.
-
Your client's would have to OK it but often when products are no longer available it is an internal issue and not a lack of manufacturing. On my sites, if I chose to drop a line I will offer both alternatives if I have any but then also a link to where the exact product can be purchased (rel-nofollow of course).
It is more important to me that customers feel like clicking the link to my shop will never be a waste of time than it is to hope for the occasional conversion to another product.
Once a few click throughs mount up, I also find products I have the that the other shop does not and send a "Hi you may have noticed the X clicks I sent you for X product at URL. I noticed you do not offer X but have content relevant to it. If you think it would help us both out, I would welcome the partnership and be happy to keep sending business your way. I think a link to X would work well "here", let me know your thoughts.
I sell a lot more to people who are looking for exactly what I have then I ever did tried to convincing them that what I have is what they are really looking for.
-
Two options.
Option 1 - 301 redirect to a similar sub category level pages for that product.
Option 2 - Set up a landing page which states this product is no longer for sale, and show up similar items for sale. this is a common strategy used by group buying sites.
-
In the case where the client wants the product page removed from the site, we've had custom programming to implement 301 redirects, up one category level, so that the customer is take to relevant products in the same category that they were seeking.
-
I agree with Todd unless you have a good recommendations engine. If that's the case, related or suggested products would still provide value to the user even if the product is no longer attainable.
-
If the product will be coming back, I would direct those platforms to simply notify the user on the product page - while keeping the product page indexed.
If the product is not set to return, redirect to a similar product.
Hope this helps.
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
-
How to create AMP Pages for product website?
How to create AMP Pages for product website? I mean we can create it easily when we have wordpress through plugin, what about when we have millions of pages, It would be too tedious to create amp version of every page. So, is there any alternative way to create amp version?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sachin.kaushik0 -
Approach for discontinued categories and products
My web site previously offered several categories of an indoor type of product, which have since been permanently discontinued. We do still offer a full line of the outdoor type of these products. The usage is quite different (indoor vs. outdoor), and customers looking for the indoor variety are not likely to be immediately interested in the outdoor ones. But the pages for the discontinued categories and products have built up significant page authority and rank quite well even for more generic searches which are not indoor or outdoor specific. I am interested in opinions on what approach to take for the discontinued category pages and product pages. Currently, the discontinued pages are accessible by direct link, but have been removed from the site's navigation menus and on-site search. The pages include some messaging for visitors to inform that we no longer offer this type of product, with some links to active categories. We can remove these pages and serve a 404 error page. Or, we can redirect these pages to the outdoor product category (but all would have to be redirected to a single category, as the specific outdoor categories and products don't map logically to specific indoor ones). Or, we can keep as-is. I am interested in opinions on approach, either between these options above, or other alternatives.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drewk0 -
We have set up our H1 to contain the product name - it used to be our Company name all the time - would this affect our sales
We noticed recently on our site - that our H1 tag was the Company Name - we changed this to be the product name - our products would be searched for by all or part of the description. Our sales have dropped of the days since we changed it, could it be a result of this change ? Is it best to have the H1 tag as the product name ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Optimizing unique pages with almost identical products?
Hi all, I work in a space where we have many products (specifically components and transistors) that are almost identical minus one or two changes in voltage, die size, etc. I'm curious if others in the tech / manufacturing space have had to tackle this issue? There are only so many ways to describe 5-6 products that are identical save one feature. My gut tells me to offer up more head terms in the title tags to draw searchers and get specific in the meta descriptions, but I'm open to ideas.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evan_cree0 -
Question about duplicate listings on site for product listings.
We list products on our site and suspect that we have been hit by Panda as we are duplicating listings across our own site. Not intentionally, we just have multiple pages listings the same content as they fall into multiple categories. Has anyone else had the same issue and if so how did you deal with it?.. Have you seen a change in results/rankings due to the changes you made?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nick-name1230 -
Product Tag Pages - Shopify
My website is Sportiqe.com. We sell t-shirts and use Shopify. We're finding that Google is assigning a higher than normal (normal being "1") page authority ranking on our product tag pages (ie - Products Tagged "knicks"). Would it make sense to do 301 redirects for these product tag pages to the Product pages we want to rank for? (ie - would we do a 301 redirect for a page called "Products Tagged 'Knicks'" to our "New York Knicks Shirts" page?) OR Would it make sense to change these Product Tag Page titles to another key term to have multiple search results (assuming that ordering the products in a different way would eliminate any Duplicate Page Content issues?) For example, renaming the page title from "Products Tagged Knicks" to "TAG NAME | Sportiqe Apparel" Appreciate any insight from the Moz community, Shopify store managers and fellow t-shirt enthusiasts.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | farmiloe0 -
Is it ok to add snippet of information taken from other sites on product pages?
Hello here, I own an e-commerce website that sells digital sheet music, and I would like to enrich my product pages with short references to artists/composers related to the product, taken from external websites such as mentions, fresh news, information taken from related videos, cross-references, etc. In other words, I'd like to provide our users with a different kind of informational content that our competitors are currently not offering. We could also think of this like "providing some sort of aggregate content on product pages to enrich the user's experience by providing more information about the product". What do you think are the risks or the benefits of such an approach? And if there are any risks, how to avoid/tackle them? Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance to anyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Sanitary ware and accessories site with 1000s duplicate product titles.
sanitary ware and accessories site with 1000s duplicate product titles.as it in title.there are around 1400 links index in Google and many of them duplicate title tags duplicate meta description .many of them are just a products pages .i am looking a solution for making these correct .site equipped with CMS also.but there are no facility to enter meta details except just a tile and price. What can i do to solve this problem ? If i no index products pages will it effect to SERP ? Is it ok to create separate landing pages for each kews using HTML static pages like www.mysite.com/sanitary ware.html expert advices need <colgroup><col width="166"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity
| sanitary ware |0