Best practice for a website where the publications (catalogues) expire frequently
-
Hi guys,
Hope to find some smart SEOs around here and where I can to contribute to the community!
I wanted to share an issue we are having with our website, which is focused on the promotional flyers of the supermarket chains. These are often valid for a short period of time and then expire. So it makes no sense to keep them but also, if we delete them, that would create a lot of 404s or something.
So how do you think it is the best way to go around this problem? should we delete them? or when deleted to redirect the dead pages to the homepage? or keep them in an archive live site.com/brand/archive/ ?
Thank you so much for any opinions, much appreciated!
Best
-
I think Anthony's idea on this is a good one and would be worth considering. I guess it depends on how many of these you have rotating at any one time and how many URLs you therefore have to maintain.
My thought on it would be to create a custom 404 page for your site that is a more pleasant landing page than regular 404 pages are. It could provide a nice apology that the content the link took them the person to is no longer available and show a number of anchored links for where the visitor may like to go to next, e.g. where to view other promotional flyers or other pages on the site which may be important to the visitor.
By doing that you provide a better visitor experience. Here are the recommendations from Moz's page on HTTP status codes. I think these make a lot of sense:
----------------------------- When visitors reach 404 pages, they should be given navigational options so they do not leave the given site. Web optimized 404 errors pages should contain:
- notification that the user has reached a page that does not exist
- a search box
- a easy to understand navigation system so the user can potentially find what they were orginally looking to access
- a link to the home page
-----------------------------
I hope that helps,
Peter -
I think this assessment is spot on. I think the superior strategy would what you mentioned at the end. If you updated the content continuously I believe you would create the most value for the user.
-
Hi-
This is a common problem for many websites, think Job Postings or Real Estate.
There are a few ways to handle it, and you have to decide what is best for your business. As of now, it sounds as if each flier is living on it's own unique URL on your site. Here are the scenarios for that set-up.
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, let them 404 when removed
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, archive them
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, redirect all back to parent subcategory/store page
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, selectively redirect pages to subcategory/store page if you know there are external links pointing at it
What I wonder is if you could just update the content and keep the URL the same.
website.com/store-name/weekly-flier
This would allow you to continuously build links to the same page and build it's authority and ranking ability over time. You could still choose to archive it if you wanted, but I wonder if that would have value for any of your users.
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 website is being opened by multiple URLs?
Dear Friends, I have a website which is being opened like example.comand example/index to same page. Is there any problem SEO point of view. By the way I have placed the Rel= canonical tag in source page. its working fine but
On-Page Optimization | | docbeans0 -
Auto loading articles ?- best practices
Hi all! In the past months I see more and more website that doing 'auto loading articles in scrolling' - can you tell me if it's okay for SEO and what are the best practices for this? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnPalmer1 -
Disavowed links, updated website etc - still no ranking improvements
Hi, Could anyone take a look at www.artificialgrass4u.co.uk - a few years ago it used to rank highly for 'artificial grass' ... then when Google rolled out its algorithms punishing websites with poor links it lost all it's rankings. We've disavowed almost all of the bad links, and have been adding new optimised content etc over the past few months but rankings still haven't improved. Is there anything I'm missing? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | icansee0 -
What is the best way to have two online stores, each focusing on a specific country?
The dilemma here of course is that the stores will be very similar in content, with the domains only being different in that the store targeting the US will be a .com domain and the Canadian store is a .ca domain.
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
Duplicate Page Content Should we 301 - Best Practices?
What would be the best way to avoid a Duplicate Page Content for these type of pages. Our website generates user friendly urls, for each page..
On-Page Optimization | | 365ToursSafaris
So it is the same exact page, just both versions of the url work.. Example: http://www.safari365.com/about-africa/wildebeest-migration http://www.safari365.com/wildebeest-migration I don't think adding code to the page will work because its the same page for the incorrect and correct versions of the page. I don't think i can use the URL parameter setting because the version with /about-africa/ is the correct (correct as it it follows the site navigation) I was thinking of using the htaccess to redirect to the correct version.. Will that work ? and does it follow best Practices ? any other suggestions that would work better ?0 -
There are companies who evaluate what effect the penguin update had on a website. Is this possible and is it a good investment ?
I have been hit by the penguin update. I have found companies who for $300 will evaluate my site for potential problems. Is this possible and is it worth the investment
On-Page Optimization | | MobileVet0 -
Is it best to optimize your site for just one or two keywords?
My company/website makes and sells a product that's not that competitive but still has about 20 key words/phrases that people search for. My site is not a huge site maybe 35 pages after you include the blog posts.We sell samples off the site but it's mostly used as a brochure but we also want it to be a successful tool at bringing in leads. Should I optimize for the most popular key word phrases focusing on only one or two per page and forget about the rest or should I try to optimize for as many keywords as possible on all pages or should I optimize for just the few (3-5) heavy hitting keywords but on all pages? Right now I've got it optimized for around 3 keyword phrases for the whole site and only 1 or 2 per page with the most popular phrases on the most important pages.
On-Page Optimization | | JAARON0 -
Best article about internal linking structure?
Hi! Could you please recommend me a good and deep article about best practises in internal linking structure? I need to rethink the structure of a big site (lucky me it's very hierarchical) and I would like to have a look at some great articles about this to consolidate some ideas and have some new ones. I've read some but I would like some recommendations 🙂 Some articles about information architecture would be appreciated as well! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | jorgediaz0