I have a client whose shop will be down a few days. What would provide less impact to organic search program?
-
I have a client who is moving their warehouse, and their shop will be down for four days. I have been doing some research on the best ways to handle this and I wanted to get the communities feedback on this. One thought is to have the pages live, but people can't place an order - but this does not provide the best customer experience. Another thought is to just do temporary redirects for the shop pages, to land on the "sorry we are moving" page for customers. Another thought was to do 503 HTTP status codes on the pages and then do a temporary redirect to the landing page.
Have any of you experienced this issue? If so, what did you do to minimize the impact to the organic search programs?
NOTE: All of their static content will remain in tact. Only the shop/store will be down.
-
Remembered seeing this back in the day,
Matt Cutts Take,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eYJuT0yGrI&list=UUWf2ZlNsCGDS89VBF_awNvA
I should think you will be fine for just 4 days,
James
-
This is a large consumer brand, so it isn't a handful of people - but let me chat with them about their communication plan. Not sure what they are doing from a customer experience perspective and it would be good to note. Thank you!
So you vote with having the pages live and not order, rather than a redirect... Even for a large consumer brand?
Thanks!
-
Due to the limitations in their system (see my response to Bruce above) I have no say in having inventory or not. But, one of the options is to have all the product pages live and no option to purchase. Possibly putting a banner on the top explaining what is happening... Maybe that is a better option the the temporary redirects... I just don't know.
-
Sure! It is a large brand that has a warehouse system and inventory system hooked into its website. By moving the warehouse, they must take the shop offline. That is just a fact I have to deal with. It is not a decision I can make or can influence. But, I can influence how it is taken offline.
I can't agree more on the "give us a few extra days" solution, but their inventory system (which is hooked into its website) can't do it. Otherwise they lose their data. I don't get it, but that is the way it is...
Thanks!
-
I would personally vote for having the pages live and either not being able to place an order (with a message), or have them be able to place an order but have a message saying things will be delayed. Totally depending on your client's type of business and customers, they could also do an email or blog post or note on their home page warning people in advance of the downtime.
My husband runs a small business, and many things are custom-manufactured by us. It's a small, niche industry, and many of the people know each other. There are only a handful of forums devoted to the hobby. We had a period where we were effectively shut down for a couple of months, due to a fire at the location we were using, followed by moving. We did a blog post on our site, and then posted on all the forums letting people know what was up and that orders would be delayed. I did take the shopping cart icons off the site at that point so that people couldn't order. Thankfully, people were fairly understanding.
-
We have moved our place of business a couple of times. Big job. Everyone has also been out of the office for a conference.
Method 1) Move on Friday and have it done by Monday... maybe you can pick a three day weekend. Have a big sale on your bulky items for a couple weeks before the move. GET SOME SHELVES EMPTY. Place restocking order with supplier so that it arrives at your new location early in the week after your move.
Start moving all nonessential items on Thursday, anything that you can get out of there. Leave only what pack-and-ship people need to operate on Friday at the old location. Get minimal furniture and computers in the new location and operating on Thursday. Get empty inventory shelving at the new location ready to accept inventory. Take anything to the new location that you can.
On Friday, pack-and-ship people arrive early and get all orders picked and packed and shipped. As soon as pack-and-ship people are finished the moving team yanks their furniture and supplies and takes it to new location.Pack inventory in boxes and move shelving to new location before inventory. LABEL THE BOXES WITH SHELF NUMBERS.
Friday night, Saturday and Sunday moving team gets all shelving, inventory, and pack-and-ship supplies and furniture set up at new location. Pack-and-ship people work during the weekend to get the inventory back on the shelves as they want it. Don't let the moving crew do this or pack-and-ship people will be cussing.
Monday morning, pack-and-ship people are ready to go, starting a little early so they have extra time to be ready for your package pickup people. Pay overtime and a nice bonus for everyone's hard work.
- Method 2)... place a big face-slapping sign on every page of your site and even bigger in the checkout. "We are moving to a new location. Please feel free to shop but know that orders will not ship until (fill in date)."
-
I would agree with Bruce in that unless this is a "must have tomorrow" industry, it might be best to leave everything as is and add something that tells your customers that you're down for a few days. Why not throw up a banner on every product page that says something like "we're moving to serve you better - so orders may be delayed for a few days more than normal". We did something similar when we moved and most customers understood.
Good Luck
Ken
-
Not sure of all the facts so very hard to make a call on what to do.
Initial thoughts:- Why is moving warehouse stopping ordering? If this is because you cannot ship fast enough, extend your lead time to ship to cover these days.
To recreate an old phrase of "Out of stock is out of business" to "Offline is out of business"....if a customer makes the effort to get to the site and then cannot buy, what is stopping this and is the reason really really valid. Can you give a few more details about what why and how come?
Warmest regards
Bruce
-
Yes, I read that one. Figured it was a few years old and maybe there was another solution available.
Thanks!
-
Here's a blog post from a couple of years ago that talks about that and should be helpful in your situation. http://moz.com/blog/how-to-handle-downtime-during-site-maintenance
Best of luck!
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
-
SEO-impact of mouseover text on header pictures
Hi, what do you reckon of taking away the mouseover effect on the header pictures seen on www.viventura.de/reisen/peru?
Technical SEO | | viventuraSEO
We are thinking of eliminating the mouseover text to make User Experience even better but are worrying that our ranking might go down when doing so. Any experiences, any help is highly appreciated!
Thanks, Benno0 -
Should we dump the https from a client site?
We inherited a site that has both http and https. No e-commerce or data transfer...just html. Should we dump the https certificate? I think it might be causing issues with indexing and possible duplicate content. The https site has a certificate warning message...not good. The URL is www.charlottemechanical.com
Technical SEO | | theideapeople0 -
Will the Google juice flow after a redirect?
If someone links to this page : http://abonnes.hospimedia.fr/articles/20131004-plfss-2014-les-federations-de-l-aide-a Will the Google juice flow to this page? http://www.hospimedia.fr/actualite/articles/20131010-gestion-des-risques-un-projet-de-decret-vient
Technical SEO | | Syl200 -
4XX(Client Error)
Hello there Please help! I am getting this kind of error in the whole site. http://www.mileycyrus-online.co.uk/leaked-hannah-montana-the-movie-pictures.html/comments Running on wordpress site. I chagned the template few times.. most of the error ends with a /comments. Infact all my post has the same issue: http://www.mileycyrus-online.co.uk/miley-cyrus-at-golden-globes-ceremony.html/comments http://www.mileycyrus-online.co.uk/miley-cyrus-at-president-obamas-inauguration-concert.html/comments 404 Error.
Technical SEO | | ExpertSolutions0 -
How much will changing IP addresses impact SEO?
So my company is upgrading its Internet bandwidth. However, apparently the vendor has said that part of the upgrade will involve changing our IP address. I've found two links that indicate some care needs to be taken to make sure our SEO isn't harmed: http://followmattcutts.com/2011/07/21/protect-your-seo-when-changing-ip-address-and-server/ http://www.v7n.com/forums/google-forum/275513-changing-ip-affect-seo.html Assuming we don't use an IP address that has been blacklisted by Google for spamming or other black hat tactics, how problematic is it? (Note: The site hasn't really been aggressively optimized yet - I started with the company less than two weeks ago, and just barely got FTP and CMS access yesterday - so honestly I'm not too worried about really messing up the site's optimization, since there isn't a lot to really break.)
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0 -
How best to set up Google + business pages for clients
I wish to setup a business page on google+ business page for my clients but it requires a personal profile, my clients don't want a personal profile but do want the business page. Currently i have set them up with pages on my personal profile but do can i allow the client to manage it? so i am not sure this is the best way Whats the best way for web developers to setup Google+ accounts for clients?
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb1 -
What are your best tips for SEO on a shopping cart?
So, I am working on a shopping cart platform (X-Cart) and so far don't like it. Also, the web designer is not someone I've worked with before and he is understandably conservative about access--which limits what I can and cannot do from the back end. One of the things I like to do is include text for the search engines. However, based on conversion, etc., I think the product images on a landing page (main brand info with specific products that show up) should show up first to move toward conversion first. I am thinking of adding the text below the product images on the brand pages so the viewer sees the products first while still keeping the content seo. My practice is to use between 300-350 words minimum on a page. Just wondering what best practices you have for a shopping cart. Care to share? Any tips or hints? Thoughts on what I might do that would be most effective? As always, thanks in advance for your sage advice!
Technical SEO | | TheARKlady0 -
How do search engines treat urls that end in hashtags?
How do search engines treat urls that end in hashtags? For example, www.domain.com/abc#xyz.
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0