Categories which are frequently empty
-
We have a medium traffic site (www.boatshed.com) which sells used boats, the site does fairly well for popular search phrases, often ranking on first page.
A common way for people to search is by boat manufacturer, for example "sunseeker for sale" or "sunseeker 33 for sale".
To service those searches, we have search results page with URL's like: "/used-boats-for-sale/sunseeker" and "/used-boats-for-sale/sunseeker/33" (i.e. make and model).
This is fine for common makes but we have a lot of makes where we might have just one which, when sold, then leaves the page with no boats to show. It could then be just weeks till we get another one or sometimes years.
Once a manufacturer has no boats for sale, we automatically remove the link to that page from the site and from the sitemap. These pages are now being flagged as soft 404s in Webmaster tools.
Currently these pages still work and just show a "No results found" message.
I am unsure of how to deal with these pages.
Options as I see them:
-
Add a "no-index, follow" tag to the pages and continue to remove them from the sitemap. My concern is that when we do get a new boat for sale, the page will not rank again or take a long time to be re-indexed.
-
Add value to the 'no results found' page - for example, show listings for similar boats. If I do this (which makes sense from a usability perspective), would it be acceptable to leave these pages with an "index" tag?
-
404 them - my concern being this basically says "this page has been permanently removed" when actually it will probably have content again soon.
-
301 redirect to a page of similar boats with a message that we don't have any of that specific type at the moment.
-
-
Hi, thank you very much for your input. I think Linda meant that adding "something about how each alternate choice is similar to/different from the original boat" would be labour intensive (which is correct for 2k makes and 8m models!) but we already have logic to get "similar boats" so we'll be able to auto populate these pages with some content.
-
I have to agree with Linda: Option 2 is your best option by far. Not only do you not continually have to manage, maintain, and remove/add these pages all the time, but they'll retain their link-juice and SEO properties.
However, I would disagree that this would require a lot of work as far as coding is concerned - even if there are thousands of pages. All you need to do is have each search page set to show set groups/images/products when results=0. Depending on how your site is coded, it could be very simple, or at least fairly easy to do.
-
Hi there,
I often am faced with a similar issue on my site, apelectric.com. We have models that get discontinued and replaced all the time. We also have obsolete parts and out of stock inventory every so often. I think that your plan has solid strategy. The pages that still have value because they are old and have seen a good amount of traffic can be either repurposed or redirected to better suit your website. If you are ranking well on pages, don't get rid of them. Matt Cutts at Google has backed the 404 strategy when a product is completely discontinued with no hopes of returning. In this case, I don't think that is the best strategy.
What I have done in the past is re-purposed the page to offer similar products. This is great for the user, and in turn, great for your SEO. Having pages with nothing on them is never a good idea, so add relevant items like similar models or any kind of parts and maintenance if you provide those. You can also add some content about the product you don't have anymore to go with the similar products. Content is a great idea all the time.
I hope this helps!
-
I like option 2. You could put up some information about the searched-for boat and then follow up by saying that there are none available at this time but here are some similar boats, and add your links to those boats.
You could even add something about how each alternate choice is similar to/different from the original boat, if that is something that time allows. This would be useful to the searcher and keep your pages indexed. (Of course, this depends on how many pages we are talking about--it would be labor-intensive for thousands of 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
-
Is it better to optimise for several keywords/keyword variations on one page, or create sub categories for those specific terms?
I've done a fair of research to try to find the answer to this, but different people seem to give very different opinions, and none of the info I could find is recent! I'm working with a company that produces a range of industrial products that fit into 6 main categories, within this categories, there are types of products and the products themselves. Prior to my involvement most of the content was added to the product pages and very little was added to the overall category page. The structure works like this: Electronic devices > type of device > products The 'type of device' category could be something like a switch, but within that category are 3/4 different switch types...leaving me with 11 or 12 primary keyword/phrases to aim for as each switch is searched for in more than one way. Should I try to rank for all of those terms using that one category page? Or should I change the structure to something like: Electronic devices > type of device > sub-category/specific variation of device > product This would mean creating a page for each variation to have a more accute focus for a small number of phrases..but it also means I've added another step between the home page and the products. Any advice is welcome! I'm worried I'm overthinking it!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adam_SEO_Learning0 -
Htaccess - Redirecting TAG or Category pages
Hello Fellow Moz's, We have an issue redirecting some /TAG and /Category pages to inner pages. As an example we use: RedirectMatch 301 /category/Sample-Category(.*) https://OurDomain.com.au/New-Page//$1 That works well. The issue is we have other categories and tags that are named similar to /Sample-Category As an example, if we try to redirect /Sample-Category-1 to /New-Page-1 - it will not work, and redirects to /New-Page I assume this is because /Sample-Category is already being redirected, so anything after /Sample-Category like -1 or -2 or -3 etc, will not be recognized. Anyone know of a workaround?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jes-Extender-Australia0 -
Working to Start an Shopping Idea Site - Which Totally Based On Scraping product from Ecom. How Quickly I should Add products and categories in this new domain.
How Quickly I should Add products and categories in this new domain. We are going to start its promotional by google adwords and facebook. I worrying about 10000's of product pages. kindly guide me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innovatebizz0 -
What is the best URL structure for categories?
A client's site currently uses the URL structure: www.website.com/�tegory%/%postname% Which I think is optimised fairly well, as the categories are keywords being targeted. However, as they are using a category hierarchy, often times the URL looks like this: www.website.com/parent-category/child-category/some-post-titles-are-quite-long-as-they-are-long-tail-terms Best practise often dictates (such as point 3 in this Moz article) that shorter URLs are better for several reasons. So I'm left with a few options: Remove the category from the URL Flatten the category hierarchy Shorten post titles two a word or two - which would hurt my long tail search term traffic. Leave it as it is What do we think is the best route to take? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Using Reg Ex to 301 old categories and query strings in Magento
Hi SEOmoz community! I'm hoping somebody with a little Magento and Reg Ex knowledge will be able to help me out here. I need to 301 some old categories along with their old query strings. Below is an example. Old URL /bed-linen/pillowcases-html.html Users can then filter by price or range which then creates a query string such as... /bed-linen/pillowcases-html.html?price=1%2C10 New URL: /bed-linen/pillowcases.html So the new query string will be /bed-linen/pillowcases.html?price=1%2C10 Does anybody know the Reg Ex to 301 this? Can this be done in Magento re-write module or by htaccess only? Thanks in advance 🙂 Anthony @Anthony_Mac85
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
What Makes Good Content for Category Pages
Hello, We're putting (roughly, depending on the category) 500 words under the products or categories under category pages. We're having a writer do these who has to learn the products from scratch. With over 100 categories, it's not possible for the client to write 500 words for each one. We're wondering, 1. What should go into a category description? 2. How do you prep a writer to write these, and is it possible to do so and get good content? I'm afraid that we're writing just words for long tails, and I know on the product pages, home page, and articles that it has to be the best content, probably written by the client himself if he is knowledgable enough. Open to your suggestions on what should be in these, how long they should be, and who should write them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Good category pages - do you have examples?
Hello all. Currently doing a major update to my e-commerce website which sells tractor spare parts. I would like to optimize the category pages, which feature the parts from a particular manufacture of tractor parts. Does anyone have good examples of well optimized product page which do not have a detrimental effect on the visual quality of the site? It is important to see the products. The best I have found is: http://www.simplyelectricals.co.uk/ but I sure a better solution must exist Thanks David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidLenehan0