Out of stock products?
-
Hi.
A client runs Woocommerce platform selling clothing. This clothing is seasonal and 95% of the stock, once it sells out is never restocked with the exception of a few core items that cross over season to season.
What I want to know is, whats the best way to handle items that are out of stock and never coming back?
I see a few options:
- delete it. Losing its rank and indexed link.
- 301 it back to the "brands" page or the "category" page. Eg. a Armani T-Shirt can go to either Armani page or T-Shirts page keeping it relevant.
- Just leave the old products there saying out of stock.
All have benefits to the business.
-
Delete it. Its gone. No more trouble, extra work involved, keeps out CMS clean.
-
Obviously good for SEO? Also good for customer to go to a relevant page. But do we end up with loads of links to manage increasing costs if a developer needs to do the work?
-
Easiest but defo not the right option.
So what is it? Is 301'ing really worth the hassle? Is it possible bearing in mind we have 500 items every 6 months going out of stock?
Who 301's it? Is it possible for staff to do it in Woocommerce or does a developer have to do them everytime you need to 301 a product?
What is your advise on what to do and how to do it?
Thanks
-
In my experience, leaving the products up with links to the category page or a similar item has worked the best for me. A lot of people still search for items that were discontinued 2-4 years ago, so removing the pages didn't work well for us. There is a meta tag you can use to tell Google the product is discontinued, but most of my customers really like being able to go to the old products and find similar models. I am in the generator industry, so years down the road someone could be searching for their model looking for a manual or something which is another big reason we keep the old products up.
We also carry small parts, When those items are discontinued we redirect to category page with a message that says the product you are looking for is no longer available, please see these other suggestions or call us.
If something is just out of stock, we leave the product alone and update the availability.
-
I think that would be a great solution with a really clear incentive for the shopper to convert. On the Moz post I linked to, Stephanie wrote about using cookies to implement a message after a redirect under the 'Dynamically-Generated Messages' sub header. Unfortunately it's well beyond my coding skills but I'm sure a developer could help you out.
-
Thanks.
Some great points. The whole SEO/Usability issue has no way around it as ultimately the item they want is not available so they will be disappointed finding a lovely message saying out of stock or if they are sent to an alternatives page.
What advise would you give?
I am thinking, if possible, 301 to a category page but somehow put a message on screen saying what is happening.
Maybe "Very sorry but the item you are looking for is out of stock. We have redirected you to our t-shirts category so you can browse for an alternative. Please use discount code FREESHIP and enjoy some free shipping on us"
Then at least you tell them whats happened and a little "sorry" incentive with the free shipping.
-
Howdy,
As you suggested, there are a few approaches you can take here. There's a really thorough article/discussion on Econsultancy on exactly this topic as well as a Moz blog on the same topic. I'd have a read of those and decide which approach is really best for you.
If you decide to go down the redirect route, there's no need for a developer to be involved. There are loads of plugins for WordPress you can use to create your own redirects but this one would probably suit your needs.
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
-
Reason for robots.txt file blocking products on category pages?
Hi I have a website with thosands of products. On the category pages, all the products are linked to with the code “?cgid” in the URL. But “?cgid” is also blocked in the robots.txt file for some reason. So I'm thinking it's stopping all my products getting crawled by Google. Am I right here? Is there any reason why a website would want to limit so many URL's? I'm only here a week and the sites getting great traffic, so don't want to go breaking it!!! Thanks
Web Design | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
Can we link back from help documents to product or features pages on website?
Hi, We have all our help documents on subdirectory linked for all the features or products we provide. Like we linked website.com/help/seo-guide from website.com/services/seo-product as that is relevant guide. Do we need to link back from all help guide pages to product pages? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
We use bigcommerce platform and want to access the bigcommerce server to change the way our product images display
Hi We use bigcommerce and want to chage the way we display multiple images for our products. At the moment in bigcommerce you switch between images by clicking the next image, we want the images to change when we hover the curser over the image. Does anyone know how to do this ? Regards Adrienne
Web Design | | CostumeD0 -
Help with Schema.org on Ecommerce Products
I’m looking for ways of using schema.org with products that have pricing options. There appear to be two main problems 1) Whilst colour, width, height and depth are all catered for, size appears to be missing – how can we mark up products that are available in sizes that aren’t necessarily covered by width/height/depth (e.g. shoe size). Also, what if the product is available in different finishes – technically, these could not properly be described as colours so how could we mark them up? 2) There doesn’t seem to be any particularly good way of marking up pricing options that are displayed on the same product detail page. For e.g. if a pricing option table is used like this: | ID | Colour | Price 001-red | Red | £3.99 001-green | Green | £4.49 001-blue | Blue | £4.99 | I can mark up each row as an offer, and give each offer a price and sku or mpn, but then I can’t use itemprop=”color” to describe exactly what the option is. Would I just use itemprop=”name” in this case and abandon color altogether (even though it’s technically supposed to be describing the colour of the product and not the name of the offer)? I suppose another way I could approach it would be to mark up each row as an individual product, and assign each one an offer with the details as described above but then the containing page would effectively look like a separate product – which it isn’t. Any help or advice on this would be very much appreciated
Web Design | | paulbaguley0 -
List of products, also on home
What happens with sites that have the complete list of products in the home page and in the "Products" section. Would like to know your opinion as web developers and users and like SEO professionals. I'm in duality like web developer, somehow my subconscience is telling me that is stupid to have it on both places... And the home page is getting nice results and comments from the users, so, would consider quitting the "Products" teaser view. But of course, eliminate the "Products" section is somehow... un natural.... And what happens with SEO, I read somewhere that it's not very good to have all the "rank" spread in so many links in the home page... I don't even understand it completely or neven sure they said rank or juice..., but it's something that is concerning me... We are talking about 20 products, that can grow. I'm looking to have a better SEO, but also the UX is very important, even more than SEO (I know good UX is better SEO). Thanks in advance to any contribution.
Web Design | | MilosMilcom0 -
E Commerce Product URL SEO
Hi, first question here. In response to Paddy's wonderful article and Rand's related article from 09 I've found myself asking this question. "www.home.co.uk/product" or "www.home.co.uk/category/product" As I'm currently reviewing the structure for so many of our e com sites the article comes at a great time. I'm going for home/category/product so I can optimise for a category, as category based searches are quite high and competitive. Yes some products can appear in 2 categories but I'm combating it with 301's or image based links. What are your thoughts.
Web Design | | PASSLtd0 -
Is there such thing as too much product information in terms of SEO
Hi All, Our website sells products online and is a prestashop system Prestashop comes with a set form you use to fill in products, however to fill it all you end up creating alot of repeated data. What i need to know, is if you have: Product name: Audi A6 Rear Lamp Set Short Description: A Short & Sweet Description Long Description: A Long Boring Description Meta Title: Same as product name Meta Keywords: What more can be said about an A6 Rear Lamp Set??? Meta Description: Same as long and boring description Im stuck in a position of having the ability to add extra information (i.e Meta-Tags) But really ill end up repeating what is already in the products natural listing. In terms of good SEO, is it better to leave Meta Fields empty, or fill them in and be repetitive for product pages? Thanks all, any guidance will be well appreciated <colgroup><col width="57"><col width="36"><col width="323"><col width="328"><col width="56"><col width="26"><col width="55"><col width="23"><col span="2" width="25"><col width="24"><col width="25"><col width="95"><col width="158"><col width="123"><col width="130"><col width="28"><col width="34"><col span="2" width="64"><col width="537"><col width="188"><col width="319"><col width="303"><col width="329"><col width="177"><col width="96"><col width="128"><col width="172"><col width="547"><col width="62"><col width="87"><col width="85"><col width="94"><col width="162"></colgroup>
Web Design | | Ev84
| ID | Active (0/1) | Name* | Categories (x,y,z...) | Price tax excl (+10%) | Tax rate | Wholesale price | On sale (0/1) | Reduction amount | Reduction per cent | Reduction from (yyyy-mm-dd) | Reduction to (yyyy-mm-dd) | Reference # | Supplier reference # | Supplier | Manufacturer | EAN13 | Ecotax | Weight | Quantity | Short description | Description | Tags (x,y,z...) | Meta-title | Meta-keywords | Meta-Description | URL Rewrited | Text when in-stock | Text if back-order allowed | Image URLs (x,y,z...) | Feature |
|
| Price tax excl | Percentage Profit |0 -
What's the best was to structure Product page information on my site?
Hi - I run a hobby related niche new / article / resource site (http://tinyurl.com/4eavaj4). One of the most critical components of the site is our product database. We don't actually sell anything directly - instead we monetize them by displaying relevant affiliate product feeds and price comparisons. However since the Panda update was implemented in February my traffic (particularly my long tail, product related traffic) has dropped off considerably. I had about a 20% drop in overall traffic, but have made up some of the ground in the past week. However I want to know once and for all how I should structure my product related information as I have a ton of great content that is ready to be published in this section but want to be sure I structure it the best possible way from a SEO standpoint. Here are a few different options I've come up with for displaying information about products on my site. For the purpose of these examples I am going to refer to all of the information that makes up my product pages collectively as "product profiles". Please let me know which is the best SEO wise (or if you have a better way of doing it let me know): - Option 1 - Current Method - Divide Content Sections into different pages / urls Example: http://tinyurl.com/4tpdlbl This is how the majority of my product profiles are currently structured. I did this to improve load times and to keep the total number of links per page down. In addition to the core product profile subpages: "Product Details","Compare Prices", **"**Product Review", "Hot Auctions", and "Checklists", I have the Checklists area further segmented by subset, each of which is on its own page that is only accessible through the main Checklists tab of the profile. - Option 2 - Everything on one url / page the old fashioned way, with everything available by scrolling vertically. This would make the page go on forever though. - Option 3 - Everything on one url / page, but visually segmented using css / javascript tabs. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4kqhauh I looked at the source code and all the page text is there, so it looks like it would be spider-able but you tell me. Or would another method of tabbing be better? My site is wordpress based so the functionality comes from a plugin. - Option 4 - Use post tabs that are technically all on the same page, but make each individual tab be accessible through its own suburl, all of which share the same core canonical url. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4bs9pjs Clicking on any of the individual tabs will result in something like ?postTabs=2 being appended to the core url. Example: http://tinyurl.com/4gvgufc Any input would be greatly appreciated asap! Thanks Mike
Web Design | | MikeATL0