Using Temporary Redirects for Ecommerce Categories?
-
Hi
I'm currently going over old category pages for an ecommerce website, and I'm trying to work out the best way of handling old pages. I will be setting up 301s for the majority of pages, as these are 100% dead and gone. I'm struggling a bit with certain pages though, whereby the category is empty but there is always the possibility that our buyers will purchase these products again in the future (or they might not, there's no way to tell). I know that this isn't what a 302 is for, but I'm wondering which would be better in this case: to create a 302 redirect or to do a full 301 and if the products are repurchased at a later date to create a whole new url.
Hope that makes sense.
Thanks,
Kate
-
Hi Kate
I work with a lot of eCommerce companies and when a category is essentially in limbo - between seasons where stock may be re-bought then I keep it live. To simply redirect to another unrelated page is not, in my opinion the best result for the customer.
If a customer is searching for Levis (just an example) and you don't have any then why would he want to end up on a generic Jeans page or another brand? The best result is that they see you are out of stock. You could even just put a message on that page saying - Sold Out - stock arriving soon or something like that. (Get the buying plans off the buyers! - they know what is on order for the next 6-9 months!)
The page will remain and get repopulated once stock arrives. If the category is simply out of stock never to return then I would consider redirecting to a higher category - but if it was a brand I may still leave the page as being sold out. (The alternative here is to allow it to 404 so the page disappears all together from SERPs - but then style your 404 page so that they can follow a menu of alternatives).
The last thing you want is a potential customer going round in circles trying to find the brand because you have redirect them somewhere else. So a message like 'We are out of stock of Levis right now but check out these other awesome brands - with a menu' is perfectly fine and a better User Experience (UX)
By creating the best UX you are far more likely to please your buyers and frankly a few pages of skinny content is not going to kill you in SERPS - you have a perfectly valid reason.
Watch Rand's video on alternative methods but I would do this.
Regards
Nigel
-
I'm not sure if I follow the "empty pages for which the client would purchase something" part. Are you referring to the site owner's company to purchase stock for those pages?
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for that! All I'm getting from it is that I should just do a 301. I'm guessing there isn't the functionality anywhere for a page that may or may not come back.
-
Hey Kate,
The guys here @ Moz actually have a really awesome "whiteboard Friday" video on this exact topic, which pretty much covers everything and is much better explained than I could ever interpret it...so...here you go: https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical
Have a nice weekend!
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
-
Magento Category Suffix - redirect issue
Hi All, Just launched a new Magento store & set the category suffix to blank & not .html or / So the desired url is https://www.example.com/category-1 But I am seeing a 301 redirect being implemented: https://www.example.com/category-1/ redirect to: https://www.example.com/category-1 I cant see this is the list of 301 redirects within the redirect panel in Magento but Moz & another redirect checker is picking it up. I am missing a setting or something ? Many Thanks,
Technical SEO | | PaddyM556
Pat0 -
301 Redirects Showing As 307 Redirects
Hi, Our clients are adamant that they have set up 301 permanent redirects on their websites, but when we check using Screaming Frog and various online HTTP status code checkers they are showing as 307 temporary redirects. Examples;
Technical SEO | | Webpresence
http://www.lifestylelifts.co.uk/home-lifts/
http://www.terrylifts.co.uk/ Again, the client says they are seeing 301 redirects. Why are we seeing 307's? Who is right? Very puzzling, any theories would be very much appreciated 🙂 Thanks in advance. Lee.0 -
Redirecting 301 or 302?
Hi, I think the part of this question has been already discussed, but not exactly the same, I think. My site requires authentication for member page. When a user try to go to member area, we redirect to 3rd party to do the authentication. 1. user clicks a link to www.mysite.com/member/contents.html
Technical SEO | | HypermediaSystems
2. www.myauthenticate.com/login?h=somehashuniquehash454859428778545 (enters id/pass)
3. login success => redirect back to www.mysite.com/member/contents.html We are doing it 302, temporary redirect. But moz crawler error seems to suggest we should do it 301.
So my question is:
A. Should we do it 301???
B. If we do 301, what happens to myauthenticate.com? since it has hashtag, I am afraid it could create a lot of duplicate contents on myauthenticate.com side... Thank you so much for your help in advance...0 -
Representing categories on my site
My site serves a consumer-focused industry that has about 15-20 well recognized categories, which act as a pretty obvious way to segment our content. Each category supports it's own page (with some useful content) and a series of articles relevant to that category. In short, the categories are pretty focal to what we do. I am moving from DNN to WordPress as my CMS/blog. I am taking the opportunity to review and fix SEO-related issues as I migrate. One such area is my URL structure. On my existing site (on DNN), I have the following types of pages for each topic: / <topic>- this is essentially the landing page for the topic and links to articles</topic> /<topic>/articles/ <article-name>- topics have 3-15 articles with this URL structure</article-name></topic> With WordPress, I am considering moving to articles being under the root. So, an article on (making this up) how to make a widget would be under /how-to-make-a-widget, instead of /<widgets>/article/how-to-make-a-widget I will be using WordPress categories to reflect the topics taxonomy, so I can flag my articles using standard WordPress concepts.</widgets> Anyway, I'm trying to get my head around whether it makes sense to "flatten" my URL structure such that the URLs for each article no longer include the topic (the article page will link to the topic page though). Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | MarkWill1 -
CPanel Redirects: Know How Needed
I have ran into something I have not ran into in the past. cpanel, setting a 301 redirect. --Drop down domain choice ----- / ---- ?attachment_id=539 http://ipromotis.com (Only box marked is redirect with or without www) Produces 301 Redirect http://ipromotis.com to http://ipromotis.com
Technical SEO | | yeagerd0 -
What hosting companies do you use & do you use dedicated servers
I am hoping the community of semoz will help me in deciding what hosting company i should use as there are hundreds of them. I have asked previously about dedicated servers but was shocked to have only received one responce. Recently i have been having nothing but problems with my hosting company so now i am trying to find a UK hosting company that can offer a dedicated server. I would be grateful if people could let me know what companies they use for their sites and if they use managed hosting companies.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Using Robots.txt
I want to Block or prevent pages being accessed or indexed by googlebot. Please tell me if googlebot will NOT Access any URL that begins with my domain name, followed by a question mark,followed by any string by using Robots.txt below. Sample URL http://mydomain.com/?example User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /?
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Product category paging
Hi, My product categories have 2-3 pages each. I have paging implemented with rel=next and rel=prev. from some reason Google GWT now reports the pages as having duplicate titles and description. Should I be worried? Should I set a different title like "blue category - page x" ? Thanx, Asaf
Technical SEO | | AsafY0