Best way to handle redirection for products that come in and out of inventory.
-
We have a large volume of products that rotate seasonally. From an SEO perspective we are looking for the best method on how to handle these issues.
Currently when crawler or user encounters a URL to a product that is no longer in inventory we are looking at two things. One, the request comes in and send a 200 to a page that says ITEM NOT FOUND. Option 2, is simply send them to a 404.
The product may or may not be put back into production. What is the best method to handle this?
-
Thank you Rob for taking the time to answer. Much appreciated. That's pretty much the direction we started with. I kind of look at it like an internal search. When an internal search is made for a product that doesn't exist, they get returned to a 200 and static item not found page. So we are moving forward this same method.
Our next step is to reduce 8k 404s a week we get!
-
It really does depend on the product and type of site for sure.
-
I agree here, but with the Panda updates this past year, just having pages up won't really do much. You'll need to improve the user experience to build on the page.
I would build on the page, but look to improve the landing pages of the products that are either no longer available, or the pages that are or will still be online but with products that are not available 'at this time'.
Bring in social media, product landing pages, perhaps a posting 'comment' section for customers to review the products (to offer some user generated content), alongside other features like customized descriptions (don't copy the supplier site), features about the history of the product, the origin of it.. etc..
If it's no longer available, redirecting to a products page of similar relation will help keep the client on the site - while also offering various products of similar needs for their use.
Do all this - I and I see a win-win for you
-
I would simply keep those pages live at all times
I keep seasonal pages up... and have found that they creep up the rankings over the years. Next season they are more valuable.
-
Really depends on the products you're selling. I do like Rob's answer about keeping the page live and offering an alternative or capturing an interest list. You still want the sale or to create the lead so providing some sort of call to action is key if these are significant.
If the product is never coming back, I'd def redirect to a close match or a parent category.
-
You definately don't want to use a 404 error code, so avoid that at. There would be a lot of 301 redirects after that as Google isn't a big fan of 404 pages and it doesn't help your 'user experience'.
Because your product pages (individually) might be gaining links and resources/mentions/social mentions, etc, from customers as they find products, a 404 would produce a loss in valuable inbound linking juice into the domain.
I would simply keep those pages live at all times, but build on the pages/products description, history, talk about it's features, etc, keep those deeply seeded and index'd pages in the domain. Then when they come back online (if they do) ir provides users excellent content about the product and in parallel works with thier user experience.
If the product after time doesn't return, then just work to find a solution for those specific pages. Perhaps a directory of 'out of date products' that visitors could reference if they were looking or searching for something in particur on that site - and offer an alternative (if available) to them in it's place?
Hope this helps a little. Rob
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
-
To many 301 redirects
Hi, Is there anything wrong with over 100 301 reditects on my wordpress website and how do you go about redirecting a 301 again for example abc.com redirects to bca.com now i want to redirect bca.com to ert.com any problems with this setup? Regards
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Dynamic Url best approach
Hi We are currently in the process of making changes to our travel site where by if someone does a search this information can be stored and also if the user needs to can take the URL and paste into their browser at find that search again. The url will be dynamic for every search, so in order to stop duplicate content I wanted ask what would be the best approach to create the URLS. ** An example of the URL is: ** package-search/holidays/hotelFilters/?depart=LGW&arrival=BJV&sdate=20150812&edate=20150819&adult=2&child=0&infant=0&fsearch=first&directf=false&nights=7&tsdate=&rooms=1&r1a=2&r1c=0&r1i=0&&dest=3&desid=1&rating=&htype=all&btype=all&filter=no&page=1 I wanted to know if people have previous experience in something like this and what would be the best option for SEO. Will we need to create the URL with a # ( As i read this stops google crawling after the #) Block the folder IN ROBOTS is there any other areas I should be aware of in order stop any duplicate content and 404 pages once the URL/HOLIDAY SEARCH is no longer valid. thanks E
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
What is the best practice to seperate different locations and languages in an URL? At the moment the URL is www.abc.com/ch/de. Is there a better way to structure the URL from an SEO perspective?
I am looking for a solution for using a new URL structure without using www.abc.com**/ch/de** in the URL to deliver the right languages in specific countries where more than one language are spoken commonly. I am looking forward to your ideas!
Technical SEO | | eviom0 -
What is the best way of inserting keywords into a social networking site
We have a social networking site called Yookos (www.yookos.com). As per the norm, many of the pages of the site carry user generated content and can only be accessed by the users themselves. i created a keyword list that our technical person the uploaded onto the site but SEOmoz shows that these keywords cannot be picked up.
Technical SEO | | seoworx123
What is the best way to make sure that our site is also picked up via search engine searches.0 -
Product landing page URL's for e-commerce sites - best practices?
Hi all I have built many e-commerce websites over the years and with each one, I learn something new and apply to the next site and so on. Lets call it continuous review and improvement! I have always structured my URL's to the product landing pages as such: mydomain.com/top-category => mydomain.com/top-category/sub-category => mydomain.com/top-category/sub-category/product-name Now this has always worked fine for me but I see more an more of the following happening: mydomain.com/top-category => mydomain.com/top-category/sub-category => mydomain.com/product-name Now I have read many believe that the longer the URL, the less SEO impact it may have and other comments saying it is better to have the just the product URL on the final page and leave out the categories for one reason or another. I could probably spend days looking around the internet for peoples opinions so I thought I would ask on SEOmoz and see what other people tend to use and maybe establish the reasons for your choices? One of the main reasons I include the categories within my final URL to the product is simply to detect if a product name exists in multiple categories on the site - I need to show the correct product to the user. I have built sites which actually have the same product name (created by the author) in multiple areas of the site but they are actually different products, not duplicate content. I therefore cannot see a way around not having the categories in the URL to help detect which product we want to show to the user. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | yousayjump0 -
Redirects 301
Hello, I need to reedirect a URL of a page that I have in my site (http://digitaldiscovery.com.pt/servicos-de-marketing-digital/publicidade-online/) to a new URL with SEO porpuses. Whats the best way to this? I use Wordpress btw. Tks in advance! PP
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
Snagged an Expired Domain Best way to get all the Link Juce?
Found a PR4 domain that had expired and not been renewed. Best way to get all the link juice from it? just 301 the whole thing to MY main domain?
Technical SEO | | bozzie3110 -
301 Redirects
Hello, I have a problem with my website. I have a page on my website http://www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus but if i type in www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus/f8e45e9d9df6140bb5a7ff1173e8d828 or www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus/0f0eea5e9ab0a3e8d91fad8fc0d3ce9c it still displays the about us page. Google is seeing this as duplicate content so what I would want to do is 301 redirect anything after www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus . How could I implement a 301 redirect in this way?
Technical SEO | | danielmckay70