Best practice for a website where the publications (catalogues) expire frequently
-
Hi guys,
Hope to find some smart SEOs around here and where I can to contribute to the community!
I wanted to share an issue we are having with our website, which is focused on the promotional flyers of the supermarket chains. These are often valid for a short period of time and then expire. So it makes no sense to keep them but also, if we delete them, that would create a lot of 404s or something.
So how do you think it is the best way to go around this problem? should we delete them? or when deleted to redirect the dead pages to the homepage? or keep them in an archive live site.com/brand/archive/ ?
Thank you so much for any opinions, much appreciated!
Best
-
I think Anthony's idea on this is a good one and would be worth considering. I guess it depends on how many of these you have rotating at any one time and how many URLs you therefore have to maintain.
My thought on it would be to create a custom 404 page for your site that is a more pleasant landing page than regular 404 pages are. It could provide a nice apology that the content the link took them the person to is no longer available and show a number of anchored links for where the visitor may like to go to next, e.g. where to view other promotional flyers or other pages on the site which may be important to the visitor.
By doing that you provide a better visitor experience. Here are the recommendations from Moz's page on HTTP status codes. I think these make a lot of sense:
----------------------------- When visitors reach 404 pages, they should be given navigational options so they do not leave the given site. Web optimized 404 errors pages should contain:
- notification that the user has reached a page that does not exist
- a search box
- a easy to understand navigation system so the user can potentially find what they were orginally looking to access
- a link to the home page
-----------------------------
I hope that helps,
Peter -
I think this assessment is spot on. I think the superior strategy would what you mentioned at the end. If you updated the content continuously I believe you would create the most value for the user.
-
Hi-
This is a common problem for many websites, think Job Postings or Real Estate.
There are a few ways to handle it, and you have to decide what is best for your business. As of now, it sounds as if each flier is living on it's own unique URL on your site. Here are the scenarios for that set-up.
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, let them 404 when removed
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, archive them
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, redirect all back to parent subcategory/store page
- Create a unique page for each weeks flyer, selectively redirect pages to subcategory/store page if you know there are external links pointing at it
What I wonder is if you could just update the content and keep the URL the same.
website.com/store-name/weekly-flier
This would allow you to continuously build links to the same page and build it's authority and ranking ability over time. You could still choose to archive it if you wanted, but I wonder if that would have value for any of your users.
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
-
How will ranking keywords add on my website
Its been a lot of time since I have launched my website but I am not getting any ranking keywords can you please help me about the following factor or provide some solutions my website is about selling third-party antivirus and technical service: norton.com/setup
On-Page Optimization | | Mehakayna0 -
What is the best use of canonical ref on home (default/index) page?
Moz reports show duplicate content for my www.domain.com and www.domain.com/default.html How do I format the canonical ref to put on the default.html page?
On-Page Optimization | | bhsiao0 -
My website is being opened by multiple URLs?
Dear Friends, I have a website which is being opened like example.comand example/index to same page. Is there any problem SEO point of view. By the way I have placed the Rel= canonical tag in source page. its working fine but
On-Page Optimization | | docbeans0 -
Rel="canonical" Wordpress 2015 Best Practice
There are forum posts about how to insert rel="canonical" tags in Wordpress, but I've read about lots of changes in this space recently (updates to Yoast, for example). I'm having a problem with duplicate content on one of my sites, and it seems to be coming from multiple indexes of the same pages. I'll have a blog post show up under the posts, then the archives, then the tags. So, my question is, in early 2015, what are the current best practices for adding rel="canonical" tags in Wordpress? Thanks! Tim
On-Page Optimization | | TimLlew0 -
Using phrases like 'NO 1' or 'Best' int he title tag
Hi All, Quick question - is it illegal, against any rule etc to use phrases such as 'The No 1 rest of the title tag | Brand Name' on a site?
On-Page Optimization | | Webrevolve0 -
Spanish version of site - best practice?
I need to create a Spanish version of an existing site. My idea was to have the Spanish content switch out the English content if the query string had something like ?l=es. It would also drop a cookie so that all other pages would switch out content as well. I do want the Spanish content to be indexed and rank in the search engines, though. I would include all of the Spanish versions (with the ?l=es) in the site map and link to them on every page with a link to the Spanish version. Does anyone have any experience with this? Is this a bad idea? Thanks! Tom
On-Page Optimization | | TomBristol0 -
Is there a guide to best practices for site content and blogs?
We have been working hard producing good content for our sites and now we need to know what are the most current best practices regarding placing and organizing content. We do the usual social media blast with Twitter, FB, G+ with each blog post. But it seems there is more that can and should be done. What about authorship and schema tags?
On-Page Optimization | | devonkrusich0 -
The best way to redirect to www
What is the best way to redirect non www to www. I saw a lot of the solution. is this one ok? RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.seomoz.org [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://www.seomoz.org/$1 [L,R=301]
On-Page Optimization | | bruki0