How do retailers phase out short term promotional pages for best SEO?
-
I have a high level question and am open to all discussions.
I work for a large ecommerce site and we are always making new landing pages, product assortments and promotions.
We have a challenge on how to retire these pages after a promotion is outdated.
What is this the MOZ community option on a way to retire, like 301 redirect to home page?
-
The guys all have some great thoughts here.
One more thought:
If a promotion or product is usually short-lived but comes back intermittently (e.g. once a year, twice a year, etc.), the URL can be kept live. A good example is rental real estate in a big city - the properties will come back on the market, but the URLs need to show visitors that the apartment is not available at the moment. RIghtmove (real estate in the UK) does this with rentals it knows will come back on the market, e.g. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-21907128.html
They re-use the pages when the property is live again - I've seen them do it with both flats I lived in, and they rank remarkably well. Questionable usability if a page ranks and is actually unavailable, but effective.
Clearly this is only relevant if you will re-use / open these short-term promotions in the future.
-
I'm in ecommerce as well. We 301 promotion-specific pages to the homepage once the promotion is over, as each one won't come back around for a year.
-
Yeah if you can determine a set schedule, with no overlap, I would try to aggregate promotions onto a common URL.
For instance, we host local events in Brooklyn, for which the content becomes obsolete once the event is over. We maintain one URL for our events:
http://www.uncommongoods.com/designs/events
And simply rotate the content. That way the links to the page help build more specific authority for "design events". If we were to 301 redirect content to the HP, we'd lose this niche.
-
It depends on how quick the promotions are. If the promotions really are short-term, I like to create a "specials" or "promotions" page where they can all be aggregated along with some unique content. Pages like that can get crazy traffic and even links. Visitors love them.
Then, you can have those individual promotions pages branch off of that main one. 301s to the promotions page would work. Or, if possible, maybe creating brand new pages for each promotion isn't the right way to go about it, and those promotions should ONLY live on the main promotions page.
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
-
Best SEO Strategy for Badges & Awards.
Hello Moz Friends! I was wondering what the correct "SEO friendly" strategy is with badges and awards. We recently got BBB accredited and added their badge to the footer of the website. We also added a review badge from shopper approved to the footer. As I'm joining other communities, I see there's badges given to us. For example, Alignable. Great place for networking. They offer a badge that says "locals recommend us" or something. Should I embed these badges onto our website someplace? Should I create a page for just badges or place them in the footer or sidebar widgets? What the best SEO practice for this? Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE2 -
2 eCommerce stores that are identical 1 for US 1 for CA, what's the best way to SEO?
Hello everyone! I have an SEO question that I cannot solve given the parameters of the project, and I was wondering if someone could provide me with the next best alternative to my situation. Thank you in advance. The problem: Two eCommerce stores are completely identical (structure, products, descriptions, content) but they are on separate domains for currency and targeting purposes. www.website-can.com is for Canada and www.website-usa.com is for US. Due to exchange rate issues, we are unable to combine the 2 domains into 1 store and optimize. What's been done? I have optimized the Canadian store with unique meta titles and descriptions for every page and every product. However I have left the US store untouched. I would like to gain more visibility for the US Store but it is very difficult to create unique content considering the products are identical. I have evaluated using canonicals but that would ask Google to only look at either the Canadian or US store, , correct me if i'm wrong. I am looking for the next best solution given the challenges and I was wondering if someone could provide me with some ideas.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Snaptech_Marketing0 -
Is writing good content the best SEO?
Hi, After reading Mr. Shepard's amazing article on the 7 concepts of advanced on-page SEO (https://moz.com/blog/7-advanced-seo-concepts), I decided to share my own experience in hopes of helping others. I started doing legal SEO back in 2013. At the time I really didn't know much about SEO. My first client (my brother) had recently left the D.A.'s office to become a criminal defense attorney. I told him to write content for the following areas: domestic violence, sex crimes, and homicide. He finished his first content piece on domestic violence and I was not impressed. It seemed too unique, individualized, and lacked the "generic" feel that many of the currently ranking pages had. Please note that I don't mean "generic" in a negative way. I just mean that his content regarding domestic violence felt too personalized. Granted, his "personalized" approach came from a Deputy D.A. with over 13 years handling domestic violence, sex crimes, and murder cases. I was inclined to re-write his content, but lacking any experience in criminal law I really had no choice but to use it. IMPORTANT: Please note that I barely knew any SEO at the time (I hadn't even yet discovered MOZ), and my brother knew, and continues to know, absolutely nothing about SEO. He simply wrote the content from the perspective of an attorney who had spent the better part of 13 years handling these types of cases. The result? Google: "Los Angeles domestic violence lawyer/attorney", "Los Angeles sex crimes lawyer/attorney", and "Los Angeles homicide attorney." They have held those spots consistently since being published. I know that MANY other factors contribute to the success of content, but at the time I published them we had few links and very little "technical SEO." Unfortunately, I started learning "SEO" and applied standard SEO techniques to future content. The result? Never as good as the articles that were written with no SEO in mind. My purpose in writing this is to help anyone about to tackle a new project or revamp an existing site. Before getting too caught up in the keywords, H tags, and all the other stuff I seem to worry too much about, simply ask yourself - "is this great content?" Thanks again to the MOZ team for the great advice they have shared over the years. Honestly, I think I sometimes become overly reliant on SEO b/c it seems easier than taking the time to write a great piece of content. P.s. Any "SEO" stuff you see on the above-mentioned pages was done by me after the pages ranked well. P.p.s. I don't mean to imply that the above-mentioned pages are perfect, because they are not. My point is that content can rank well even without any emphasis on SEO, as long as the person writing it knows about the subject and takes the time to write something that readers find useful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14403 -
SEO: Can you rank Amazon product Pages ?
Hi Guys Just a general question about doing SEO for our product pages... We have a range of products on Amazon and wondered if it is worth build some good links to our product pages to get them ranked higher in Google ?? Is it easier to rank Amazon product pages ?? Thanks Guys G Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Putting "noindex" on a page that's in an iframe... what will that mean for the parent page?
If I've got a page that is being called in an iframe, on my homepage, and I don't want that called page to be indexed.... so I put a noindex tag on the called page (but not on the homepage) what might that mean for the homepage? Nothing? Will Google, Bing, Yahoo, or anyone else, potentially see that as a noindex tag on my homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Linking to local pages on main page - keyword self-cannibalization issue?
Hi guys, Our website has this landing page: www.example.com/service1/ Is this considered keyword self-cannibalization if on the above page we link to local pages such as: www.example.com/service1-in-chicago/ www.example.com/service1-in-newyork/ www.example.com/service1-in-texas/ Many thanks David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0 -
What is the best canonical url to use for a product page?
I just helped a client redesign and launch a new website for their organic skin care company (www.hylunia.com). The site is built in Magento which by default creates MANY urls for each product. Which of these two do you think would be the best to use as the canonical version? http://www.hylunia.com/pure-hyaluronic-acid-solution
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielmoss
or http://www.hylunia.com/products/face-care/facial-moisturizers/pure-hyaluronic-acid-solution ? I'm leaning on the latter, because it makes sense to me to have the breadcrumbs match the url string, and also it seems having more keywords in the url would help. However, it's obviously a very long url, and there might be some benefits to using the shorter version that I'm not aware of. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts. Best, Daniel0 -
Google swapped our website's long standing ranking home page for a less authoritative product page?
Our website has ranked for two variations of a keyword, one singular & the other plural in Google at #1 & #2 (for over a year). Keep in mind both links in serps were pointed to our home page. This year we targeted both variations of the keyword in PPC to a products landing page(still relevant to the keywords) within our website. After about 6 weeks, Google swapped out the long standing ranked home page links (p.a. 55) rank #1,2 with the ppc directed product page links (p.a. 01) and dropped us to #2 & #8 respectively in search results for the singular and plural version of the keyword. Would you consider this swapping of pages temporary, if the volume of traffic slowed on our product page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JingShack0