How to keep the link juice in E-commerce to an "out of stock" products URL?

[ikomorin]

I am running an e-commerce business where I sell fashion jewelry. We usually have 500 products to offer and some of them we have only one in stock.

What happens is that many of our back links are pointed directly to a specific product, and when a product is sold out and no longer is in stock the URL becomes inactive, and we lose the link juice.

What is the best practice or tool to 301-redirect many URLs at the same time without going and changing one URL at a time?

Do you have any other suggestions on how to manage an out of stock product but still maintain the link juice from the back link?

Thanks!

[Entrusteddev]

In previous E-commerce builds I have simply kept the page for out of stock items active and just post an out of stock message on the product page and category level page so customers are aware of the fact the item is out of stock.

If your not getting the product back in stock ever again, then 301 the URL to a relevant page.

[AaronSchinke]

This is exactly what we do as well, or if the product is obsolete always keep the page and use it to suggest relevant products.