New Site Launch- Bad Rankings

[K2_Sports]

So I am slightly stumped. I work on a few eCom sites and over the past few months we have been launching new products as well as some site updates/upgrades. The issue that I am having is this. Product that is actually new this season, as in we did not carry it before, is ranking fine...generally speaking we are top 3 in Google with Brand/Product name.

However product that is not new, meaning it has a new color or graphic but has been in the catalog for years is not ranking. In Prior years the URL's ended with the product name, now however they have additional information added to the end for this season. Would not directing the old URL to the new URL effect the rankings of these pages?

I am open to suggestions beyond redirecting as well. Thank you!

[BrianCrouch]

Hi Melissa,

A few clarifying questions:

1. When you say the older products are not ranking, do you mean they aren't appearing even for brand and product-specific searches?
2. Do I understand you right, that you've got new URLs for old pages (product pages) but the older URLs aren't 301 (or 302) redirected to the new URLs? If that's the case, then yes, not redirecting from the old URL to the new one would affect the rankings of those pages.
3. I assume all internal links and sitemap were updated to point to the new URLs, and that there are no internal links pointing at the outdated URLs?
4. What is the textual difference between the canonical URL of the older products vs. the newer ones?

I'd need to see the actual site to be able to understand more clearly. Would you be willing to put up screenshots or link to an example of an older product that is not ranking anymore? (Perhaps with an example of the older URL too?)

[K2_Sports]

Hi Brian, yes let me clarify.

1. They  no longer appear in searches as we put a "no follow" on them..that is fine we don't want to rank for the older product but the URL has history if you will.

2. Here is an example of a URL. My thought process is that we needed to redirect the old to the new...as it stands now we cannot get the new URL's to Rank in the top 50.

old: ridesnowboards.com/snowboards/machete

new: ridesnowboards.com/snowboards/machete-1213

3. Yes I believe so...however I am going to double check with the dev team.

Hope this helps

[BrianCrouch]

They  no longer appear in searches as we put a "no follow" on them..that is fine we don't want to rank for the older product but the URL has history if you will.

I assume the old pages had some external links from product reviews? Since you want to harvest that link juice for the new pages, if you don't want to do a redirect you can set rel="canonical" on the old page to the new pages; though that means the older products will still be visible in SERPs, the SE juice would pass to the new. Better though to redirect to equivalent product pages.

Noticed there's no sitemap, or at least it's hard to find... http://goo.gl/ULW69

Also, I googled "Machete 1213" and got this as #1, as we would expect: http://ridesnowboards.com/snowboards/machete-1213

[K2_Sports]

Yes there was link juice that we would like to harvest...I am thinking that the redirect is the way to go.

So next question. Since the "new" product has been live since June is it still ok to go do a redirect, is there any harm in this?

And I guess moving forward we would have to do a redirect every season as the product names stay the same.

[BrianCrouch]

"is it still ok to go do a redirect, is there any harm in this" Not at all. Older content pages that are being deprecated are redirected to other pages all the time, most usually to the home page.

"And I guess moving forward we would have to do a redirect every season as the product names stay the same."

That's a different story... I'd actually consider new taxonomy/IA altogether. Do older products still receive support/service? Customers might want to find the product they'd had if they have service questions.

Anyway, good luck, let me know how it all works out!

[K2_Sports]

Yes we are actually thinking of doing an "archive" type page so people can look and see what season their product is from..this helps with warranty processing for customers.

Thank you Brian for your help!