What is the best strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?

[JimJ]

RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales;  and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years.

We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings  that older than 2years that do not generate any sales.  What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings  an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items?

Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.

[jessicapremier]

Can't speak for everyone, but i had this same thing come up with our eCommerce website.  We added a feature to our eCommerce store that allowed us to "discontinue" the product.  Meaning that we removed the product from being searched or listed in our store.  However, if you visited the page by direct URL the product page would load and say discontinued and display a list of related products in hopes the customer would not bounce.

[jasongmcmahon]

I'd 301 redirects from the discontinued lines to the main  section pages, so

https://www.domain.com/**product-type**/a-red-sweater

would redirect to

https://www.domain.com/**product-type**/

[Salience_Search_Marketing]

Hey,

If a product is out-of-stock temporarily, best practice is to link to alternative products, for example:

• Newer models or versions.
• Similar products from other brands.
• Other products in the same category that match in quality and price.
• The same product in different colours.

This provides a good service to customers and helps search engines find and understand related pages easier.

If a product is out-of-stock permanently there are three main options.

1: Product returns a 410 (or 404) Not Found status.
Google understands 410 and 404 Not Found pages are inevitable, but the problem with creating too many of them is it reduces the time search engine crawlers will spend visiting the pages that actually should rank. If this option is implemented, ideally there should be signposts to related products on the Not Found page.

2. 301 permanently redirect old product to existing product (e.g. newer version or close alternative).
A dynamically generated message should clearly display on the page e.g. “Product X is no longer available. This is a similar product/the replacement product.”

This option is recommended if redirect chains can be minimised, e.g. if product turnover is high the following could happen in a short timeframe:

1. Product 1 no longer exists and gets 301 redirected to Product 2.
2. Product 2 no longer exists and gets 301 redirected to Product 3.
3. Now a redirect chain exists: Product 1 redirects to Product 2 which then redirects to Product 3. Product 1 would need to be updated to redirect to Product 3, without the intermediate redirect to Product 2.

3. 301 permanently redirect old product to parent category. A dynamically generated message should clearly display on the page e.g. “Product X is no longer available. Please see similar products below.”

As categories are likely to change less often than products, this is potentially easier to implement than option 2.

[Colemckeon]

I have countless clients that get HUGE traffic form products that they have "discontinued"

You worked so hard to get those products to display on Google, why would you throw away all of your traffic with a 301 redirect to a different product causing high bounce rates or even worse taking your visitors to a discontinued product page.

I would simply put an "Out of Stock" notice on that product and have related products below to direct your customers to similar products or maybe an add to waitlist, so if you decide to bring the product back you have immediate customers.

Amazon is a perfect example. For the most part, they do not delete or remove products. If you search a product that is no longer in stock at Amazon it will say out of stock, still allowing you to see multiple reviews on that product or other sellers offering similar products.

[JimJ]

Hi Cole

These are not out of stock products. These are items that don't sell and have not sold in years; We have listings older than 5yrs and do not have any sales at all.

You would mark them as out of stock?

[JimJ]

These are not out of stock products. These are items that don't sell and have not sold in years; We have listings older than 5yrs and do not have any sales at all.

You would mark them as out of stock?

[Colemckeon]

James, I would still make these as out of stock.

If these products don't get any organic search or traffic anyway, it is ok to re-direct them.

The message above was for established products that have been indexed by Google over a long period of time.

Please le the know if you have any questions. Also, if someone answer the question to your satisfaction you should mark the comment as a good comment