To delete or not? That is the question..

[seanmccauley]

In the case of an eCommerce store with a large catalogue of branded goods the inventory is constantly being adjusted as products become discontinued. Each year most fashion brands have 2 or 3 launches. At this same time they will delete some (not all) of previous years collections. Once we have sold through the remaining inventory of last season's products the question is how to proceed?

a) delete products to avoid customers landing on page, then only to be disappointed when product is no longer available to purchase..

b) keep products however mark as discontinued / no longer available and show a link to a similar product if applicable..

I am coming around to the opinion that b) provides a better user experience. However will this growing catalogue of old products (pushed to bottom of category page) help keep content of site full and have SEO advantages? If this is the case then that helps confirm b) as best choice??

[DonnaDuncan]

Matt Cutts recommends a strategy based on the size of your product inventory. For large sites (like yours), he recommends configuring an unavailable_after meta tag when the page is created. The tag will effectively provide Google with a page expiry date which will be treated the same as a removal request. The page will be removed from search results about a day after the expiry date.

That solution doesn't help folks who have bookmarked the expired product page or sent there from one of your referral partners. For those, you'll still need to create a custom (redirected-to) page that explains what's happened - the product has been discontinued, is no longer available, and showcase similar products, if applicable. As you said, it will provide a much better user experience.

[Alick300]

Hi,

Yes option 'b' would be the best choice in my opinion. I also suggest you to read below article.

https://moz.com/blog/how-should-you-handle-expired-content

Thanks

[seanmccauley]

Donna

Thanks for the Matt Cutts video which I had been unaware of. I would consider our site to be more in the medium category. We are unable to predict an expiry date as our products don't have such a date i.e. some will continue for years and others will sell poorly and be discontinued after a few months. Also I am not in complete agreement that a 404 page is no more frustrating than a page which shows the original product albeit with a discontinued note. At least in the latter scenario the customer has an image and details of the original product to work from. Even better if we make suggestions of similar products...

[seanmccauley]

Alick

Thanks for link to moz article which is excellent. I like the suggestion of a custom 404 page for certain cases. Also as 404 pages lose link juice they suggest best option is to leave products on site though with suggested alternatives;

One of the more important aspects to my question was regarding SEO, ie will keeping discontinued products be superior to a 404 and the answer is within the article you link to... Also I am coming to the opinion that the best customer experience is to keep the product on site (however at bottom of list of products in their category) with suggestions for alternative choices. This way the customer doesn't hit a dead end and we keep any traffic and/or link juice ..

[seanmccauley]

Thanks for responses so far. I have been thinking further on this question and a further question has presented itself;

Consider the example where you sell ski goggles. Company SkiEyes produces a gents goggle called ExEyes in three colours, black, blue and red. It has been a best seller for years with plenty of sales, traffic and links (one for each colour). Now the blue has been discontinued whilst the red will be out of stock for 2 weeks. In the case of a customer making a google search 'SkiEyes ExEyes' the ideal scenario would be that google ranks in stock black colour at top, then out of stock red and further down the discontinued.. Any thoughts on how this could be achieved?

[DonnaDuncan]

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your example or intent, but in my mind, the ideal situation would be where Google ranks the category page that lists and links to all the different color options. The specific black, red, and blue goggle pages would be canonicaled back to the main category page, allowing you to consolidate SEO equity there.

[seanmccauley]

Donna, Thanks for your reply. In this case each of these goggles in each colour is a separate sku and landing page.  (Also apologies to use google and goggle in same sentence

[DonnaDuncan]

Ha! Yes, I noticed the Google goggle thing.

I get that each is a separate SKU and landing page. I'm suggesting why compete with yourself? Use canonical tags to tell Google (for ranking purposes) you want to consolidate all the SEO equity (and content) from all three pages into the category page (making it richer and stronger). Theoretically, if someone searches for "SkiEyes ExEyes goggles in red", Google will render the red landing page. If the same searcher searches for "SkiEyes ExEyes goggles", the category page will display.

[seanmccauley]

Hi

Thanks. We do canonicalise sizes though not colours as the colour can be an important search term..