Need Q&A for out of stock seo
How do I deal with product which are permanently out of stock?
- If you are a large site, use the “unavailable_after” meta tag to automate the process of deleting product pages which you will never restock.
- Use 404 pages on your website are inevitable once you delete a product which goes permanently out of stock. Although these pages are a big turn-off to customers, there are ways you can make them more attractive to potential buyers.
Custom 404 error pages are step up from the generic “sorry! this page was not found.” They are brand create a pleasant experience for the user. Several ways to customize your 404 pages include;
- Design the page to look like your website, complete with some or all of your navigation bars.
- Create a humorous message telling users what happened. That will lighten up their mood.
- Leave behind links to similar products or pages that the user could be interested in.
- Place a search box at the front and center of your error page.
- Should I keep discontinued product pages running?
There are three reasons why you should keep discontinued product pages running:
- There is traffic to the site
Sometimes, people continue to search or demand for a product long after you have taken it is out of the market. In such instances, you can still keep a discontinued product page if you offer similar alternative products that you can recommend to buyers. Let the customer know that the product is unavailable before you recommend other products.
- You are getting revenue from the site
Through the other recommended products of course.
- The page has quality backlinks
Backlinks are some of the most valued ranking factors on Google. Check for links to that site by using tools such as Majestic and Moz Link Explorer.
If your page has relevant backlinks, do not delete it. Instead, redirect it to a page with a similar product or product categories. When you are deciding where to redirect your page, choose websites that are unlikely to be discontinued in the future. That way, you will avoid multiple redirects that will negatively affect page load speed, user experience, and backlink equity.
Whenever you are directing, inform your users why they are going to a different page.
- How can I prevent sold-out product pages from damaging MY SEO performance?
If many of your products are going out of stock at a high rate, Google can reduce your rankings as it doesn’t intend to send customers to non-functional pages.
To prevent this, check the website’s traffic both organic and referral. If the numbers are down or non-existent, you can either delete or redirect the page.
- How should I handle pages of products which are temporarily out of stock?
- Keep such pages live.
If you delete or 404 a temporarily unavailable product page, you will have a problem attaining the same Google score you has with that page when you relaunch.
- Do not redirect them permanently (301) or temporarily (302)
It’s quite obvious why you shouldn’t redirect your temporarily unavailable product page permanently, what about a temporary redirect?
While that would seem like a wiser way to get people to continue to buy other products from you, it will reduce customer experience and may not help your conversions.
Nevertheless, if you are dealing with a product whose future availability is unclear, you can redirect these pages to other similar products or categories.
- Use product availability schema
You can also use product availability schema to inform people about the availability of your product. Your options will include: out of stock, in stock, instore only, or sold out.
Sometimes, Google displays these product statuses as part of the search results which is useful to potential customers. You can also tell your customers how many items are remaining in stock, to avoid disappointments.
This approach is not without challenges. The major one is that when the product is back in stock, you will have to change the schema, but Google takes time to update it.
Bottom line, avoid technical twitches that cause search bots to re-crawl or re-cache your site.
Nevertheless it is okay to suggest to your customers other relevant products on the page.
- Inform visitors on the page of product status
On the website, inform the visitors that the product is out of stock and when it is likely to be back.
- Have visitors sign to be notified when the product is back.
- Enable pre-orders.
- Include a link to other stores where your customer can get the product.
- Give people an option to filter out-of-stock products. Make the filter option unavailable to search bots to save your backlink equity.
- Place in-stock products at the top of your internal search results.
- How do I handle seasonal products and categories such as Christmas gifts?
If a product is seasonal, do not remove them if you are sure that you are still going to stock them when their season comes. A good move would be to continually create content for these pages so that they can continue to show up in search results.
When the time comes to sell, change up the content into highly converting copies
For products which you are not sure that you will restock, you can redirect them to custom 404 pages.
- What mistakes should I avoid when handling out of stock pages?
- Do not redirect a product page to a homepage
Redirect to a more relevant page on your site instead!
When you send visitors to your homepage, you leave them frustrated which could hurt your sales. So, if you had gained some SEO benefit from the redirect, you probably lost it in the customer experience due to high bounce rates.
- Doing nothing with such pages
Some large websites decide to ignore the discontinued pages for fear of hurting SEO or traffic. However, that practice hurts you even more. It results in an index bloat.
An index bloat is a situation whereby you have so many out-of-stock pages, such that Google ends up ignoring your important pages which could bring you revenue. It is, therefore, important to only keep the pages that are adding value to your business.
- What should I do if I do not want the discontinued page to appear in Google?
If you neither want the page in Google or any kind of redirect, you can use the meta “nonindex” tag, but do not add a “no follow” link to the code.
- Why does Google treat some redirects treated as soft 404 error messages?
Google may treat some pages as “soft 404 error messages” if they do not redirect to “very equivalent content.” That means that you need to pay extra care to the pages where you redirect your discontinued pages.
As Google stated in 2018, “A soft 404 means that a URL on your site returns a page telling the user that the page does not exist, and also a 200-level (success) code to the browser. (In some cases, instead of a “not found” page, it might be a page with little or no usable content –for example, a sparcely populated or empty page.)”
When a page returns a code other than a 404, it takes much more time for Google to crawl the page, which causes it to ignore other crucial pages leading to indexation issues that affect your aseo.
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