Home E-Commerce How to Handle Discontinued Products – SEO Tips and Strategies

How to Handle Discontinued Products – SEO Tips and Strategies

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ecommerce seo

No potential buyers care about the discontinued products and unavailable products in your eCommerce store. Reasons for discontinuation may be of different types, like diminished popularity, low sales, supply problems, manufacturers’ issues. When buyers do not find the product in your store, they will hit another platform. However, while the number of discontinued products is increasing, it may affect your eCommerce revenues. But, do not remove pages for your discontinued products. You have some other alternatives to maintain your eCommerce SEO status. You may check out new Brainvire offerings to manage your eCommerce business issues.

Defining the term, discontinued products

Discontinued items refer to products, which are no longer available in your stock. In some cases, the inventory has limited products, and store owners do not like to replenish it anymore.

There are several reasons for product discontinuation-

  •       The sales rate is going down.
  •       The product is unavailable, as the company has stopped manufacturing it.
  •       There are temporary issues with your supply chain.

However, discontinued products are still convertible into revenues, and you can deal with active and available product lines. Some retailers think that it is a waste of resources to promote discontinued products. But, you will gain value in the future from investing time in those products.

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Products permanently discontinued- What to do with these pages?

There are some buyers searching for these products. Thus, those product pages can rank in SERP and draw traffic. On the contrary, when you have kept the discontinued product pages active, it can leave negative impressions in some viewers. Search engines will start crawling those pages than that of the active products.     

That is why there is no particular solution to the issue. You may test your user feedback to take the right step. One of the best tips for you is to avoid removing the pages while the search volume for the product is high.

Products temporarily out-of-stock- What to do with these pages?

In this case, sellers will start selling the product within a very short period. Lots of potential customers will hit these product pages, as they like to purchase the item. However, do not let your category pages show the out-of-stock products. Still, visitors can view your product details, and you need to notify them when the product is available.

You have two options for dealing with the unavailable product pages.

Mention the time of availability of the product and request your visitors to submit details, like an email address. It helps you in sending emails when the product is in stock. Your notifications should include phrases, like Coming Soon.

Another option for you is to direct visitors to the pages showing similar products. Every out-of-stock product page has to display relevant items.

Avoid 410 and 404 pages

The presence of these pages can cause a negative effect on your store. These pages can come up when there is no action. You may have encountered these pages by entering the wrong URL. When it is about your discontinued product pages, you must avoid 404 Error. After deleting a page, links to your website get lost. Moreover, Google reveals a message that the webpage will no longer be available.

Try to keep up the link juice

What will you do when there is a low traffic level in the unavailable product pages? Several old web pages of your eCommerce site consume much server space. Visitors will have negative feelings from these pages. However, you must not lose the link juice. 301 redirects can be the right solution for you. You may use Google Analytics to track your discontinued product page traffic while redirecting the URL.

Your visitors must be directed to your landing pages. Present them with relevant items and your visitors will start browsing those products.

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Insert the URL to the related product pages

Your store has some products, which are alternatives to out-of-stock items. The best trick for you is to use the identical page URL for the newly chosen products. It will maintain your bookmarks and maintain your link equity. Thus, start looking for replacement items in your store and modify their URLs. It is one of the smartest approaches for your eCommerce SEO.

To conclude, it is to be said that all products may not be available throughout the year. It happens in almost every eCommerce platform. However, the way you manage your products uniquely can make a difference. Without affecting your eCommerce website rank, you need to deal with discontinued products. Choose the right strategy for an end-of-life product. An e-store may discontinue selling a product for different reasons. Thus, the strategy must also be different for every item. You need to consider the scenario and take the right steps for eCommerce SEO.