Recommended SEO practice for deleted products

[koskimaa]

Like the title says: What is the current recommended SEO practice for deleted and/or deactivated products?

1. Deactivate and forget (but get a lot of old product entries in the backoffice, and also a page that says "There is 1 error, This product is no longer available".)

2. Delete product and forget (but lose the indexed link with google)

3. Any other option...?

I have a lot of products that are out of stock in my store, which doesn't look nice. But setting up redirects to the home page (or parent category) for EVERY single removed product would be a pain and also bad UX in my opinion.

What do you guys usually do (SEO wise) after you delete a product from your catalogue?

[datakick]

Definitely don't delete products, google juice is way too precious.

I personally would go with redirect to similar product, or to parent category if no product is close enough alternative. This doesn't need to be such pain when you use mass update / inline editing tools.

[dosbiner]

Or just set visibility to none, we still can access the products using direct url, but hidden from catalog and search

[Briljander]

This is what I do too.

I remove price and make it unable to buy and set visible to none. Then I add a link to a new product in short description and related products if there is one.

[koskimaa]

Thanks for the responses guys, I had forgotten about the Visibility: Nowhere option.

So if I've understood this right, best option is:

Set quantity to 0 (or just make it unavailable to order) and set the Visibility to "Nowhere". NOT deleting and NOT setting the status to disabled.

Correct?

One addition by me: Doing it the way above will make it difficult to filter out these products. My idea would be to start the reference code of available products with something like "A-" or whatever, and then change it to "NO-" when retiring the product.

What do you guys think of this solution? Let me know if you have a better idea.

[dosbiner]

too complicated for me when you have to edit the products one by one, I prefer use this way to automaticaly set visibility to none if stock quantity = 0 https://forum.thirtybees.com/topic/997/show-on-stock-products-only-by-default/12

[zimmer-media]

@koskimaa you can find a solution example here https://forum.thirtybees.com/topic/1445/how-to-show-product-visibility-in-product-list

[koskimaa]

@dosbiner said in Recommended SEO practice for deleted products:

too complicated for me when you have to edit the products one by one, I prefer use this way to automaticaly set visibility to none if stock quantity = 0 https://forum.thirtybees.com/topic/997/show-on-stock-products-only-by-default/12

@zimmer-media said in Recommended SEO practice for deleted products:

@koskimaa you can find a solution example here https://forum.thirtybees.com/topic/1445/how-to-show-product-visibility-in-product-list

Both of you, thanks for sharing. dosbiners's solution looks like something I'd be able to pull off myself, so I'll look into it for future products.

[Nathan Howard]

I would recommend a better solution - instead of directing a customer to the page with the message that the product is no longer available (a rather negative message, you can't but agree), redirect the removed product URL to the page with the related product or content. This way, the chance the customer will not leave your store, but keep browsing it and eventually make a purchase, is much higher. 

[Anuj Rajput]

simply block delete product url by Robots.txt file.

[Pedalman]

How do you redirect non-available product to another? Only via htaccess ? It could become pretty lengthy then over time.