Out of stock products - What is best SEO-wise?

[the.rampage.rado]

Hello,

 

Many times when I search for sports goods from previous years I open up sites that list those as out of stock and they are hidden in the normal product listings. But google sees this "half-inactive" product and shows a result. I click and open this site, otherwise I would not click this result.

 

Currently I set all old collection items to available - NO and I make 301 reddirect to analog product. So after some time I lose all those results in google.

 

In your opinion what is the best config for such products?

Availability - Yes
Visibility - Search only

or should I continue to 301 to new products?

I'm even not sure that the first scenario will result to the same behaviour I described in the start. If I enable search indexation will google 'search' for some products in order to get to those hiden products that are only search-visible?

[30knees]

We do:

• Enabled: Yes
• Visibility: Nowhere
• Availabel for order: No

Like this they still show up in search engines but not in the store.

For some products I'll add a text saying this one is discontinued but check out this new one and link to the new one.

Edited March 1, 2023 by 30knees

[the.rampage.rado]

On 3/2/2023 at 12:12 AM, 30knees said:

We do:

• Enabled: Yes
• Visibility: Nowhere
• Availabel for order: No

Like this they still show up in search engines but not in the store.

For some products I'll add a text saying this one is discontinued but check out this new one and link to the new one.

I'll try your setup for few products.

What if I have 'available for order' set to Yes and I have no stock? I believe nothing changes in FO?

[the.rampage.rado]

Just tried your settings - those products are not visible in the sitemap. Why and how will then Google bot reach them?

[30knees]

That's strange. They're in my sitemap. But if they've already been indexed, does it not matter whether they're in the sitemap?

Here the settings:

[datakick]

They should not be in sitemap: https://github.com/thirtybees/sitemap/blob/c1ade8ced29c953c5dd2e19d992cbcf437628066/sitemap.php#L697

Sitemap shows only products that match both these criteria:

active = 1 AND visibility != 'none'

 

[the.rampage.rado]

@datakick - how can I achieve the same behaviour? Is it possible at all at the moment?

 

Edited March 3, 2023 by the.rampage.rado

[30knees]

@the.rampage.radoCouldn't you modify the file like this so it shows?

active = 1 AND visibility = 'none'

[the.rampage.rado]

Search only means "search in the shop". It does not mean Google search. Tried and tested this - they don't get indexed by Google.

[trendyuser]

Dealing with out-of-stock products for SEO is indeed a tricky situation. Your current strategy of setting items as unavailable and redirecting to similar products using 301 redirects is a common practice. This helps in maintaining the link equity and providing users with relevant alternatives.

[trendyuser]

Dealing with out-of-stock products for SEO is indeed a tricky situation. Your current strategy of setting items as unavailable and redirecting to similar products using 301 redirects is a common practice. This helps in maintaining the link equity and providing users with relevant alternatives.
However, another approach worth considering is implementing canonical tags for out-of-stock items. canonical tag test can be invaluable here. Canonical tags help search engines understand which page to focus on when ranking, especially useful for pages with duplicate or similar content. They tell Google which page is primary, even if you have multiple pages with similar products.