Products Discontinued - 301 Redirects?

by fprint
6 replies
Hi everyone,

This is something I have been confused about for awhile. When a product is either discontinued or sold out, should the product page:
1. Be deleted
2. Be deleted and have a 301 redirect done back to the relevant category
3. Have the page made invisible
4. Have the superseded products revert to a custom 404 page

What is the best thing to do in this case for seo purposes. If the pages are left but made invisible, do they still help with seo or are they just doing nothing.

Your ideas on what is the best thing to do when products are no longer needed will be appreciated. I look forward to your thoughts.

What do you do in this case?
#301 #discontinued #products #redirects
  • Profile picture of the author Karan Goel
    See, if you plan to release the next version,
    or reopening the offer, then a squeeze page
    would be good.

    If you have completely discontinued the product
    (ie no support, no downloads, no help etc etc),
    then for a while, display the message that product
    is discontinued, then redirect or whatever.

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  • Profile picture of the author GarrieWilson
    I put up a notice and then give people different options. An optin, a few different product links, and way to contact me.

    Garrie
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  • Profile picture of the author GarrieWilson
    If it's the index.php, I delete the content and put what I listed above on it. I then 301 redirect all the other files associated with the product to the index.

    Garrie
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