SEO // Redirects on discontinued products
planned
Shirin Sadr
It would be useful to be able to set an appropriate redirect when product landing pages are disabled, we find that the largest traffic losses we experience is on discontinued product pages. If there was a facility to set a redirect when product pages are deactivated that would be very beneficial to SEO in managing a redirect strategy.
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime
Provide a way of managing 301 redirects and 404 page not found codes
There are two parts to the redirect manager functionality, providing options for redirects on deactivated products which have been activated in the past, and a global redirect manager. This functionality will provide the ability to set a 301 redirect (permanent redirect) or a 404 (page not found).
The purpose is to make it easier to optimise a website for search engine rankings (SEO).
Inactive Products
When a product has historically been activated we should provide the following options on the product page in Cloud MT:
Redirect to the products Find and Filter page (this should be the default selected option when a product is deactivated).
Serve 404 page not found
Continue to serve the page (which is what happens now)
Redirect to a specific Url which the user enters.
The default for historically deactivated products should be the current behaviour (the page loads and a 200 OK status code is served).
If a product is activated again the redirect should be cleared, so if the product is deactivated again a new option needs to be chosen.
Redirect Manager & Product Redirect Viewer
We need to add two screens to Merchant Tools.
Redirect Manager
The redirect manager should not show a list of inactive product redirects only those created manually.
This should show a list of redirects or 404’s using our normal searchable grid format.
The source Url does not need to be an existing page or Url, it just needs to be a valid Url. This allows our customers to setup page shortcuts Urls.
We need to validate the destination Url serves a 200 code, if it serves a 301 we should follow the redirect until we get a 200 code and adjust the entered Url in the UI to be the one after the 301 chain.
Product Redirect Viewer
This should a list of all inactive products which have previously been activated (e.g. surpressing those which have never been active), and the redirect Url.
The grid should include a link to the product in Cloud MT so products can be opened and the redirect altered for inactive products. This makes it easy for our customers to view and manage redirects for any historically inactive products.
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime
planned
This will be addressed in the early summer, I've included a summary of our plans which are pinned to the top of this post.
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime
Provide a way of managing 301 redirects and 404 page not found codes
There are two parts to the redirect manager functionality, providing options for redirects on deactivated products which have been activated in the past, and a global redirect manager. This functionality will provide the ability to set a 301 redirect (permanent redirect) or a 404 (page not found).
The purpose is to make it easier to optimise a website for search engine rankings (SEO).
Inactive Products
When a product has historically been activated we should provide the following options on the product page in Cloud MT:
Redirect to the products Find and Filter page (this should be the default selected option when a product is deactivated).
Serve 404 page not found
Continue to serve the page (which is what happens now)
Redirect to a specific Url which the user enters.
The default for historically deactivated products should be the current behaviour (the page loads and a 200 OK status code is served).
If a product is activated again the redirect should be cleared, so if the product is deactivated again a new option needs to be chosen.
Redirect Manager & Product Redirect Viewer
We need to add two screens to Merchant Tools.
Redirect Manager
The redirect manager should not show a list of inactive product redirects only those created manually.
This should show a list of redirects or 404’s using our normal searchable grid format.
The source Url does not need to be an existing page or Url, it just needs to be a valid Url. This allows our customers to setup page shortcuts Urls.
We need to validate the destination Url serves a 200 code, if it serves a 301 we should follow the redirect until we get a 200 code and adjust the entered Url in the UI to be the one after the 301 chain.
Product Redirect Viewer
This should a list of all inactive products which have previously been activated (e.g. surpressing those which have never been active), and the redirect Url.
The grid should include a link to the product in Cloud MT so products can be opened and the redirect altered for inactive products. This makes it easy for our customers to view and manage redirects for any historically inactive products.
J
Jon Mayo
This would be a massive benefit.
We have a Salesfire overlay that displays on discontinued products for key brands to inform the customer. This gives them a button to go to the /instock for that brand and it gets a huge amount of hits. This shows the extent of traffic not getting to where ideally we'd like to send them.
Best case would be be a 301 redirect that runs off the MT item card and when an item is disabled a re direct url box shows.
A wizard would be amazing too as I'd imagine like us many retailers have hundreds to action.
Find & Filter would be one solution but we lose a huge amount of traffic for old model to new model seasonal changes so a direct URL 301 would be bes solution IMO.
I
Info
Our SEO provider is astonished that this is not a feature of Cloud MT. We regularly have to request the implementation of redirects by CL as we cannot do it ourselves.
S
Scott
Agree, having no control over redirects is rare and frustrating as it can be an opportunity to direct the customer to the perfect alternative or newer version of an item so really needs to be per item control, as per the out of the box platforms
Shirin Sadr
Scott: Yes agree with Scott, that this is the reason free choice would be preferable.
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime
Could we redirect to the brand page?
Shirin Sadr
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime: The best solution would be being able to define the most appropriate redirect URL at the time. Automatically going to the brand page isn't necessarily always going to be the best redirect (for example there could be a situation where the product was the only road bike that was offered under that brand at the time and so the user would then be presented with a list of non-road bikes after redirection). BUT it is definitely much better than just presenting the user with a soft 404, so for now I'd say it is a good compromise if it means a quicker solution in place short-term.
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime
Info: do you mean the Find and Filter department?
I
Info
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime: Yes, although I agree with Shirin Sadr that pretty much anything would be an improvement over displaying a page for an item that was discontinued 6 years ago. Again, I think Shirin and I are on the same page where if a customer has been searching for a particular style of bike that is now inactive, taking them to the Brand page of that bike may not provide the customer with a great UX eg Genesis Bikes no longer make a mountain bike so if customer is brought to the site by a now obsolete Genesis MTB, redirecting them to the Genesis brand page is not going to present them with an alternative.
My thoughts would be that redirecting them to a page showing alternative mountain bikes that are available might make more sense. If a customer came to my store looking for Genesis MTB that is not available, I don't start showing them Genesis Road Bikes or Genesis Gravel Bikes, I show them alternative Mountain Bikes from different brands.
The best solution is that we could choose where to redirect the page to (in bulk if required) but if a short term solution is to go to the brand page then that would be better than the current way of doing things.
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime
Info: I suspect going to the F&F department would also be equally possible. We'd should serve this with a 301 permanent redirect code I think?
I
Info
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime: Absolutely. As I mentioned previously, our SEO company, who obviously work with a number of different platforms and websites are very surprised that this feature is not available on Cloud MT. Currently, we are submitting support tickets every couple of months with a list of products which need the 301 redirects applied. Not ideal when it's something we should be able to manage ourselves.
Shirin Sadr
Info: Yes this is what I have now enquired about doing, however at the moment I am waiting for a response on whether I can just submit these to the helpdesk ad-hoc or if I have to use my 360 time.
I'd say department redirect would be the second best option to brand pages. However the ultimate solution would be to control this ourselves, for example in the scenario where a newer model of the same bike exists, we would redirect the customer to the newer model. As it will arguably what they'd be most interested in.
I
Info
Shirin Sadr: Don't you think that redirecting to Brand is moving the customer further away from what they were searching for? I guess it depends on how you have you F+F set up. I suppose unless we get full control, redirecting to brand might be the solution. It would certainly be a step in the right direction.
Shirin Sadr
Info: Sorry I've confused you, I wrote that wrong. My preference would be free choice, department, and then brand. In summary, Yes I agree with you 😅
Shirin Sadr
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime: Hi Neil - having just done a yearly review, myself and my SEO agency are really keen to understand if this idea has legs and where it would sit in the timeline as again our largest loses are down to discontinued products. Its a real shame to leak traffic here if we can avoid it. There's a hole in my bucket...
Shirin Sadr
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime Any more thoughts on the redirect solution?
Shirin Sadr
Neil McQuillan - CEO Citrus-Lime Is there any update on this?