If there’s one thing Trilogi (TLG Commerce) is clear about after 17 years of experience and debate in eCommerce, it’s that today nobody builds an online store without an associated SEO and marketing strategy. For anyone who still doesn’t know, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is much more than adding tags and content or keywords; it means understanding, through data and trends, how users search online in order to build profitable strategies and sell more and better. Today, every store has worked on and optimized SEO for its categories. But what about the products?
One of the big questions online store managers ask our Marketing Department is whether they should keep optimizing the product pages they upload, even when those pages have a very clear “expiry date.” Take online clothing stores, which change collections with the seasons or even replace their entire catalog every two weeks (as fast fashion chains do).
So,
Do you need to optimize product pages if they keep changing?
If we’re clear that capturing organic traffic to generate conversions is our goal, SEO must never stop. Your product pages should always be optimized to appear on Google (titles, meta descriptions, URLs and images). Unless you’re a well-known brand that generates direct traffic thanks to branding efforts —as with fast fashion online clothing stores, where people search by brand rather than by product.
Keep in mind Google’s changes, which now push organic results to the middle or bottom of each results page, making categories and products harder to see if they haven’t been worked on beforehand. Add to that the growing weight of Google Shopping: in most cases, campaigns there are far more profitable than Google Adwords search campaigns (where you have to compete with the biggest brands).
If we’re clear that capturing organic traffic to generate conversions is our goal, SEO must never stop.
But, setting paid traffic aside and returning to organic…
What do we do with SEO when entire product collections have to change?
First and foremost, common sense. If we’ve learned anything about SEO, it’s that what sustains a store in the long run is its quality at every level (starting with the technical platform, design, product and customer service). You can rank through different strategies, but common sense is what ultimately prevails and keeps an online store visible—or not.
But if the store is going to keep generating new content or products, in stock or out of stock…
What should you keep in mind so you don’t lose rankings?
First: study each case individually, because removing products doesn’t affect every eCommerce in the same way. Changing collections in a little-known online store (which may see drops after an unplanned change) is not the same as in a store with strong branding and lots of direct traffic. Likewise, multi-brand stores selling the same products as others need to plan their redirects more carefully.
With that in mind, here are several points to consider at each change of season:
To start, plan each product’s seasonality and understand its turnover so you can get ahead with keyword research and current trends. If you know what will change and when the products will be swapped, it will be easier to prepare the store so it doesn’t lose ranking positions with each new season.
Work on meta descriptions as they are the store’s “shop window”: beyond keyword research, there’s one thing to keep firmly in mind: the description users see is what will make them click on us instead of a competitor. That’s why not only technical SEO —tags, URLs and links to the page— matters, but also the semantic side that can win over a future customer.
Out-of-stock products that will be back on sale: if the product will be available again, after a thorough analysis of links and Google rankings, it’s best to keep the product page live to avoid 404 errors. To avoid hurting usability and navigation metrics, add a “Leave your details and we’ll notify you when it’s available” or “Reserve yours” message, which helps prevent high bounce rates on the page.
Seasonal products: before redirecting to a 404 error page, study each product in detail: will we have a product similar to the one we’re removing? Does that product rank on Google? If so, could we consider creating 301 redirects to a related product?
For example: Zara’s famous yellow jacket, —search “chaqueta amarilla Zara” and you’ll see why it’s famous :)— which has been reworked in different colors for the new Fall-Winter 2016 season. If the jacket stops being available in the coming weeks but its page still ranks well on Google, Zara could take that organic traffic and steer it to its new jacket models, even without the original, if they remove it. As of September 12, 2016, the jacket still ranks, although at a reduced price.
Don’t create duplicate product pages: even with a good rel=canonical strategy to avoid duplicate content, it’s best not to have identical product pages so you keep tighter control of your content. If a product comes in different colors, create a single product page with a color selector to avoid duplicate content and keep things under control.
Fast indexing after changes: submitting an updated sitemap through Google Search Console will help Google crawl the changes and new product pages in your store as soon as possible.
And remove any links you no longer need: once you’ve decided what you no longer want in the store’s “shop window,” it’s important to clear the 404 errors generated, using Google Search Console.
In short, rotating products can be a disaster or a gateway to new sales, new customers and greater visibility, if you study each product or category in the store as a separate entity. Since a high percentage of users will enter your store through product pages (even more so with a Google Shopping campaign), you can’t afford to miss any chance to rank what you sell.
