So, what can you do to keep your SEO value intact when products go out of stock? First and foremost, don’t delete the product pages! This may seem like an easy solution, but it can actually damage your ranking in search engines. If people are searching for those items and your page doesn’t come up because it has been deleted, they’ll be frustrated and likely turn to one of your competitors which means you have a high bounce rate and you will not rank well because Google will think that your site visitors are having a bad user experience and cant find what they're looking for.
In this video, I give you a few different options on what you can do to protect your SEO while managing your out of stock products.
Should I put my out of stock product pages in Shopify in Draft mode? Should I archive the product page or should I remove it from my online sales channel?
There are three main types of out-of-stock pages on e-commerce stores.
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The first type is the page for a product that is permanently unavailable, such as something that has been discontinued.
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The second type of out-of-stock product page indicates that the item is unavailable only temporarily until your supply re-ups their offering.
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The third type of out-of-stock page shows up when the product is permanently unavailable, but you have redirected the product URL to show an alternative product, collection, or your homepage.
