If I delete or archive products in shopify and and someone clicks on that product in google I have set up,a custom 404 page using a shopify app. Does google still consider this a 404 error?, and does it effect my google ranking?. I often sell one off products and once they are sold out I don’t know if I should delete the item or archive it?
Yes that is still a 404 error, customizing a 404 template to show special stuff on a 404 error page still means it’s a 404 error.
You need to either use redirects to the replacement product.
Or simply have another way to manage retired/discontinued product such as an alternate template with a different styling and no checkout buttons.
You could also just redirect to a /page named after and setup to be info about what it used to be etc.
Really depends on the context of the products and industry behavior.
Hey @ozinsignia ,
Whether or not it hinders or helps SEO is a tough question. I do not believe it will directly harm your SEO ranking, however, having a broken link as a page that is possibly searchable is not always ideal, let’s go into more depth below!
Do 404s affect SEO?
A true 404 error message occurs when a website’s server returns an HTTP 404 code to indicate that it couldn’t find the webpage (URL) that was requested by the user. This informs both browsers and search engines that the page doesn’t exist.
What most people don’t understand is that the content of the page – ‘page not found’ message – is entirely unrelated to the HTTP response returned by the server. Just because a page displays a 404 File Not Found message, it does not mean that this page is automatically defined as a 404 page.
A soft 404 error occurs when a non-existent page (a page that has been deleted/removed) displays a ‘page not found’ message to anyone trying to access it but fails to return an HTTP 404 status code. They can also occur when the non-existent page redirects users to an irrelevant page, such as the homepage, instead of returning an HTTP 404 status code.
This distinction is important for SEO because it determines how Google treats the page. Crawling and indexing is a process Google’s bots go through before listing your website’s pages in search engine result pages. When a true 404 error message is returned, Google’s bots don’t spend time crawling or indexing the page. When a soft 404 error is returned the page is still crawled and indexed.
Custom 404 page
Error pages can be a bad user experience but you can soften a user’s frustration and help reclaim potentially lost traffic by creating a custom 404 page. An effective custom 404 page will encourage users to further explore your site and help them find what they are looking for. At a minimum, an error page should contain links to common resources, consistent branding, a clearly stated error message, and an apology for the error.
An optimized error page should include:
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A simplified version of the navigation to help users find their way through the site.
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A site search box to encourage users to continue their site journey or discover new content they may not have been originally looking for.
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Depending on the site or situation, it may make sense to include contact details such as a phone number, email, social media, or chatbot.
URL redirects
URL redirects can be used to redirect traffic from one web page to another. When you change a URL on your Shopify store, you can create a URL redirect to ensure your customers can still find what they’re looking for.
For example, if you delete a product, you can set up a URL redirect so that when customers enter the URL for that product, they are redirected to a similar product on your store.
Delete or Archive Products?
If you are 100% definitely not going to use the products again, then you are better to delete the products from your admin. They won’t keep or improve your SEO unless they are actively live on the website. If you think for any reason you might use the products, then I would suggest toggling the visibility in the product page of your admin.
Otherwise, if you no longer want to display a product in your online store, but you don’t want to permanently delete the product, then you can archive the product instead. You can archive a single product, or archive multiple products at the same time using a bulk action.
Improve SEO
Whilst we are on the topic of search engines, what steps have you taken to improve your search engine ranking so far? People who find your online store in Google are probably looking for products like yours, so they are more likely to buy something.
One area of your store that can really help drive organic traffic is adding unique Meta Descriptions. Products, Collections, and Pages all have Meta Descriptions that you’re able to customize yourself, in the Edit website SEO Section at the bottom of their admin pages.
There are a couple of things that you should keep in mind in order to have an SEO description that ranks well. You want to write the description as if you’re writing it to a potential customer, touching on descriptive words about the product and its use. A lot of the time merchants list keywords without any structure, thinking the more keywords the better - but this is not the case. We have a great blog with further detail on this right here.
If you have any questions please feel free to thread those below!
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Hi @ozinsignia
would you mind checking our app Nada: Sort & Hide Out Of Stock?
The app is automatically hiding sold-out products and sets a redirect to the homepage or any other page. Once the product is back in stock, it’s published again and redirect deleted. Like this, you are not being penalized on SEO as the visitors never get to the 404 page.
Try it for free for 7 days and check if it helps to solve your problem.
Martin
Hi @ozinsignia
I have found a blog from Google Search Central that can help answer your questions directly, you can see all the answers in this guideline. In short, they will be regarded as 404 still if you did not do anything after deleting the product pages, unless they refer to less important pages. However, if you care about the page contents and would like visitors to have a better view of feedback, then it is suggested to do something accordingly.
You can do 301 redirections for these 404 pages if they are important, and it is suggested to use SEOAnt for this work, as it can manually and automatically redirect 404 pages conveniently and you can go on monitoring the status after redirecting. Please don’t forget to click this link for installation, and you can also get a 30% discount (SEOAnt 30% Jeffery) for the first two months during this period. I hope my answer helps you here, thanks!
