When you delete your products, does it affect your SEO?

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Topic summary

A store owner with many sold-out products wants to archive them but is concerned about SEO impact and whether redirects are necessary.

Key Recommendations:

  • Avoid archiving/deleting without redirects: Removing products creates 404 errors, which harm SEO and user experience, especially if pages have backlinks or traffic.

  • Implement 301 redirects: Direct old product URLs to relevant replacement products, similar items, category pages, or the homepage to preserve link equity and maintain rankings.

  • Alternative approach: Make products unavailable on sales channels instead of archiving, keeping pages searchable while hiding them from customers.

  • “Retired product” page concept: Create a template showing the product is discontinued with suggestions for similar items, avoiding redirects while maintaining user experience.

Impact Considerations:

  • SEO impact depends on the page’s traffic volume, backlinks, and search rankings
  • Pages with minimal traffic may not require redirects
  • Submit updated sitemaps to Google Search Console after changes

Tools mentioned: Shopify’s built-in redirect feature, SEOPro, and SEOAnt apps can automate broken link detection and bulk redirects.

The discussion emphasizes that proper redirect management is crucial for maintaining SEO health when removing products.

Summarized with AI on October 31. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
9

THIS!!! This is the best advice I have found on this topic. Archiving affects SEO without setting up URL Redirects (which can be cumbersome with large quantity of archived products to manage). Too many URL Redirects over time is also not good for your site performance from what I understand.

However, when I test this out you still get a 404 if the product was previously searched and is in a customer’s browser history…

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But to basically ‘unpublish’ the products removes them from your customer user experience but keeps the product SEO intact.