eCommerce SEO for New Products and Seasonal Products

When you are running and eCommerce website two of the situations you are likely to encounter are how to do SEO for new products and for seasonal products. In this article we will be taking a look at some best practices for both situations.

SEO For New Products

Sometimes you will have a product that you know will be available in a few weeks or months, but isn’t available for sale yet. The ideal situation you want to create is one where your page is ranking for the product before it’s available, so your page is perfectly positioned when the time comes. You need to set up a “placeholder” page on the exact URL the final product will be available at. There are ways to change the URL properly, but getting the URL right and sticking with it, is your best case scenario. Fill the page with as much real text as you can get your hands on. Do not put up dummy text, or “coming soon” text, the more real the information you use the better. Additionally do not use a data feed or verbatim information from the manufacturer/supplier, as this will be seen on other websites and by search engines, “flagged” as “duplicate text” and hinder your ability to rank by search engines. Once you have the product “fleshed out”, start giving signals to the search engines with some internal links. Initially you just need to give the new product just a few internal links to get the process started.

Your next goal is to add as much real information as you can to get, to make the product to look as complete or close to its final state as possible. Once you have the product complete or nearly complete, between 60 – 90 days out if possible, you will want to increase the number of internal links. Somewhere between 45-30 days out give the product a link on your homepage, and start to build external links. Depending on the importance and revenue potential of the product, as the product nears sale date think about additional promotions like press releases, white papers, research, case studies, how to articles, guests posts, interviews and so on.

As the product nears it’s sale date, hopefully customers will start searching for the product. If you do rank, having them land on your website and not be able to purchase or “do anything” is not a situation you want to be in if you can avoid it. If you can take pre-orders that is the ideal, if not try to capture email or other contact info, so that you can notify customers when you eventually can sell the item and take orders.

SEO For Seasonal Products

Performing SEO for seasonal products is very similar to the process discussed above for new products. The big difference is what you do at the end of each season. If the product will “come back”, then you want to keep the page in place, just remove the ability for customers to place orders. This makes choosing the URL especially important. If you put model number, year or other “fluctuating” data that will change from one season to the next it can get problematic. If the product comes back every year but is only slightly modified, try to use a generic URL scheme that allows you to “swap” this years model onto the same URL from last year/season. Taking the URL down and putting it up on a new URL next season is like starting from scratch every year.

If the product will not come back or will be significantly different, then you want to let the URL “expire” in a graceful way. Instead of just removing the URL, you want to serve a 301 redirect to the replacement product, up one category, or most appropriate other page. This allows you to “recycle” any existing link equity the page has built up, instead of letting it “evaporate”. While search engines are getting better at handling 302 redirects, it’s not worth the risk, and you should always issue a 301.

One last consideration, is you want to avoid adding, removing, changing, or redirecting large portions of your product offerings or catalog at once. For example changing 50% or more of your products in a one month time period should be avoided if at all possible. This may be impossible if you are strictly a seasonal merchant, but try to avoid if you can.

What are the takeaways from this post:

• Try to choose your urls carefully especially for new and seasonal products, avoid changing them if at all possible
• Create a “place holder” page for new products with as much real information as possible, avoiding duplicate or filler text
• Initially point only a few internal links at the product
• As the product sale date approaches try to flesh out the information as close to its final state as you can get it
• Slowly point more internal links at the product, eventually adding a link to the home page
• Build external links and think about additional marketing if the product is important
• Try to take pre-orders or capture contact info before the sale date
• If the product is seasonal and will return next year, leave the URL up just remove the ability to purchase
• If the product will not return, issue a 301 redirect to the most appropriate page
• Try to avoid changing too many of your products in a small window of time if you can avoid it

photo credit: Shutterstock/Loskutnikov