Discontinued products, product updates, an unexpected increase in demand…
Whatever the reason you’ve run out of stock of one or more products, you need to be clear about the strategy for SEO management of out-of-stock products in your e-commerce so that it affects you as little as possible in terms of web positioning.
In this article, you’ll learn what to do with those out-of-stock product URLs, what it depends on to take one action or another, and what essential data you need to consult beforehand.
What Happens when You Have Out-Of-Stock Products in your E-Commerce?
Having out-of-stock products in your e-commerce means losing online visibility for very transactional searches, sales, and customers.
And the problem with selling online is that the same product is just a click away in many other stores.
Therefore, managing your inventory is vital to be able to apply some techniques that help retain the user and minimize the impact of out-of-stock products on your SEO.
Let’s see them.
| ➡️ First of all, the first step is to identify the out-of-stock products. You can do this through the CMS itself (WooCommerce, Shopify, and Prestashop allow you to filter them) or with Screaming Frog’s custom search. |
Aspects to Consider when Deciding What to Do with Out-Of-Stock Products and how to Manage Them
Once you have located the out-of-stock products, you have to make important decisions that directly affect the SEO positioning of your e-commerce.
Doing so is easy if you ask yourself the right questions (and analyze the correct data):
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Will it be Back in Stock? Then You Can Do this:
This is the best-case scenario for you, as SEO management of product URLs that return is simple.
For the user, who has decided to enter your online store to make their purchase… Not so much.
As the last thing you want is for them to have a bad experience in your store, it’s important to send them a message of reassurance so they don’t get frustrated.
You achieve this with actions as simple as these:
- Indicate the approximate return date of the product.
- Enable a field for them to leave their e-mail and you can notify them when the product is available.
This way, they will feel they have some control over the situation and don’t have to keep entering your website again and again to check if they can buy it yet.
Want to go a little further? To prevent them from going to look for the product in another store, reward their patience. You can:
- Offer them a small discount, which they can redeem when you receive the product in question.
- Suggest similar products, in case they need it now.
At a technical level, you don’t have to do anything. Leaving the page active maintains its status code 200 and the search engine crawlers will continue to crawl it as before.
Will it Never be in Stock Again? Ask Yourself these Questions:
SEO management of your e-commerce products gets complicated when you come across out-of-stock products that are no longer returning, usually because they are discontinued.
And before deleting them, there are other actions you can take to avoid losing the SEO work done.
Which ones you choose depends on your answer to this first question:
>>> Is there an equivalent product for that out-of-stock product, or not? <<<
If that other alternative has similar characteristics to the one you’re missing, and you think the user won’t mind it being from another brand (or another season, as happens a lot in fashion), you can make a 301 redirect.
Of course: include a message where you warn them of this change to avoid any feeling of confusion that it generates by taking them to a different reference.
And if your answer to the question above is that you don’t have a similar product to give the user an alternative…
It’s time to ask more questions and analyze data to know how to manage that URL:
- Does the out-of-stock product have organic traffic? Check it in Google Analytics or any alternative.
- Does it rank for keywords in top positions? Check the position, clicks, and impressions in Google Search Console or with a tool like SEranking or DinoRANK.
- Does it have conversions? Again, use Google Analytics. Analyze this data for the relevant categories (you’ll see why now).
- Does it have incoming links (backlinks)? Does it have authority? You can check it with SEranking.
You can keep track of all these metrics with these reports for e-commerce that we have prepared.
If the data is positive, it means that there has been strategic SEO work behind it, and you don’t want it to be lost. To maintain it (and continue capturing that traffic), you have two options:
- Redirect via a 301 to a higher-level category URL. For example, if an online gadget store discontinues a wooden spatula model and there is no other similar one, it can redirect to the higher category of kitchen spatulas.
- Keep the product page (therefore, in code 200) but include a message of its lack of stock, the reason, and the link to the alternative, whether it is the higher category or related products.
If the opposite happens (the URL barely has traffic, positioning, and authority), then you can choose to make a 410 redirect, which tells the search engine spiders that that page is not available nor will it be again.
| 💡Remember that the only URLs that should appear in your sitemap are those that have a status code of 200. The rest, whether with 301 or 410, you should not include them. Remember to send them for removal through Google Search Console. |
And whatever you do, monitor and modify the internal links that point to the URL you are modifying.
With this and the rest of the SEO management actions for products that we have seen, you make sure to continue maintaining a good user experience and even make out-of-stock products continue working in favor of your web positioning.
You know: with 301 redirects you transfer and maintain the authority, with 410 you optimize the crawl budget, and by linking to equivalent products you scratch sales that you didn’t count on.
To know what to do at all times, here is a summary table of SEO management actions for out-of-stock products:
| Product status | Actions |
| Will be back in stock ✔️ | 1. Indicate the return date. 2. Enable a field for e-mail notification. 3. Offer a discount. 4. Suggest similar products. 5. Keep the URL active with code 200. |
| Will never be in stock again ❌ | If there is an equivalent product301 redirect with warning message If there is no equivalent productTraffic and link analysis: a) If it has traffic: 1. Redirect to higher category. 2. Keep the page with notice. b) If it has no traffic: 410 redirect. |
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Alex Serrano
12 años en marketing digital. Creador de Chartud y especialista en Looker Studio. Consultor SEO desde hace 8 años. Creador y divulgador de contenido en diferentes formatos como 300Segundos (newsletter) o SEOdesdeCero (podcast). También cofundador de RankPulse.app, herramienta de SEO Local.
