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There are three key considerations for this equation, which are: 

• What can we do that provides the best user experience?
• What can we do to maintain the SEO value of that page?
• How can we avoid generating a huge number of 404 errors?

I believe that a lot of this is circumstantial and subjective, as it depends on the number of products being discontinued, the nature of the website (some websites only stock products for short periods) and a number of other factors.

I believe that redirecting a product back to a parent category with a message (explaining why they’re being redirected to the user), serving a custom 404 page (with recommendations) and maintaining the page and adding recommendations based on similar products (as per the Wiggled example below) are all viable options that offer a similar level of SEO value.

My initial recommendation for this specific example was to create a rule to redirect the product back to the parent category, which also worked in-line with the development issue that was causing them to change their existing solution.

In order to validate what I was saying, I decided to ask a few other experienced SEOs what they thought the best option (in relation to the site in question) was. Bare in mind that this would impact a lot of products and it happens regularly, so it needed to be automated. 

I asked a number of people this question and here were some of the answers.

The first answer, from Rishi Lakhani, was a very good solution, but probably not suitable for a website as large as this one was.

Rishil suggested creating individual blog posts talking about each product, with the intention over upselling other products and spreading value via internal links within the blog posts. The original page would be redirected to the blog post.

This is a fairly good option for smaller retailers.

The second suggestion, was to 301 redirect each product to a closely related product whilst also displaying a message communicating why the user was being redirected. This is a good option as it means the value from the page will be passed on to the similar product, but it’s quite difficult to automate and, in this very specific scenario, similar products are also quite likely to be discontinued (because of the seasonality).

I do however think that adding the post-redirect messaging will help to aid user experience, as these kind of redirects can easily cause confusion.

Finally, Kristine suggested serving a custom 404 page that provided information on why the product is out of stock, along with guidance on finding similar products on the website.

This would provide a good user experience and would be fine from an SEO perspective, but it’s a fairly complex and time-consuming solution (both dev time and on-going maintenance). Again, I’d suggest that this would be a great solution for a smaller retailer.

So, to summarise, I’d say that the best solution (for this large website) would be a combination of the above,  with an automated redirect back to the parent category and messaging to communicate the reason behind the redirect to the user.

This would help to avoid a confusing user-experience and also help to maintain SEO value of the products.

Here are a few examples of how other retailers deal with this issue:

Wiggle:

Wiggle keeps the page live, maintain the copy, imagery etc and then add an out of stock message, along with suggested alternative products.

Zalando:

Zalando keep all of their discontinued pages live, with suggestions of similar products and a ‘request details’ button, just in case it’s coming back into stock. 

If you have any questions about this or any alternative solutions – please feel free to leave them in the comments below.

There are many differences between agency-side and client-side, not least the amount of sites worked on! However, there are also some shared resources that add value to both sides of the coin.

Data sources are an example of this and when we’re all fighting the same fight, it’s essential to have consistent pots of data to analyse and report on.

One such data source is, of course, Google Analytics. As a free tool, it is an essential resource for agencies and brands alike. I’m a daily user of GA as part of client reporting and helping our search and technical teams understand how sites are performing, both positively and negatively. 

Google has made changes to GA, especially recently. Some of these changes, particularly around UX and usability, have really benefitted the user.

On the flip side, Google has given with one hand and taken away with the other, by making it more and more difficult to gain full access to data, especially in organic.  

With this post I aim to go a little deeper by giving specific, actionable advice on how to further prove the value of organic for your business or clients. 

(not provided)

The most infamous of GA’s restrictions is undoubtedly (not provided) keyword data, where Google restricts keyword data due to ‘security’ and protection of the searcher’s privacy.

If you are signed in to Google when you search, the keyword you search for is not passed on to the site owner. This began as a small percentage but has steadily grown until Google announced in late 2013 that all signed-in keyword data would be hidden indefinitely. In reality, from what we see everyday across our client portfolio, this equates to around 80-90% of organic keyword data being hidden. 

This is just an example of some of GA’s niggling inconsistencies, and one I hope to resolve for you in this post, amongst others.  So let’s begin with unlocking (not provided) data…

(not provided) – the bane of the SEO’s life! There are two main issues with (not provided) that I encounter on a daily basis – being unable to specify brand and non-brand traffic volumes, and the split of non-brand traffic between keywords. Let’s look at both of these issues and how we can resolve them… 

Brand and non-brand

(not provided) makes our lives difficult, but it does leave us a sliver of data to work with. As mentioned above, this is usually around 15% of keyword data. The word of the day here is extrapolate. We need to take this 15% of available keyword data and apply its structure to the hidden remainder. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to do this, with an additional bonus download to help you.

The methodology:

If we can calculate the brand vs non-brand split of the available data, this gives us a % split we can then extrapolate.  Firstly, we need to define “what is brand?” To do this, we must set up an advanced filter that removes all traffic coming in via a brand-related term.

Let’s say our brand is GA Tips and our site is GAtips.com – we need to tell GA what our branded keywords are. This is usually made up of variations of the brand name, for example GA tips, GAtips etc, and variations of the URL, for example GAtips.com, www.GAtips.com etc.

Start off by navigating to this page in GA: acquisition > keywords > organic, and ensure the primary dimension is set to ‘keyword’. Then click the ‘advanced’ button next to the search box below the trend.

This presents some options, which need to be set as follows:

In the text field, enter your brand variations in the following format:

GAtips|GA tips|www.gatips.com|gatips.com etc etc

You can be as accurate as like/need here. Some brands may also need to include product brand names. For example, Apple might include the term ‘iphone’ in this as a branded term. You can also dive into popular misspells to be super-accurate.

Once you’ve inputted all your brand variations, click Apply, then click the ‘Shortcut’ button at the top of the page:

You can then name your filter and save it to your shortcuts menu in the left nav, so you can easily access it in future.

What this achieves is removing all branded keywords from the organic keyword report, leaving us with just non-branded and (not provided).

If we take total organic traffic and subtract (not provided), this gives us our available data set. Then, take away (not provided) from the number supplied by our non-brand filter. We are then left with Total provided data and Non-branded provided data. 

The difference between the two figures is the branded provided total. From this point it is simple to calculate the brand % and the non-brand % by subtracting non-branded provided from total provided and using a simple percentage calculation. Finally, apply the two percentages to our total organic traffic number to get the brand and non-brand volumes. 

All of this is summarised and made easy for you in this downloadable Excel equation: click here to download – all you’ll need is the download, and three numbers: total organic traffic, (not provided) and non-brand organic (supplied by your new advance filter). The equation will do the rest for you.

Tracking this over time allows us to monitor increases and decreases in brand and non-brand, which can in turn indicate changes in brand awareness and/or non-brand rankings.

I also mentioned another issue with (not provided):

Restricted ability to track traffic from non-brand keywords

The key here is landing pages. Spend time looking at which pages rank for which keywords. Tools like SEMrush and Searchmetrics are great for this. Understanding this allows us to make informed decisions about increases and decreases for particular landing pages.

For our GAtips brand, let’s say we have identified that the page gatips.com/really-cool-analytics-hacks ranks for the search terms ‘GA hacks’ and ‘analytics hacks’.

We don’t know that those terms are sending traffic to that page in GA (although we can in Webmaster Tools) because of (not provided), but what we can do is react to changes in traffic to the page by checking positions for the terms we know to be ranking that page in Google. If we know our ranking for ‘GA hacks’ has dropped, then we can assign a landing page traffic drop to that.

I briefly mentioned Webmaster Tools and this is a really key data source for keyword data, although it can be a little vague and somewhat inaccurate. Use it in conjunction with your rankings>pages analysis to really understand how keyword traffic is behaving.

More Google Analytics work-arounds

Now we’ve tackled the big issue, here are a few quickfire solutions for things that you may have come across in your day-to-day use of Google Analytics:

Why does GA show one sessions figure for a particular date range, but a different one when I add in a comparison to a previous date range (this also applies to individual landing page numbers too)?

What Google doesn’t tell you is that, in most cases, GA data is a sample. This is especially true if you have an especially large amount of traffic.

The ultimate solution is to either go Premium (very expensive!) but in the real world, be consistent with your comparisons and the numbers you use.

Personally, I take the numbers from the date range alone, with no comparison, and then add the comparison to get the numbers for the previous date range.  It’s a bit manual, but it works and is predictable.

UA code can also skew things, so make sure you have the most up to date code on your site.

A lot of my landing page traffic is being assigned to (not set) – why is this and how can I fix it?

If Google is unable to make a link between a session and a page, it is recorded as a session but the page is assigned as (not set). This can be caused by several things, including the user not completing the page load.

The server request is made but the page is not loaded.

The solution is to identify which pages are experiencing the (not set) assignations. This should be clear, as (not set) tends to target particular page types, e.g. those with events/conversions on them or pages within a certain category on your site, so you should see a pattern.

The total organic traffic for a date range will not be affected by (not set), but if you calculate (not set) as a percentage of total, then you can extrapolate this across all landing pages to give a truer view of sessions per page.

My rankings are flat vs prior week/month/year but my landing page traffic is dropping, why is this and how can I mitigate it?

This is not exclusively a GA issue, but GA provides the landing page traffic data, so it’s certainly a relevant issue to discuss. If rankings are flat, the drop is most likely market driven.

Use Google Trends to look at search demand for the terms in question over the appropriate timeframe and in the appropriate location. Export this as a CSV. Google assigns a number out of 100 per week within the date range, so each week is relative to those around it.

Also CSV export your weekly traffic numbers for the landing page in question and plot your Google Trends weekly numbers alongside. You should see a pattern between demand modulation and traffic behaviour.

Also check Google Keyword Planner for search volumes for the same month in prior year and the month before it. You may see a similar drop, which indicates a seasonality change.

There is a lot of talk in the industry around organic search traffic being wrongly labeled as Direct by GA, which skews true organic numbers. How do I deal with this?

Famously, Groupon undertook an experiment to understand the real impact of this, as it is understood to affect ALL Google Analytics profiles. It’s caused primarily by browsers failing to correctly report where traffic is coming from, with IE being the biggest culprit.

As a result, some organic traffic is ‘dumped’ into the vague Direct channel.

To understand the true impact, Groupon actually de-indexed itself from Google results for six hours to see how much the Direct channel reduced by. With no organic visits, this gave a true view of how much was actually Direct.

It uncovered the fact that approximately 50% of Direct channel traffic into long URLs, i.e. those beyond sub-folder level, dropped by around 50%. The end result is that organic is bigger than GA actually reports.

Moz also conducted a similar experiment. Its results were slightly different overall, however did share some consistencies with the Groupon investigation, in that Direct traffic to long URLs again dropped by around 50%.

Do some analysis of your Direct traffic to understand how much of it is into long URLs. Take that traffic, divide it by 2 (50%) and, according to the evidence we have from Moz and Groupon, that’s how much of your Direct traffic is organic.

There’s always more!

Whilst I know there are infinitely more niggles and foibles with GA, the issues discussed here are ones that I have encountered in my day-to-day GA usage and have had to formulate work-arounds to ensure consistency for our clients and also ensure my own sanity remains!

Please explain your role at Clarins…

I recently became head of digital in APAC, covering China, Japan and Korea. We’re also contemplating moving into Taiwan and Australia in the New Year.

A big part of my job is to control the branding of the website, ensuring that all merchandising and communications is in line with the brand’s creative guidelines.

This involves working with the marketing and creative teams in the region to make sure we support our advertising campaigns.

In 2015 we want to maintain strong sales and profitability, while also expanding into new countries.

Clarins’ Chinese website

We also want to become more proficient in using eCRM features, improve conversion rates, and increase our share of voice on social.

And a big project which is now coming up is moving to an omnichannel model, which involves digitising our POS using tablet devices and different types of merchandising.

How does your distribution model differ in APAC compared to Europe?

It’s very different. In the West our products are sold through distributors, but in Asia we have our own counters in department stores, where the sales team are Clarins employees.

This accounts for about 90% of the business.

This means we have much more control over the POS and the customer database, which makes it easier to build a more seamless experience between online and offline channels.

What is WeChat’s role in bridging that gap between offline and online sales?

We are active on social networks across APAC and mainly focus Facebook, though we’re just trialling Instagram in Singapore.

The one exception is China where we use Weibo and WeChat. We first established an account on WeChat in June 2013 and have had really good traction so far.

Our WeChat fanbase grew very rapidly and it drives really good traffic to our ecommerce site as well. It’s actually one of the first times that we’ve seen a social site driving a large number of ecommerce sales.

We also use WeChat as an online acquisition tool to bring people into the stores.

At Clarins we do a lot of sampling, and we offer prospective customers the chance to try before they buy, so for each marketing campaign we do there is an online sampling initiative where we ask people to register with Clarins on WeChat and then they can collect a free sample at the store of their choice.

We can then explain to them how the products should be used, so they benefit from advice of the sales team.

Do you use Tmall?

Yes, we have an official flagship store. It’s important to have a presence on Tmall as it helps to establish wider visibility among Chinese shoppers.

When Chinese people are looking for a brand, they turn to either Taobao or Tmall ahead of search engines.

But as it’s not our own asset we are a bit cautious in the way we deal with the platform, and our own Clarins site is very important as we have more control over the content and CRM.

Clarins’ Tmall store

Looking at our Tmall campaigns, one thing we did there tied into Women’s Day, which is a very popular event in China.

Tmall users could register for a free sample that was redeemable if they went into a specific department store to buy a product.

This campaign created a huge increase in offline sales during the three-day event.

We’re trying to do more of these types of campaign, but I would say we are still at the beginning of the tests. We need to get to the stage where it is an ingrained process, rather than a one-off pilot that takes a lot of effort.

Tmall is owned by Alibaba. How do you think it has changed as a result of the IPO?

In the lead up to the IPO there was a big push to secure high-end brands to give more credibility to the platform.

There was also a bigger push to control the sale of fake goods. 

If you go on Tmall you will see our official site, but also a number of other resellers. Many of these are unofficial, so there was a move to clean it up ahead of the IPO.

Now this being said, I’m really eager to see how it develops. 

I think it’s going to become tougher for companies now the platform has more credibility and is more popular with high-end brands.

It could become a media-buy game, where the cost of media will increase very rapidly.

If you look at the mass market environment, some brands are already finding it a challenge to justify the amount they are being asked to pay on Tmall, and some are considering using that investment elsewhere.

Looking at search in China, as Tmall is so popular how much of your focus goes on Baidu?

We definitely focus on both, because Tmall is a closed environment. Its pages don’t even show up in Baidu.

Baidu is a no-brainer as it’s the biggest search engine in terms of marketshare, however the issue we have is that the cost inflation for Baidu PPC is crazy.

For me it’s not playing a smart game or considering the long-term relationship with brands.

Search results for Clarins on Baidu

The cost inflation we are seeing is higher than the comparative growth of the ecommerce market, so it’s almost impossible to sustain the same visibility as we had last year because to do so we would have to massively increase our investment.

Thankfully 360 is now taking a greater share of search traffic, I think it’s up to around 20%, and I hope that continues to grow and shake up the search market because it will create a more healthy environment.

One common question among brands expanding into China is whether they should recruit locally or transfer over their Western staff. Which approach did Clarins opt for?

For the first two years I was the only foreigner out of 80 people in Clarins’ Chinese subsidiary, however we have begun to recruit more from overseas to create a more mixed culture.

I’m now moving to Singapore and the person replacing me in China is Chinese, so we strongly believe we need local talent but this being said, we also believe that we need cultural diversity in our teams. 

There is still a divide between Chinese people and foreigners in China, both professionally and socially, so it can be difficult to build something together.

So in terms of the approach we have when it comes to digital in China, we think it’s key to have strong local talent.

If you talk with platforms such as Tmall it’s 100% in Chinese, so even though I speak Mandarin I was limited to what I could achieve with them.

So though my role was to build our presence on these platforms, we now need someone who can create closer relationships.

In terms of agencies, we have a mix of both. Usually it’s a regional agency based outside of China, which is able to work in China and in other countries.

This is because Chinese companies often only work within their own country and nowhere else, with the exception of WeChat and Alibaba.