Should I Take My Website Offline for the Holidays?

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. With no such thing as a free lunch, it seems an easy solution to take your website offline for the time you are away. But we’re saying, no, don’t do it and here’s why:

• Whenever your website is live, it will be repeatedly indexed by search engines. If you take it offline, it won’t be.
• If a website is offline, it will not show up in search engine results and you end up losing the SEO benefit of remaining online. When you do go back online, your previous SEO rankings may have dropped off. 

What Can I Do with My Website When I’m Away?

When it’s time to take a holiday, there are a few SEO friendly things you can do to your website. They are:

• Remove the BUY buttons from your website. This stops people from ordering anything!
• Disable your checkout page, so manual orders cannot be placed.
• Let people order from your website, but have prominent text on the checkout and cart pages that orders won’t be shipped until a set date.
• Change your website header to announce that sales cannot be placed between specific dates.
• Add a short paragraph to your Terms and Conditions or FAQ page saying that orders cannot be placed until a certain date. Or that orders can be made, but they won’t be shipped until a set date.

I No Longer Sell a Product: Should I Delete It from My Website?

Each page on your website, acts like an advertisement. Ready and waiting 24/7 for search engines to display it in their search results, if it is not there, it won’t be seen.

Even if you have sold out of a certain product and have no intention of stocking it again, keep the page live. Just set it to ‘Out of Stock’ or disable buy button, and ensure no backorders can be made. You can also add a piece suggesting they purchase a different item and share that link on this page too. Keeping the page live still gives you the SEO benefits of being found and sending traffic to your website.