‘Closeout’ Your Competition with Optimized Closeout Pages

Ecommerce websites bring a unique set of challenges when it comes to optimization, but they also have a unique set of opportunities that other sites do not have. Where non-ecommerce sites might struggle to find pages outside of a blog to optimized for valuable keywords and topics, ecommerce sits have hundreds, if not thousands of pages at the ready.

• Product category pages
• Product sub-category pages
• Brand category pages
• Brand sub-category pages

Those right there can keep any SEO busy for years, writing and optimizing content. But not every one of those pages will be high on the priority list, as determined by looking at search volume for relevant phrases. Which opens up an additional opportunity which might get overlooked: Closeout Pages.

JCPenney has a specific “Closeout” section on its website.

For every product being searched, there are almost always searches for that product with the following or similar qualifiers:

• closeout
• sale
• deals
• on sale
• discount
• clearance
• wholesale
• value
• coupon
• cheap

Most ecommerce sites ignore these keywords because they don’t really work on their main category pages. You can’t really advertize “widget deals” on your page that lists all your widgets at full price.

But why not create closeout pages? Just about every ecommerce site has products that go on sale. Whether it’s end of year inventory you’re trying to get rid of, or low-selling products that you need to clear out. Instead of (only) showing these products on their appropriate category pages, create pages dedicated to housing your on-sale products.

These pages can be optimized for all relevant keywords, while showing only the relevant products that are on discount. Not only will this open up an opportunity to bring in these deal seeking searchers, but it will allow you to drop them on the most relevant page for their search. They won’t have to hunt for the deals, they land on a page that has them right there!