Removing Products From A Site

You may also consider offering similar products through an affiliate program for another site. You can host the products on your own site, the transaction can be completed on your site, and none will be the wiser except you and your affiliate.

Or you can post AdSense, but I prefer showing actual items.

keep the page and put pics and links to similar products.

I vote for option one too, and it wouldn't be orphaned if added t oyour sitemap under "discontinued products" - with a paragraph and a cople of links to other suggestions -

If that's really not what you want to do, then I'd 301 to a category page -

PS  - you say "if anther site linked to it..." but then you say there are no inbound links, so... - i dunno.

IMO always keep the page and change the text if possible -

I vote for Option # 1. With this choice, you can maintain any long-tail search traffic for discontinued products. I think from a sales perspective this would be the best option too. People like recommendations - especially if the product they want isn't available. As a customer, I would prefer to receive recommendations (suggested replacements) instead of being redirected to the category page.

The downside is Option # 1 will require more work than using 301's. If any of the "suggested replacements" are ever discontinued, you will have to update multiple product pages.  :-(

al are you posing this question b/c you are worried that the item for sale is simply taking up space, and diluting the overall pagerank (NOT tbpr ) of the site?

are you simply trying to funnel your PR better and get rid of dead weight?

Thank you for your replies!

The actual page will be removed from our navigation (the site has product flyouts).  It will be an orphanged page.

This page does not have any outside backlinks, however for consistency, there will be times pages to be removed will have backlinks and I do not want to loose those links. 

It's a catch 22 - just trying to see which is better/worse.  Adding a 301 to somewhere else in the site and keeping the back links or keep it as an orphanged page for usability reasons (person clicks to ourside link, gets a meesage that the prosuduct is no longer avail and links to other pages)  OR another solution???

I guess I just don't fully understand why you want to remove a product page. Long tail is your friend :-)

Unless you think your suffering from the above situation I mentioned.

product no longer exists and no exact replacement.

why not use it to push to a similar product?

gotcha. My 2 cents would be to leave it (in case someone comes looking for the product)

say its not on sale anymore and give them some options for other items that they might find of interest. like you initially said.

I agree with Brian - if there intent was to find that product then best you acknowledge their intent and persuade them to consider an alternative.

I think it also highlights that sometimes what is best for the customer maybe a better option that what is the best technical SEO option.