Pruning your store
Pruning means removing the parts of your store that aren't working. Just like pruning a plant helps it grow stronger, removing underperforming content and products helps your store focus on what actually drives traffic and sales.
Why Pruning Matters
- Better SEO. Search engines judge your store as a whole. Pages with no traffic, thin content, or outdated products drag down your overall quality score.
- Better visitor experience. Visitors who land on empty categories or unavailable products get a bad impression and leave.
- Less maintenance. Fewer pages means less to keep up to date.
What to Prune
Products with no offers
Products that have lost all their merchant offers are dead ends. Visitors see a product page with no buy button and leave frustrated.
Use the Store Cleaner tool to find and remove these quickly.
Products with no views
If a product has been in your store for months and nobody has viewed it, it's not contributing anything. Consider removing it or replacing it with something more relevant.
Empty categories
Categories with no products or only one or two items look incomplete. Either add more products to fill them out or remove the category.
Thin or outdated articles
Articles with only a sentence or two, or articles that reference outdated information, can hurt your search rankings. Either expand them into proper content or remove them.
Empty brands
Brands with no products attached serve no purpose. Remove them to keep your store tidy.
How to Prune
- Check your analytics. Identify pages with zero views over the last 3 months.
- Run the Store Cleaner. Go to Tools > Store Cleaner to remove products with no offers, empty brands, and empty categories in one go.
- Review your articles. Read through your articles and identify any that are thin, outdated, or no longer relevant.
- Check your categories. Make sure every category has enough products to be useful.
Be careful when pruning. The Store Cleaner permanently deletes items. Make sure you export any data you want to keep before cleaning up.
How Often to Prune
Aim to review your store every few months. A quick 30-minute pruning session can make a real difference to your store's quality and performance.