Should I implement pagination(rel=next, rel=prev) if I have duplicate meta tags?
-
Hi,
I just want to ask if it is necessary to implement pagination(rel=next, rel=prev) to my category pages because Google webmaster tools is telling me that these pages are having similar meta title and meta description. Ex.
page1: http://www.site.com/iphone-resellers/1
meta title:Search for iphone resellers in US
page2:http://www.site.com/iphone-resellers/2
meta title:Search for iphone resellers in US
page3:http://www.site.com/iphone-resellers/3
meta title:Search for iphone resellers in US
Thanks in advance.
-
I agree with you one hundred percent Dr Pete. Thanks for your detailed insight. Always helps
-
This is a constantly changing area of SEO the past couple of years, but my general feeling is that the rel=next/prev tags are working pretty well. They're low risk, and it can help you reduce duplication in Google's eyes without de-indexing the pages (page 3 could still rank, for example).
The biggest downside of the tags is that they're a bit tricky to implement, especially if you have search filters and sorts (in which case the proper tags get pretty complicated fast). Another option (as Nakul mentioned) is to NOINDEX pages 2+, which is simpler but would knock those extra pages out of ranking contention. That's a route I'd go only if you seemed to be getting hit hard for thin content.
The only area where I'll disagree slightly with Nakul is that handling pagination for SEO isn't always one of those areas where usability considerations help much. From a core architecture and internal search perspective, give your users a good experience, absolutely. From the standpoint of how to index those search pages, though, it's almost all about how Google views near-duplicate content. This is an area of SEO that is getting more technical and really comes down to the quirks of how Google indexes content.
-
Hi Nakul,
I don't have a view-all page. Both suggestions are great but they have disadvantages, based on what I read in Google, and it would really depend on what's the purpose. And a big YES, that's what I am thinking since user experience is more important.
Thanks a lot!
-
I see you have 2 responses from SWD and SanketPatel. They are both different strategies and you need to decide what you want to do as a Business. Here's why:
If you adopt SWD's solution, you could technically get rid of the problem, by telling Google that do not index page 2, page 3 and so on and just index your page 1. My question would be, do you have a View All page ? Do you want search engines to index and rank each one of your paginated pages ? Do they have unique collection of products and does it help the user if they land directly on Page 2 or would you rather then have land on Page 1 always ?
SanketPatel's solution definitely gets rid of the problem from a GWT perspective, however, the bigger question is, what you are trying to achieve and what your users would prefer.
Instead of looking it it from what's right in GWT or SEO, find what's right for your user first and then implement that in an SEO Friendly way.
I hope that helps and makes sense.
-
Its not necessary but its advisable if you implement it, to get out of duplication errors. If you don't want to do that then you can change title on page 2 like "Search for iphone resellers in US - Page 2". Same as you can implement for 3rd, 4th... page
-
I think it would be better for you if implement pagination and canonical url of ../1, ../2, ../3 as http://www.site.com/iphone-resellers. Google always prefer a good herarchy in every website.
I hope it can help you.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content: using the robots meta tag in conjunction with the canonical tag?
We have a WordPress instance on an Apache subdomain (let's say it's blog.website.com) alongside our main website, which is built in Angular. The tech team is using Akamai to do URL rewrites so that the blog posts appear under the main domain (website.com/more-keywords/here). However, due to the way they configured the WordPress install, they can't do a wildcard redirect under htaccess to force all the subdomain URLs to appear as subdirectories, so as you might have guessed, we're dealing with duplicate content issues. They could in theory do manual 301s for each blog post, but that's laborious and a real hassle given our IT structure (we're a financial services firm, so lots of bureaucracy and regulation). In addition, due to internal limitations (they seem mostly political in nature), a robots.txt file is out of the question. I'm thinking the next best alternative is the combined use of the robots meta tag (no index, follow) alongside the canonical tag to try to point the bot to the subdirectory URLs. I don't think this would be unethical use of either feature, but I'm trying to figure out if the two would conflict in some way? Or maybe there's a better approach with which we're unfamiliar or that we haven't considered?
Technical SEO | | prasadpathapati0 -
Duplicate Product Descriptions
Hi All, After a bit of advice please, we will be selling similar products e.g. A chair which comes in different fabrics and finishes, but is basically the same product. Most, if not all of the ‘long’ product descriptions are identical with only the ‘short’ product descriptions being unique. The ‘long’ product descriptions contain all the manufacturing information, leg option/colour information, graphics, dimensions, weight etc etc. I’m concerned that by having 300+ products all with identical ‘long’ descriptions its going to be seen negatively by google and effect the sites SEO. My question is will this be viewed as duplicate content? If so, are there any best practices I should be following for handling this, other than writing completely unique descriptions for each product, which would be extremely difficult given its basically the same products re-hashed. Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Jon-S0 -
Webmaster > HTML Improvements > Duplicate title tags
Hi, Webmaster > HTML Improvements > Duplicate title tags shows as in screenshot. How can i set this right as its a single page which duplicates? http://imgur.com/mjB0xZS Regards
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Tags - Should i add description for every tag ?
Hi 🙂 Should i add description for every tag in wordpress and i am using Yoast WordPress SEO and there is also option to add SEO title for tags , should i add also titles for tags ? and how should look title for tag, can you give me example from my blog : http://www.dota2club.com thank you !!!!
Technical SEO | | wolfinjo0 -
Problem with duplicate content
Hi, My problem is this: SEOmoz tells me I have duplicate content because it is picking up my index page in three different ways: http://www.web-writer-articles.co.uk http://www.web-writer-articles.co.uk/ and http://www.web-writer-articles.co.uk/index.php Can someone give me some advice as to how I can deal with this issue? thank you for your time, louandel15
Technical SEO | | louandel150 -
Problem with Rel Canonical
Background: We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. Clearly I am doing something wrong here, how do I check my various pages to see where the problem lies and how do I go about fixing it?
Technical SEO | | SallySerfas0 -
.Rel=author
For the purpose of implementing rel=author, 1. Whether http://www.ultraseo.com/blogs/ is my "Author page" 2. Where should i link from my Google profile to website http://www.ultraseo.com/ I mean, in which tab or section in Google profile should i link back to website ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Canonical pagination content
Hello We have a large ecommerce site, as you are aware that ecommerce sites has canonical issues, I have read various sources on how best to practice canonical on ecommerce site but I am not sure yet.. My concert is pagination where I am on category product listing page.. the pagination will have all different product not same however the meta data will be same so should I make let's say page 2 or 3 to main category page or keep them as is to index those pages? Another issue is using filters, where I am on any page and I filter by price or manufacturer basically the page will be same so here It seems issue of duplicate content, so should I canonical to category page only for those result types? So basically If I let google crawl my pagination content and I only canonical those coming with filter search result that would be best practice? and would google webmaster parameter handling case would be helpful in this scenario ? Please feel free to ask in case you have any queries regards
Technical SEO | | CNMOnline28
Carl0