Pagination, Canonical, Prev & Next
-
Hello All
I have a question about my Magento setup. I have lots of categories which have many products so the categories paginate. I've seen info about making sure the Canonical tag doesn't simply send Search Engines back to the first page meaning the paginated pages won't get indexed. I've also seen info about using the rel=next & rel=prev to help Search Engines understand the category pages are paginated... Is it okay to use both?I've made sure that: category/?p=1 has a canonical of category/ to make sure there isn't duplicate content.
Here's an example of category/?p=2 meta data:
http://website.com/category/?p=2" />
http://website.com/category/" />
http://website.com/category/?p=3" /> -
While it can work that way, Google has explicitly stated that they do not want paginated search results to canonical back to page 1. They suggest either using rel=prev/next or using a canonical to a "View All" version.
Now, in practice, it's a bit more tricky, but most SEOs I know have moved away from canonical to page 1. If we don't canonical to "View All" or use rel=prev/next, the next most common approach is to META NOINDEX/FOLLOW pages 2+. Otherwise, Google may stop honoring your canonical tags, which can cause problems sitewide.
-
Hi,
Google recommends using a rel=canonical to a 'view all' page OR prev/next pagination. That being said though, the setup you have now is unlikely to cause any issues, the pagination is correct and the canonical is pointing to the same page so no technical reason for confusion.
One thing to keep in mind is if you have any filters available on these pages (like sort by price for example). In this case the recommendation IS to use both rel canonical and prev/next pagination. The rel=canonical in this case would point back to the main unfiltered page's url and the prev/next links would point to the relevant pages with the filtering included. So something like:
Page is **category/?p=2&sortby=price and **meta data is:
-
Hi Allen
Thanks for your reply. I don't think you understod the question though.I know the product pages will get indexed. My questions is purely about Category pages. If I had 10 paginated pages and they all had http://website.com/category/" /> then the 9 paginated pages won't get indexed (I've seen this on many ecommerce sites). Because the 9 other paginated pages on my site aren't duplicate content I won't them to get indexed as well.
There are some great articles out there you may want to read. I just haven't seen any advice on using the methods I've ended up with.
http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html
http://searchengineland.com/the-latest-greatest-on-seo-pagination-114284 -
Si,
Your concern about sending search engines back to the "Root" page is unfounded. Simply the search engines WILL index not only your category page but also your individual product pages.
So if you had a category, lets say "batteries" and that category had 100 different batteries, each category page having 10 of the different batteries. All 10 of the category pages should be Canonicalized to point to the first battery category page. That page is now receiving link juice from the lower 9 pages. But your 100 individual battery product page has its own link juice and they should NOT be directed back to the category page.
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
-
Advice needed on canonical paginated pages
Hi there. I use Genesis and StudioPress themes. I recently noticed that the canonical link for blog pages points to the first page on all paginated pages, which I understand is an SEO no-no. I found some code here that adds a unique canonical link to each paginated page but for categories only. It works fine. I only have one category for my site. My question is: is there a downside (or even upside) to not having a blog page and placing a link to my category page in the navigation bar instead, using the category page as the blog page? It looks good and works. What do you think? I find it odd that this seems to be an issue across the Internet and the only solution that comes up relies on the Yoast plugin, which I don't want to use (don't want to use a plugin for SEO). Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Syntax: 'canonical' vs "canonical" (Apostrophes or Quotes) does it matter?
I have been working on a site and through all the tools (Screaming Frog & Moz Bar) I've used it recognizes the canonical, but does Google? This is the only site I've worked on that has apostrophes. rel='canonical' href='https://www.example.com'/> It's apostrophes vs quotes. Could this error in syntax be causing the canonical not to be recognized? rel="canonical"href="https://www.example.com"/>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ccox10 -
Google ignoring Canonical and choosing its own
Hey Mozzers, We have several products that all have upto 6 different versions, they are the same product but in a different specification. As users search via these specifications (within our website) it is beneficial to keep all 6 products as different listings on the website. In google however it is not. So we kept all 6 listing but chose 1 to be the google landing page, the only different between them all is the technical specification + occasionally size. But 95% of the pages are the same. Let call the products A, B, C, D, E, F, we made all the canonicals point to C because this is out best selling version of the product. However, google has chosen E to rank instead. What is my best move here? Should i accept the page google has chosen and change the canonicals the point to that version or should I be stubborn and try to get google to change which version it ranks. As always many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP0 -
Rel canonical or redirect
Hi, my client has the following links pointing to the home page http://www.weddingrings.com/index.cfm http://www.weddingrings.com In this case would I use rel canonical or redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexkatalkin0 -
What next to help with my rankings
I'm after a fresh set of eyes and any suggestions to help me with my site on what next I should be doing to help increase rankings. The site is: http://bit.ly/VR6xIm Currently the site is ranking around 9-11th on google.co.uk for it's main term which is the name of the site. The site is around a year old, when it launched it went initially up towards positions 3-5 but has since settled at around where it is now. I have a free tool webmasters can use to implement our speed test into their sites which also includes a link back to our site in it to recognise that we are providing the tool for free, I periodically change the link achor text so it is not always the same anchor text that every site uses. Is there anything obvious I should be doing or that is missing that would help with my rankings? *Just as a note, I am not after a review on the actual speed test on the site, a new one will be developed to help further increase accuracy.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wardy0 -
Rel=canonical on image pages
Hi, Im working on a Wordpress hosted blog site. I recently did a "site:search" in Google for a specific article page to make sure it was getting crawled, and it returned three separate URLs in the search results. One was the article page, and the other two were the URLs that hosted the images that are found in the article. Would you suggest adding the rel=canonical tag to the pages that host the images so they point back to the actual context article page? Or are they fine being left alone? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbfrench0 -
Do different meta titles & descriptions delete the canonical origin?
Hi, hopefully anyone knows something about this case: There is a canonical tag on site "www.xyz.com**/de_de/" **refering to site "www.xyz.com/de-de/". If the meta title and descriptions are different on both sides - is there a problem that google will not pay attention to the canonical tag? Do both sides need the same title and canonical? Thanx for your answers! Cheers Heiko!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | heckert0 -
Rel canonical issues on wordpress posts
Our site has 500 rel canonical issues. This is the way i understand the issues. All our blog posts automatically include a rel=canonical to themselves.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | acs111
eg a blog about content marketing has: Should this tag point to one of the main pages instead so the link juice is sent back to our home page?0