Canonical VS Rel=Next & Rel=Prev for Paginated Pages
-
I run an ecommerce site that paginates product pages within Categories/Sub-Categories. Currently, products are not displayed in multiple categories but this will most likely happen as time goes on (in Clearance and Manufacturer Categories). I am unclear as to the proper implementation of Canonical tags and Rel=Next & Rel=Prev tags on paginated pages. I do not have a View All page to use as the Canonical URL so that is not an option.
I want to avoid duplicate content issues down the road when products are displayed in multiple categories of the site and have Search Engines index paginated pages. My question is, should I use the Rel=Next & Rel=Prev tags on paginated pages as well as using Page One as the Canonical URL?
Also, should I implement the Canonical tag on pages that are not yet paginated (only one page)?
-
Thanks Anthony. I have read Adam's article and after further research this was the direction I was leaning in. You have definitely helped me choose a direction.
-
Pagination is a huge topic and a bit too much to get into here on the Q&A. Here are my brief answers and I hope they help.
- Don't worry about duplicate content if your category/subcategory pages only show snippets for the products they contain and you don't have two identical category/subcategories. Similar category/subcategories will have a certain level of overlap and that is fine.
I recommend adding a bit of unique content to each one. Make it useful to the visitor. Help them find what they are looking for and teach them a bit about this particular category. This unique content will help you make each page unique and also hopefully help you rank for long-tail kws and convert better.
-
Don't worry about implementing the canonical tag unless you see that you are having problems with multiple versions of the same page being indexed. URLs with Tracking codes for example.
-
Make each paginated page have a unique page title (Category - Page 2 - Brand) and then implement rel=next/prev.
Read everything you can on this subject from Adam Audette. He has some very good posts and slides on e-comm pagination.
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&rlz=&q=audette+pagination
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
-
Quickview product modal - should I add rel=canonical to each URL ?
I have a quick view modal for all products on my website. How should I deal with these in the page set up eg. should I rel=canonical to the full product page and no-index in robots txt or are they ok in Googles eyes as they are part of the UX ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColesNathan0 -
Canonicals for Splitting up large pagination pages
Hi there, Our dev team are looking at speeding up load times and making pages easier to browse by splitting up our pagination pages to 10 items per page rather than 1000s (exact number to be determined) - sounds like a great idea, but we're little concerned about the canonicals on this one. at the moment we rel canonical (self) and prev and next. so b is rel b, prev a and next c - for each letter continued. Now the url structure will be a1, a(n+), b1, b(n+), c1, c(n+). Should we keep the canonicals to loop through the whole new structure or should we loop each letter within itself? Either b1 rel b1, prev a(n+), next b2 - even though they're not strictly continuing the sequence. Or a1 rel a1, next a2. a2 rel a2, prev a1, next a3 | b1 rel b1, next b2, b2 rel b2, prev b1, next b3 etc. Would love to hear your points of view, hope that all made sense 🙂 I'm leaning towards the first one even though it's not continuing the letter sequence, but because it's looping the alphabetically which is currently working for us already. This is an example of the page we're hoping to split up: https://www.world-airport-codes.com/alphabetical/airport-name/b.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra0 -
Rel=canonical Question
Alright, so let's say we've got an event coming up. The URL is website.com/event. On that page, you can access very small pages with small amounts of information, like website.com/event/register, website.com/event/hotel-info, and website.com/event/schedule. These originally came up as having missing meta descriptions, and I was thinking a rel=canonical might be the best approach, but I'm not sure. What do you think? Is there a better approach? Should I have just added a meta description and moved on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWillner0 -
Why does SEOmoz bot see duplicate pages despite I am using the canonical tag?
Hello here, today SEOmoz bot found and marked as "duplicate content" the following pages on my website: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/PatrickCollectionFlPf.html?tab=mp3 http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/PatrickCollectionFlPf.html?tab=pdf And I am wondering why considering the fact I am using on both those pages a canonical tag pointing to the main product page below: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/PatrickCollectionFlPf.html Shouldn't SEOmoz bot follow the canonical directive and not report those two pages as duplicate? Thank you for any insights I am probably missing here!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
301 redirect or rel=canonical
On my site, which I created with Joomla, there seems to be a lot of duplicated pages. I was wondering which would be better, 301 redirect or rel=canonical. On SeoMoz Pro "help" they suggest only the rel=canonical and dont mention 301 redirect. However, ive read many other say that 301 redirect should be the number one option. Also, does 301 redirect help solve the crawling errors, in other words, does it get rid of the errors of "duplicate page content?" Ive read that re-=canonical does not right? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waltergah0 -
Should we Use rel=canonical in ccTLDs websites
We have multilingual eCommerce websites with some content variations but majority of the content remains the same We have used rel=alternate hreflang on corresponding ccTLDs respective countries. for example on example.com -which is the oldest of these sites- we have used Now should we also use link rel="canonical" href="example.com" on all ccTLDs? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
Website layout for a new website [Over 50 Pages & targeting Long Tail Keywords]
Hey everyone, We are designing a new website with over 50 pages and I have a question regarding the layout. Should I target my long tail keywords via blog pages? It will be easier to manage and list and link out to similar articles related to my long tail keywords using a word press blog. For this example - lets suppose the website is www.orange.com and we sells 'Oranges' Am I going about this in the right way? Main Section: Main Section 1 : Home Page - Keyword Targeted - Orange Main Section 2 : Important Conversion page - 'Buy oranges' Long Tail Keyword (LTK) 1: www.orange.com/blog/LTK1 Subsection(SS): www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS1 www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS1a www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS1b Long Tail Keyword (LTK) 2: www.orange.com/blog/LTK2 Long Tail Keyword (LTK) 3: www.orange.com/blog/LTK3 Subsection(SS): www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS3 www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS3a www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS3b All these long tail pages and sub sections under them are built specifically for hosting content that targets these specific long tail keywords. Most of my traffic will come initially via the sub section pages - and it is important for me to rank well for these terms initially. _E.g. if someone searches for the keyword 'SS3b' on Google - my corresponding page www.orange.com/blog/LTK1/SS3b should rank well on the results page. _ For ranking purposes - will using this blog/category structure hurt or benefit me? Instead do you think I should build static pages? Also, we are targeting more than 50 long tail keywords - and building quality content for each of these keywords - and I assume that we will be doing this continuously. So in the long term term which is more beneficial? Do you have any suggestions on if I am going about this the right way? Apologies for using these random terms - oranges, LKT, SS etc in this example. However, I hope that the question is clear. Looking forward to some interesting answers on this! Please feel free to share your thoughts.. Thank you! Natasha
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Natashadogres0 -
Multiple stores & domains vs. One unified store (SEO pros / cons for E-Commerce)
Our company runs a number of individual online shops, specialised in particular products but all in the same genre of goods overall, with a specific and relevant domain name for each shop. At the moment the sites are separate, and not interlinked, i.e. Completely separate brands. An analogy could be something like clothing accessories (we are not in the clothing business): scarves.com, and silkties.com (our field is more niche than this) We are about to launch a related site, (e.g. handbags.com), in the same field again but without precisely overlapping products. We will produce this site on a newer, more flexible e-commerce platform, so now is a good time to consider whether we want to place all our sites together with one e-commerce system on the backend. Essentially, we need to know what the pros and cons would be of the various options facing us and how the SEO ranking is affected by the three possibilities. Option 1: continue with separate sites each with its own domains. Option 2: have multiple sites, each on their own domain, but on the same ecommerce system and visible linked together for the customer (with unified checkout) – on the top of each site could be a menu bar linking to each site: [Scarves.com] – [SilkTies.com] – [Handbags.com] The main question here is whether the multiple domains are mutually beneficial, particularly considerding how close to target keywords the individual domains are. If mutually benefitial, how does it compare to option 3: Option 3: Having recently acquired a domain name (e.g. accessories.com) which would cover the whole category together, we are presented with a third option: making one site selling all of these products in different categories. Our main concern here would be losing the ability to specifically target marketing, and losing the benefit of the domains with the key words in for what people are more likely to be searching for (e.g. 'silk tie') rather than 'accessories.' Is it worth taking the hit on losing these specific targeted domain names for the advantage of increased combined inbound links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0