Paginated category pages still showing in Google
-
Despite our blog using rel=next and rel=”prev” we’re still finding paginated pages getting impressions in Google, suggesting they are taking up unnecessary crawl budget.
An example is: https://www.theukdomain.uk/seo/page/2/
What steps would you recommend I take to most benefit my sites SEO?
Thanks,
Sam
-
Hi Sam,
Even with that random bombshell announcement from Google about rel=next/prev, I still wouldn't worry about this too much.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else has a different opinion though!
I don't suppose you have explored server logs to validate the claim that Google is being inefficient in its crawling? I don't personally see how having a page 2 indexed equates to this, but understand in general where you are coming from with this!
Kind regards,
Nick
-
I'm always in two minds over what Google says and what actually happens. For example, I've seen a lot of cases of sites cutting out thin pages which have resulted in boosted Organic Visibility.
The paginated pages aren't a major concern as there isn't a lot of them and I would usually focus my time on more impactful activities but with rel=next/prev now depreciated and working through an audit I'm keen to get to a resolution.
Sam
P.S. With had issues with the latest version of Yoast so are awaiting a fix.
-
Hi Sam,
Just had a quick look at the URL in question and noticed you were using Wordpress AND Yoast which is a great choice .
Honestly, I wouldn't worry about page 2 etc being indexed.
This used to be a common SEO practice and an option in Yoast, however it has since been advised as the incorrect thing to do by Google
Please see this post here which covers it with references: https://yoast.com/pagination-seo-best-practices/
I also noted that your site has 1,100 pages indexed in Google. Again, directly referencing something John Mueller recently said... I wouldn't worry too much about crawl budget optimisation: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-crawl-budget-overrated-25825.html
Hope these two links help further your knowledge of SEO, you're asking all the right questions!
I must admit, it's only recently I've let go of my former held assumptions around this...
Kind regards,
Nick
P.S
I notice your version of Yoast is out of date (7.6), I'd get that updated ASAP to the latest (10.0) for additional features and most importantly for security
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
-
Homepage not showing up for Brand/Any keywords (on Google) all of a sudden
The homepage to this website is crawled and indexed, however, it's not showing up for any searches, even brand searches (eg: Klay schools). This happened overnight. Do you know what the underlying issue could be? Link to the homepage: https://www.klayschools.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vishesh10104 -
Blank Cart Pages Showing as Duplicate, HELP
Hi Everyone, I'm seeing a bunch of URLs that look something like this [ domain.com/cart?add&id_product=42&token=776d4a08721f3d8c920e287248797547] showing as duplicate content in my Moz crawls. I think these are just blank pages for the most part. Is there anything to be concerned with here? Is there a way to clean this up? Thanks! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Google is indexing the wrong pages
I have been having problems with Google indexing my website since mid May. I haven't made any changes to my website which is wordpress. I have a page with the title 'Peterborough Cathedral wedding', I search Google for 'wedding Peteborough Cathedral', this is not a competitive search phrase and I'd expect to find my blog post on page one. Instead, half way down page 4 I find Google has indexed www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/blog with the title 'wedding photojournalist | Portfolio', what google has indexed is a link to the blog post and not the blog post itself. I repeated this for several other blog posts and keywords and found similar results, most of which don't make any sense at all - A search for 'Menorca wedding photography' used to bring up one of my posts at the top of page one. Now it brings up a post titled 'La Mare wedding photography Jersey" which happens to have a link to the Menorca post at the bottom of the page. A search for 'Broadoaks country house weddng photography' brings up 'weddingphotojournalist | portfolio' which has a link to the Broadoaks post. a search for 'Blake Hall wedding photography' does exactly the same. In this case Google is linking to www.weddingphotojournalist.blog again, this is a page of recent blog posts. Could this be a problem with my sitemap? Or the Yoast SEO plugin? or a problem with my wordpress theme? Or is Google just a bit confused?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weddingphotojournalist0 -
Weird Page switch for a keyword in Google Rankings
Over this past weekend Google switched the page which usually showed in search results for keyword benchmarking. It went from from http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking to http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking-portal/osb. Also on Google the Rankings for the keyword 'benchmarking' sank from 15 to 47 for http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking Just looking for some theories or ideas or anyone that has had this happen to them.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
Why Google is not showing right title tags of my website inner pages?
Hello Everyone, I have a same problem with my 3 websites that Google is not showing right title tags of inner pages of my websites goldcoast-plumbers.com: http://screencast.com/t/2AEzDcoTkWF accountants-goldcoast.com.au: metalrecyclers-brisbane.com.au One common thing is all these websites is All in one SEO Pack Plugin for SEO Is it a problem? Thanks in advance for your help! Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asjad0 -
Home Page or Internal Page
I have a website that deals with personalized jewelry, and our main keyword is "Name Necklace".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
3 mounth ago i added new page: http://www.onecklace.com/name-necklaces/ And from then google index only this page for my main keyword, and not our home page.
Beacuase the page is new, and we didn't have a lot of link to it, our rank is not so well. I'm considering to remove this page (301 to home page), beacause i think that if google index our home page for this keyword it will be better. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but i know that our home page have a lot of good links and maybe our rank will be higher. Another thing, because google index this internal page for this keyword, it looks like our home page have no main keyword at all. BTW, before i add this page, google index our main page with this keyword. Please advise... U5S8gyS.png j50XHl4.png0 -
Will Creating a Keyword specific Page to replace the Category Section page cause any harm to my website?
I am running a word press install for my blog and recently had 3 of my main keywords set as categories. I recently decided to create a static page for the keywords instead of having the category page showing all the posts within the category, and took it off the navigation bar. I read about setting the categories to use NO index so the search engines can shine more importance on the new pages i created to really replace where the category was showing. Can this have a negative effect on my rankings? http://junkcarsforcashnjcompany.com junk car removal nj is showing the category section, So i placed the no index on it. Will the search engines refresh the data and replace it with the new page I created?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars0 -
Category pages in forums
I would like to hear feedback on the best SEO practice for forum category pages. An example would be a forum about cars. You can have a Chervorlet category which contains forums for every chevy model. Often this category page is simply a list of all the forums. If I noindex, follow the page then am I missing an opportunity? I am thinking of Google sitemaps for example where this page can be used for a category link. If I noindex the page, there probably isn't another great place for a sitemap to link to. I could fill out the page with wiki-like generic chevy information. Please share any thoughts or best practices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanKent0