Pagination Help
-
Hi Moz Community, I've recently started helping a new site with their overall health and I have some pagination issues.
It's an ecommerce site and they currently don't have any pagination in place except for these tags:
I understand what these are doing (leading visitors to the previous, next or last page, but do these do anything for search crawlers or does the site need to have an option of:
1.rel=next/rel=prev
2.canonical leading to the view all page (the view all page takes a long time to load)Thanks for your help.
-Reed
-
Thanks Marcus,
Your Answer is really helpful. I have read a few of the pagination articles and agree they all say you don't need it 100%, but I needed some extra help understanding the issue.
I think in this case no following secondary pages would be best because the content might look duplicated. When I do a inurl:dir site search I get back searchers indexing "high/low price" "most/least reviewed" etc. for products so that could be the issue there.
Again thanks for your in depth response to help clear up my issue.
-Reed
-
Hey Reed
This is one of those questions where it is all too easy to get lost in the technical implementation BUT we really have to focus on what is best for the user AND traffic from search engines.
Firstly to answer your questions:
1. Does the page need rel=next/prev - nope. It does not need it. Google will do a pretty good job in most cases. That said, if the paginated pages are largely duplicate then you could run into problems here. If they are highly unique and page 1 is better a better landing page for X where page 3 is a better landing page for Y then they may be just fine. Certainly, though in this instance, adding rel=next/prev will not hurt and will help Google better understand the series of pages. Really, it comes down to the content and the users.
2. Do you need a rel=canonical to the view all page. Nope again. It may not even be the right thing to do. If that page takes a long time to load (> 5 seconds) then it likely is not the best option here. Alternatively, if the view all does represent the best page for the search engine to index then... again it comes back to the best decision for your users.
--
Other options include noindexing the secondary pages, no following the pagination links for more efficient crawling and filtering page variables in webmaster tools. However, the right technical solution is the one that aligns with the needs of the business and sensible requirements regarding what is best for searchers.
The one point to note here is that we see a lot of badly put together pagination. Rel=next/prev which does not start or end properly (if at all), endless pagination of empty pages etc. Whatever solution you choose try to ensure it works and test thoroughly. Screamingfrog can be a big help here!
Ultimately, try to determine what is the best solution for your site users and then implement the technology solution that best meets your requirements.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Hey, I am sure you will find answers for all of your queries here- http://moz.com/ugc/seo-guide-to-google-webmaster-recommendations-for-pagination
Also, I would recommend you to read these articles-
http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
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
-
Despite proper hreflang and lang attribute implementation using xml sitemaps, I'm seeing sitelinks from different countries. Any help please?
When someone searches for our brand in US, instead of only US links, users are served with canadian or iranian sitelinks. Despite we have properly implemented xml sitemaps with hreflangs, even we have implemented lang attribute in the head section of source code for every country. I'd be thankful for any advice.
Technical SEO | | eset0 -
Help! How to Remove Error Code 901: DNS Errors (But to a URL that doesn't exist!)
I have 2 urgent errors saying there are 2 x error code 909's detected. These don't link to any page - but I can tell there is a mistake somewhere - I just don't know what needs changing. http://www.justkeyrings.co.ukhttp/www.justkeyrings.co.uk/printed-promotional-keyrings http://www.justkeyrings.co.ukhttp/www.justkeyrings.co.uk/blank-unassembled-keyrings Could someone help please? screen-shot-2015-08-11-at-13.18.17.png?t=1439292942
Technical SEO | | FullSteamBusiness0 -
Need Help With WWW vs. Non-WWW Duplicate Pages
A friend I'm working with at RedChairMarket.com is having duplicate page issues. Among them, both www and non-www URLs are being generated automatically by his software framework, ASP.net mvc 3. How should we go about finding and tackling these duplicates? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BrittanyHighland0 -
Rel Canonical ? please help
Can some one please answer a question for me, I have a crawl error stating that I have [#### Rel Canonical 326](http://pro.seomoz.org/campaigns/243472/issues/18) Can you please advise me on how serious these Errors are? I was told by one person not to worry but It seems far to many to me. thanks
Technical SEO | | Chris__Chris0 -
Proxy Server & Wordpress - Need Help
I'm looking for some guidance/expert opinions on using a proxy server with Wordpress. When a consumer goes to ourwebsite.com/blog, our IT department would like to set up the request to be “proxied” to the Wordpress Blog site. They would like to add a header to the web request to identify that traffic as coming from through the proper URL. Should someone or a crawler attempt to access the WordPress site directly (blog.ourwebsite.com) they would be client side redirected to the proper URL ourwebsite.com/blog. This is WAY out of my league here, so I figured I would ask the experts. Will this negatively effect our SEO?
Technical SEO | | SavikaTilakhdin0 -
Any Positive Experiences with Rel=Next Rel=Prev for pagination?
Hi Mozzers! Can you share your experience and observations in implementing rel=next rel=prev on sites you've worked on?
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Help with Rel Canonical on Wordpress?
Crawl Diagnostics is showing a lot of Rel Canonical warnings, I've installed Wordpress SEO by Joose De Valk and Home Canonical URL plugins without success. Any ideas? I'm getting a lot of URL's that I thought I blocked from being indexed, such as author pages, category pages, etc. I'm also getting stuff like "recessionitis.com/?homeq=recent" and "recessionitis.com/page/2/", those pages are similar to my homepage. I thought those plugins were suppose to automatically clean things up.. anyone use these plugins that have any helpful hints?
Technical SEO | | 10JQKAs0 -
Internal Linking Structure - help Req'd
I have a website that due to the way in which it was put together a few years back always redirects to a /subdomain folder when the top level domain is entered. When analysing the new SERPS tool i spotted that when the .com domain was assessed it didn't pick up the internal links that were pointing to the /subdomain. Q) Could the /redirect cause a problem when crawled by Google, and if i'm linking back to the homepage should i be using the domain or the subdomain as the link (even though one redirects to the other......)
Technical SEO | | NSJ780