Pagination and matching title tags - does it matter when using rel="prev" and "next" attributes?
-
I'm looking at a site with the rel="prev" and "next" HTML attributes in place, to deal with pagination.
However, the pages in each paginated category have identical page titles - is this an issue?
Rand gives an example of how he'd vary page titles here, to prevent problems, though I'm not entirely sure whether this advice applies to sites with the rel="prev" and "next" HTML attributes in place: https://moz.com/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience
Any advice would be welcome - many thanks, Luke
-
Many thanks again CleverPhD, and thanks for your input Martijn - much appreciated. I guess one issue may be the mass alteration of title tags acting as a spam flag, as I have hundreds of pages to deal with - most of the website :-I - I am advising that the changes are implemented gradually so we don't upset Google - is my caution justified?
-
I second this, we just implemented a similar thing to make sure that we don't get in trouble with duplicate titles.
-
Yes this is an issue. All pages in pagination using rel next prev need unique titles (just like all pages on your site need unique titles). I usually accomplish this with each title being something like
Website Name Article Archives - Page $
or
Shoe Inventory - Page $
Where $ is whatever page of the pagination the person is on.
If you do have duplicate titles due to pagination (or otherwise), then you will start to see this show up as errors in your Search Console reports.
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
-
Should I delete all tags and just use my categories to organize content?
My website NorthernCaliforniaHikingTrails.com/blog has 400 or so tags, and it also has an extensive set of categories. I'm thinking about deleting all the tags, but keeping the categories and consolidating them a bit. Is there a significant SEO advantage to having tags in my case? I've seen a few very high-ranking websites actually rank for a tag, but I doubt my site will reach that level. Any help appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | John88990 -
Company name in title tags for lesser known brands - yes or no?
Hi Mozzers I read an interesting post over on Authority Labs this morning about title tag length and how Google changes the way they are displayed. The author Brian advises that, "if you want your title tag to remain unchanged, it's worth making sure that you're staying within the 50-59 character window and that your titles fit with the content of the page". This got me thinking... Given the limited amount of title tag characters that are now shown in the SERPs, I find it difficult to include a primary keyword, secondary keyword and the company name. So, if you're a lesser known brand is it worth sacrificing your company name in the title tags of deeper pages for a secondary keyword to help with rankings, or even a special offer to grab a users eye in the SERPs? What are people's views on this? Thanks Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Canonical and Rel=next/prev Implementation
Hi, I have an ecommerce site that allows users to view numerous pages and sort by a number of options on categories. I've read numerous posts around my issue but am still a little confused on what is best practice with regards to the canonical tag and rel=next and prev. Below is an example of the various page/sort by URL's: Paginated URL: http://www.example.co.uk/category/subcategory.html?p=3 Sort by URL: http://www.example.co.uk/category/subcategory.html?dir=desc&order=price Paginated & Sort by URL: http://www.example.co.uk/category/subcategory.html?dir=desc&order=price&p=3 It is not viable for us to use a canonical tag to the view all page as some of the categories contain a large number of products and therefore would not have the best load speeds. Is it best to use the below structure when it comes to the canonical tag and rel=next and prev? Paginated URL: http://www.example.co.uk/category/subcategory.html?p=3 Sort by URL: http://www.example.co.uk/category/subcategory.html?dir=desc&order=price Paginated & Sort by URL: http://www.example.co.uk/category/subcategory.html?dir=desc&order=price&p=3 http://www.example.co.uk/category/subcategory.html?dir=desc&order=price&p=2" /> Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrappleAgency0 -
Is it dangerous to use "Fetch as Google" too much in Webmaster Tools?
I saw some people freaking out about this on some forums and thought I would ask. Are you aware of there being any downside to use "Fetch as Google" often? Is it a bad thing to do when you create a new page or blog post, for example?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Two pages on same domain - Is this a proper use of the canonical tag?
I have a domain with two pages in question--one is an article with 2,000 words and the other is a FAQ with 300 words. The 300 word FAQ is copied, word-for-word and pasted inside of the 2,000 word article. Would it be a proper use of the canonical tag to point the smaller, 300 word FAQ at the 2,000 word article? Since the 300 word article is identical to a portion of the 2,000 word article, will Google see this as duplicate content? Thanks in advance for any helpful insight.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewv0 -
REL prev/next on pages with additional sort parameters
We need a bit of advice on a site we are working on. Currently, the site displays items in the categories in order of date and all of the pages of the category listing are rel prev/next tagged correctly. This is great, and works really well - however we want to include some more sorting options (by popularity, name, file size... etc) into the mix. What's the best way to go about this using the correct tags? Is it better to NOINDEX all of the sorting options and just leave the default by date listings indexed? Also, we cannot canonical the sorted options to their counterparts because the page content would be different. Any ideas? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640 -
Is a separate title tags and description reqquired
is it a separate title tags and description for all pagination pages. We have common title tag and meta desciption of all pagination pages should we need to modify the same
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Fetch as GoogleBot "Unreachable Page"
Hi, We are suddenly having an error "Unreachable Page" when any page of our site is accessed as Googlebot from webmaster tools. There are no DNS errors shown in "Crawl Errors". We have two web servers named web1 and web2 which are controlled by a software load balancer HAProxy. The same network configuration has been working for over a year now and never had any GoogleBot errors before 21st of this month. We tried to check if there could be any error in sitemap, .htaccess or robots.txt by excluding the loadbalancer and pointing DNS to web1 and web2 directly and googlebot was able to access the pages properly and there was no error. But when loadbalancer was made active again by pointing the DNS to it, the "unreachable page" started appearing again. This very same configuration has been working properly for over a year till 21st of this month. Website is properly accessible from browser and there are no DNS errors either as shown by "Crawl Errors". Can you guide me about how to diagnose the issue. I've tried all sorts of combinations, even removed the firewall but no success. Is there any way to get more details about error instead of just "Unreachable Page" error ? Regards, shaz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shaz_lhr0