Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
-
Hello,
I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
-
Thank you, Oleg, for your response, and thanks, Matt, for jumping in.
The response was definitely very informative, but I'm still on the fence about this issue because, while Oleg confirmed what I had thought, that #2 would be the better choice, I now want to ensure that all the products on pages past page 1 will be crawlable by search engines. Any scenarios that you can think of in which search engines would not be able to read subsequent pages? Assuming that this is done using Ajax should we be okay?
(Please bear with me, my specialty is link building and content, not the technical stuff
-
To add some info... if you want infinite scrolling + paginated pages, check out Google's demo.
-
Hi Michelle!
Did Oleg settle this for you?
-
use #2 if search engines can see the content that would be on the other pages. if they can't see it, then use rel=next/prev
-
Thank you! Just to clarify, this is a site that is being built from scratch so my question really is, what would be the best way to go about this?
-
use rel=next/prev and cannonical tags if necessary
-
ensuring that the URL doesn't change between pages 1,2, and 3 within the category
-
-
If the paginated pages still exist (and can be indexed) but you want to load more products dynamically, without changing the URL, using rel=next/prev would work fine.
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
-
Nofollow/Noindex Category Listing Pages with Filters
Our e-commerce site currently has thousands of duplicate pages indexed because category listing pages with all the different filters selected are indexed. So, for example, you would see indexed: example.com/boots example.com/boots/black example.com/boots/black-size-small etc. There is a logic in place that when more than one filter is selected all the links on the page are nofollowed, but Googlebot is still getting to them, and the variations are being indexed. At this point I'd like to add 'noindex' or canonical tags to the filtered versions of the category pages, but many of these filtered pages are driving traffic. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fayfr0 -
Problems with WooCommerce Product Attribute Filter URL's
I am running a WordPress/WooCommerce site for a client, and Moz is picking up some issues with URL's generated from WooCommerce product attribute filters. For example: ..co.uk/womens-prescription-glasses/?filter_gender=mens&filter_style=full-rim&filter_shape=oval How do I get Google to ignore these filters?
Technical SEO | | SushiUK
I am running Yoast Premium, but not sure if this can solve the issue? Product categories are canonicalised to the root category URL. Any suggestions very gratefully appreciated. Thanks Bob0 -
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
How to Delete the slug /category/ from wordpress category pages
Hi all, I would like to ask you what's the better way to eliminate the slug /category/ form the wordpress category pages. I need to delete the slug /category/ to make the url seo frendly. The problem is that my site is an old site with the page indexed by Google for a long time. Thanks for your advice.
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
Can I use a 410'd page again at a later time?
I have old pages on my site that I want to 410 so they are totally removed, but later down the road if I want to utilize that URL again, can I just remove the 410 error code and put new content on that page and have it indexed again?
Technical SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
URL rewriting from subcategory to category
Hello everybody! I have quite simple question about URL rewriting from subcategory to category, yet I can't find any solution to this problem (due to lack of my deeper apache programming knowledge). Here is my problem/question: we have two website url structures that causes dublicate problems: www.website.lt/language/category/ www.website.lt/language/category/1/ 1 and 2 pages are absolutely same (both also returns 200 OK). What we need is 301 redirect from 2 to 1 without any other deeper categories redirects (like www.website.com/language/category/1/169/ redirecting to .../category/1/ or .../category/). Here goes .htaccess URL rewrite rules: RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&par4=$6&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/$ /index.php?lang=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] There are other redirects that handles non-www to www and related issues: RedirectMatch 301 ^/lt/$ http://www.domain.lt/ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.lt RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.lt/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.lt/$1/ [R=301,L] At this moment we cannot solve this problem with rel canonical (due to our CMS limits). Thanks for your help guys! If You need any other details on our coding, just let me know.
Technical SEO | | jkundrotas0 -
Google counting numbers of products on category pages - what about pagination ?
Hi there, Whilst checking out the SERPS, as you do, I noticed that where our category page appears, google now seems to be counting the number of products (what it calls items) on the product page and displaying this in the 1st part of the description (see image attached). My problem is we employ pagination, so that our category page will have 15 items on it, then there are paginated results for the rest, with either ?page=2 or page-2/ etc. appended to the URL. Although this is only a minor issue, I was just wondering if there was a way to change the number of products displayed on that page to be the entire number of products in that category, is there a microformat markup or something that can over-ride what google has detected ? Furthermore is this system of pagination effective ? I have considered using javascript pagination, such that all products would be loaded on to the one page but hidden until 'paginated', but I was worried about having hidden elements on the page, and also the impact of load times. Although I think this may solve the problem and display the true number of products in a section! Any help much appreciated, Stuart b4urme.jpg
Technical SEO | | stukerr0 -
Deep Page Link - url no longer exists
I used Open Site Explorer and found a link to our site on http://www.business.com/guides/bedding-supplies-3639/ The link was setup to go to an important, deep page on my website, but the structure of our urls changed and the url no longer exists. The link (anchor text 'National Hospitality Supply') does direct to our homepage, www.nathosp.com. My question is, am I receiving full link juice? Or would I be better served to create a 301 redirect to the revised / new page url? In case it matters, if I had my choice I'd prefer the link to go to the intended deep page. Thanks in advance for your insight. -Josh Fulfer
Technical SEO | | mhans0