Why is pagination SEO such a mystery in 2021?
-
Hi folks.
I would like to discuss pagination.
I use WordPress (Genesis, specifically).
I ran my site through a site scan and it flagged an error which told me that my blog was producing duplicate meta descriptions because the blog is paginated - the same meta description from the blog page is being used on Page 2, Page 3 etc.
I looked into this and the Internet is awash with many other people scratching around for a solution.
My understanding is that using a canonical link on the first page is not a good idea, because it says to Google that only Page 1 of the blog is important.
I also read an article that states Google no longer reads the Rel=Prev/Next code that could be used to tell Google to ignore the issue.
So, what's the solution?
Do I even need one?
As a side-thought, it seems to me that pagination is, well, pretty useless. I mean, if my blog has 20 pages and I've worked hard to create content, who is going to click through to anywhere near page 20? Nobody. There has to be a smarter way for people on-site to access content.
I would love your thoughts on all of this.
Cheers.
-
Thanks, Paddy!
That was well timed!
I am in the process of developing a blog and am lining up my ducks SEO-wise before I go live. I think I have opened a can of worms.
I have asked the question of StudioPress - why a page allocated to Posts Page is not canonicalised, and neither are paginated pages. Category pages are canonicalised but I'd rather show a dedicated blog page as opposed to a category page for the blog (I only have one category).
I don't want to use a plugin.
I have even been tempted by Ghost but looks like I need a PhD to figure that out!
Thanks again
-
Hi there,
For what it's worth, pagination is a source of contention for many SEOs, so you're not alone here
I think part of the reason for this is that there isn't a perfect answer and I'm yet to see consistent, definitive proof of any one answer being right, particularly when it comes to different types of websites. As you say, for a blog, it may not be that useful anyway. Whereas for an ecommerce website, it's probably more important but even then, users are not likely to click through to hundreds of paginated pages, but search engines may need to crawl them.
Anyway, the timing of your question is funny because earlier I came across this tweet thread from Patrick Stox which does a great job of laying out the options. I'd recommend taking a read:
https://twitter.com/patrickstox/status/1370218363440537601
Ultimately, keep in mind what your goals are - I imagine driving more traffic to key pages on your website. I'd also look at how things are performing at the moment and make decisions based on that. If your paginated pages are getting lots of traffic, you may not want to tinker too much with that. If they aren't, then you can make changes far more easily because you're not risking too much.
I hope that helps a bit!
Paddy
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
-
Multi Store SEO Drop
I have two stores (thespacecollective.com and thespacecollective.com/us) and over the past month the keyword rank for the US store had dropped by half, while the UK store is relatively the same. The content is mostly the same, except the US site uses US spelling. I assumed that this would not be flagged as duplicate content because it is the same site, just serving two locations. I'd be interested to hear some thoughts on the reason for this drop and how I might fix it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
New Website SEO Implications
Hi Moz Community, A client of mine has launched a new website. The new website is well designed, mobile friendly, fast loading and offers a far better UX than the old site. It has similar content but 'less wordy'. The old website was tired, slow, not mobile responsive etc but still ranked well. The domain has marketing leading authority and link metrics. Since the launch, the rankings for virtually every word has plummeted. Even previously ranked #1 words have disappeared to page 3 or 4. New pages have different URLs (301s from the old urls are working fine) and still score the same 98% (using the Moz page optimiser tool). Is it usual to experience some short term pain, or are these rankings drop an indication that something else is missing? My theory is that the new URLs are being treated like new pages, and that those new pages don't have the engagement data which is used for ranking. Thus, despite having the same authority of the old pages, as far as user data is concerned, they are new pages and therefor, not ranking well - yet. That theory would make logical sense but I'm hoping some experts here can help. Any suggestions welcome. Here's a quick checklist of things I have already done: complete 301 redirect list
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | I.AM.Strategist
New sitemap
Submitted to console
Created internal links from within their large blog
Optimised all the new pages (img alts, H1s etc) Extra info: Platform changed from Wordpress to Expression engine
Target pages now on level 3 not level 2 (extra subfolder used)
Less words used (average word count per page from 400+ to 250) Thanks in advance 🙂0 -
Pagination & Canonicals
Hi I've been looking at how we paginate our product pages & have a quick question on canonicals. Is this the right way to display.. Or should the canonical point to the main page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/euro-containers-stacking-containers, so Google doesn't pick up duplicate meta information? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
International SEO Question
_The company I work for has a website www.example.com that ranks very well in English speaking countries - US, UK, CA. For legal reasons, we now need to create www.example.co.uk to be accessible and rank in google.co.uk. Obviously we want this change to be as smooth as possible with little effect on rankings in the UK. We have two options that we're talking through at the moment - Use the hreflang tag on both the .com and the .co.uk to tell Google which site to rank in each country. My worry with this is that we might lose our rankings in the UK as it will be a brand new site with little to no links pointing to it. 301 redirect to the .co.uk based on UK IP addresses. I'm skeptical about this. As a 301 passes most of the link juice, I'm not sure how Google would treat this type of thing - would the .com lose ranking? So my questions are - would we lose ranking in the UK if we use option 1? Would option 2 work? What would you do? Any help is appreciated._
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | awestwood0 -
ECommerce Google PR mystery
Dear all, Our eCommerce site has the following structure Home .. PR=5 Category .. PR=4 (linked from home) Sub-Category Linked from Category PR=Un-ranked The domain has several years and perform well the site is here: http://tinyurl.com/5v9hrql Any idea or suggestion? Thank you Claudio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharewarePros0 -
Pop Up Advertisement - Bad for SEO?
So i have been working with a company running their SEO for close to two years now. Since i started to engage with them they have always used a very simple pop up for the first time an end user visits their website (via javascript and cookies). The pop up simply ask them if they would like to download a solutions brochure from their website. So as far as pop ups go, it is at least relevant. The client loves this pop up, i do not. For a while we have always held spots #1-3 for a lot of our keywords but we have started to drop to lower on the first page. So i have been researching to see if some of the new algorithm changes are targeting sites with this type of functionality. If i have some data i could definitely get them to remove it. So the question is, do pop-ups hurt your organic ranking? Thanks for the input! Kyle
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler1 -
Looking for SEO & design help
Our website is www.mosquitocurtains.com built by an amateur (me). Traffic has been on the decline, slipping from enviable rankings, higher bounce rates. Of course I have a modest budget but can't seem to sift through those that say, "Pay us a bundle and cross your fingers that we're any good."
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kurtyj0 -
Predictive SEO
Hello all, I am trying to perform a predictive competitive SEO analysis to estimate what I will need to do to surpass my competitors. I am unsure of how to do this and would like some advice or link to an article. What I am trying to do is predict where I can rank in three months, six months and one year as well as what I need to do compared to my competitors. Specifically also to estimate how many links I would need to acquire to both my page as well as domain. I have already pulled my competitors domain links, page links, and age. Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalops0