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I notice your version of Yoast is out of date (7.6), I'd get that updated ASAP to the latest (10.0) for additional features and most importantly for security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
-
Google stopped showing rich snippets - what does warning mean?
Hi, for our site prams.net, Google stopped showing the rich snippets yesterday. We got the following warning in Webmastertools "Data with spam structures http://www.prams.net/ may be removed from the search results" As we have not changed anything for months, I do not know what the reason could be. Here a sample url from our site http://www.prams.net/brevi-ovo-twin Does anybody have experience with this and can give me a tip what to change? Thanks in advance. Dieter Lang Here the full message. Google has found some of your pages markup with structures that violate our quality guidelines for structured data. To provide users with high quality search results, we show detailed search results only for content with markup that meet our quality guidelines. This manual action was against prams.net/ imposed. You should correct the markup and make a request for reconsideration. Having noted that the guidelines for the markup on the pages in question are complied with, we will remove this manual action. You can resolve this problem as follows: | 1 | Update your markup so that it no longer violates our guidelines for structured data Correct Incorrect markup or remove the markup that is not the content of your page properly. | See guidelines |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco
| 2 | Ask a reconsideration request Once you have corrected your website, you can submit a reconsideration request, so this manual action is canceled. Be specific so that we can understand what changes you have made to your site. | Reconsideration request | Need more help? | • | For more information on manual actions against data with spam structures can be found in our Help Center. |
| • | Refer to the section Guidelines for structured data about the problem. |
| • | Ask in our forum questions if you need more help. Make reference to the message type [WNC-632 900]. |0 -
How can a website have multiple pages of duplicate content - still rank?
Can you have a website with multiple pages of the exact same copy, (being different locations of a franchise business), and still be able to rank for each individual franchise? Is that possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OhYeahSteve0 -
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 -
Do 410 show in the 404 not found section in Google Webmaster Tools?
Question: Do 410 show in the 404 not found section in Google Webmaster Tools? Specific situation: We got rid of an entire subdomain except for a few pages that we 301'd to relevant content on our main domain. The rest return a 404 not found. These show up in our google webmaster tools as crawl errors. I was wondering since 410 is a content gone error and we intentionally want this content gone, if we switch it to 410, does Google still report it as a 404 error? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Robots.txt error message in Google Webmaster from a later date than the page was cached, how is that?
I have error messages in Google Webmaster that state that Googlebot encountered errors while attempting to access the robots.txt. The last date that this was reported was on December 25, 2012 (Merry Christmas), but the last cache date was November 16, 2012 (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.etundra.com/robots.txt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a). How could I get this error if the page hasn't been cached since November 16, 2012?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eTundra0 -
If you have multiple schema types on a page, which Rich Snippet will display in Google?
We currently have product schema on product pages and will now be adding video schema to our product pages. According to Google they state you can have multiple schemas on a page, do you know if you have a product schema and a video schema which rich snippet will display in Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gatorpool0 -
Old Redirecting Website Still Showing In SERPs
I have a client, a plumber, who bought another plumbing company (and that company's domain) at one point. This other company was very old and has a lot of name recognition so they created a dedicated page to this other company within their main website, and redirected the other company's old domain to that page. This has worked fine, in that this page on the main site is now #1 when you search for the other old company's name. But for some reason the old domain comes up #2 (despite the fact that it's redirecting). Now, I could understand if the redirect had only been set up recently, but I'm reasonably sure this happened about a year ago. Could it be due to the fact that there are many sites out there still linking to that old domain? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VTDesignWorks1 -
Category Pages in competition with Homepages
I am finding it a real uphill task with a few of our clients with there either product or category pages competing against other sites on main keywords. The sites either categories or product specific pages are in direct competition with other sites homepages and I am finding it increasingly more difficult to break into positions. What are other peoples experiences with this ? Do you feel the way the pages are ranked within the xml sitemap with priority could also be a factor.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0