Getting rid of pagination - redirect all paginated pages or leave them to 404?

[iHasco]

Hi all,

We're currently in the process of updating our website and we've agreed that one of the things we want to do is get rid of all our pagination (currently used on the blog and product review areas) and instead implement load more on scroll.

The question I have is... should we redirect all of the paginated pages and if so, where to? (My initial thoughts were either to the blog homepage or to the archive page) OR do we leave them to just 404?

Bear in mind we have thousands of paginated pages

Here's our blog area btw - https://www.ihasco.co.uk/blog 

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[lydiagilbertson]

Howdy iHasco!

Big site changes like this can always be tricky. Depending on how often these paginated pages are indexed and how many external links are currently pointing to them (I'd take a look and analyze both of these things before making any concrete decisions). Either of these decisions could be an okay route.

404 ing them is appropriate if the pages arn't indexed in Google, and have no backlinks.  (Be sure to remove all internal links pointing to them as well)

301 redirecting these pages is the correct route if your pages have link equity you want to preserve or the pages are indexed and users could potentially still access them from the SERP.

Since the blog homepage will contain the content these users would potentially be looking to access, I think that the blog homepage is the correct page to redirect to, as it will house the same content as the pagination used to have.