The Mysterious Case of Pagination, Canonical Tags
-
Hey guys,
My head explodes when I think of this problem. So I will leave it to you guys to find a solution...
My root domain (xxx.com) runs on WordPress platform.
I use Yoast SEO plugin.
The next page of root domain -- page/2/ -- has been canonicalized to the same page -- page/2/ points to page/2/ for example.
The page/2/ and remaining pages also have this rel tags:
I have also added "noindex,follow" to page/2/ and further -- Yoast does this automatically.
Note: Yoast plugin also adds canonical to page/2/...page/3/ automatically.
Same is the case with category pages and tag pages. Oh, and the author pages too -- they all have self-canonicalization, rel prev & rel next tags, and have been "noindex, followed."
Problem:
Am I doing this the way it should be done?
I asked a Google Webmaster employee on rel next and prev tags, and this is what she said: "We do not recommend noindexing later pages, nor rel="canonical"izing everything to the first page." (My bad, last year I was canonicalizing pages to first page).
One of the popular blog, a competitor, uses none of these tags. Yet they rank higher. Others following this format have been hit with every kind of Google algorithm I could think of. I want to leave it to Google to decide what's better, but then again, Yoast SEO plugin rules my blog -- okay, let's say I am a bad coder.
Any help, suggestions, and thoughts are highly appreciated.
Update 1: Paginated pages -- including category pages and tag pages -- have unique snippets; no full-length posts. Thought I'd make that clear.
-
Hey There
Assuming your WordPress theme isn't conflicting with any of this, so long as you select "noindex subpages of archives" in Yoast you should be good to go. No need playing around with anything else.
-Dan
-
--> I think it's important to look at your site as a whole and divide the number of all pages by paginated pages.
I barely have control over these paginated pages. WordPress automatically takes care of this. I do, however, have the power to add a fixed number of links per paginated page. For example, I can set "10" in WordPress panel and every paginated page -- homepage, page/2/ for example -- will have 10 links (10 articles).
Subsequent pages will be automatically created as I feed my blog with more content.
Thanks Irving!
-
The noindex,follow tag on paginated pages will not compromise your sites integrity with Google. I think it's important to look at your site as a whole and divide the number of all pages by paginated pages. If the ratio is above 10%, I would be concerned that the site may appear to be more of a directory and it definitely would make sense to noindex the site. Also, there are paginated pages with just a bunch of links and other paginated pages with a lot more data surrounding the links. The fact that others are ranking higher probably have more to do with overall site content and PR.
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
-
Categories VS Tag Duplicate Content
Hello Moz community, I have a question about categories and tags . Our customer www.elshow.pe just had a redesign of its website. We use the same categories listed before . The only change was that two sub categories were added ( these sub-categories were popular tags before ) .Then now I have 2 URL's covering the same content: The first is the URL of the subcategory : www.elshow.pe/realitys/combate/ The second is the URL that is generated by the tag "combate" that is www.elshow.pe/noticias/combate/ I have the same with the second sub category: "Esto es guerra" www.elshow.pe/realitys/esto-es-guerra/ www.elshow.pe/noticias/esto-es-guerra/ The problem is when I search the keyword "combate" in my country (Perú), the URL that positions is the tag URL in 1st page. But, when I search for "esto es guerra" the URL that positions is the **sub category **in the second page. I also check in OSE both links and sub categories goes better than tags. So what do you guys recommend for this? 301 redirect? canonicals? Any coment is welcome. Thanks a lot for your time. Italo,
Technical SEO | | neoconsulting
@italominano WmzlklG.png 1RKcoX8.png0 -
Rel Canonical ? please help again!
Hi, I have been looking at the on page section and the grading. And I have noticed on nearly all of my pages an error. No More Than One Canonical URL Tag Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt> <dd>2</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>The canonical URL tag is meant to be employed only a single time on an individual URL (much like the title element or meta description). To ensure the search engines properly parse the canonical source, employ only a single version of this tag.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single canonical URL tag</dd> </dl> <a class="more expanded">Minimize</a> Please how do I make sure these canonicals are working properly, My rankings are getting worst fro long tail and short tail keywords. I am not even ranking for the main keywords "Probate" at all now! Our site is probate, we sell probate, we talk aout probate and now we are out of the top 200??? http://www.finalduties.co.uk Kind Regards Elissa HAyes
Technical SEO | | Chris__Chris0 -
Canonical Tag on Blog - Roger says it's incorrect?
Hi I have just released a post on my blog and I wanted to check my primary keyword for the post to make sure the page scores well. However when I did the page report it showed the Canonical Rel tag was incorrect. example of link the blog is http://www.example.com/Blog/post-comment/ The Canonical tag is below What am I doing wrong, as it looks correct to me?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Do canonical tags pass all of the link juice onto the URL they point to?
I have an ecommerce website where the category pages have various sorting and paging options which add a suffix to the URLs. My site is setup so the root category URL, domain.com/category-name, has a canonical tag pointing to domain.com/category-name/page1/price however all links, both interner & external, point to the former (i.e. domain.com/category-name). I would like to know whether all of the link juice is being passed onto the canonical tag URL? Otherwise should I change the canonical tag to point the other way? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tjhossy0 -
Tags - Should i add description for every tag ?
Hi 🙂 Should i add description for every tag in wordpress and i am using Yoast WordPress SEO and there is also option to add SEO title for tags , should i add also titles for tags ? and how should look title for tag, can you give me example from my blog : http://www.dota2club.com thank you !!!!
Technical SEO | | wolfinjo0 -
Why does it take so long for my TITLE tag it show ??
Hi Guys, I am frustrated here! I have changed my title tag so that I get a much better CTR. But I changed it a week ago and it is still howing the old title tag in the SERPS. Can anyone please tell me how long Google can take to show the new title tag in the search results?? Can it take weeks?? Thanks guys Gareth
Technical SEO | | GAZ090 -
Help with Rel Canonical on Wordpress?
Crawl Diagnostics is showing a lot of Rel Canonical warnings, I've installed Wordpress SEO by Joose De Valk and Home Canonical URL plugins without success. Any ideas? I'm getting a lot of URL's that I thought I blocked from being indexed, such as author pages, category pages, etc. I'm also getting stuff like "recessionitis.com/?homeq=recent" and "recessionitis.com/page/2/", those pages are similar to my homepage. I thought those plugins were suppose to automatically clean things up.. anyone use these plugins that have any helpful hints?
Technical SEO | | 10JQKAs0 -
Confused about rel="canonical"
I'm receiving a duplicate content error in my reports for www.example.com and www.example.com/index.htm. Should I put the rel="canonical" on the index page and point it to www.example.com? And if I have other important pages where rel="canonical" is being suggested do I place the rel="canonical" on that page? For example if www.example/product is an important page would I place on that page?
Technical SEO | | BrandonC-2698870