Pagination Help
-
Hi Moz Community, I've recently started helping a new site with their overall health and I have some pagination issues.
It's an ecommerce site and they currently don't have any pagination in place except for these tags:
I understand what these are doing (leading visitors to the previous, next or last page, but do these do anything for search crawlers or does the site need to have an option of:
1.rel=next/rel=prev
2.canonical leading to the view all page (the view all page takes a long time to load)Thanks for your help.
-Reed
-
Thanks Marcus,
Your Answer is really helpful. I have read a few of the pagination articles and agree they all say you don't need it 100%, but I needed some extra help understanding the issue.
I think in this case no following secondary pages would be best because the content might look duplicated. When I do a inurl:dir site search I get back searchers indexing "high/low price" "most/least reviewed" etc. for products so that could be the issue there.
Again thanks for your in depth response to help clear up my issue.
-Reed
-
Hey Reed
This is one of those questions where it is all too easy to get lost in the technical implementation BUT we really have to focus on what is best for the user AND traffic from search engines.
Firstly to answer your questions:
1. Does the page need rel=next/prev - nope. It does not need it. Google will do a pretty good job in most cases. That said, if the paginated pages are largely duplicate then you could run into problems here. If they are highly unique and page 1 is better a better landing page for X where page 3 is a better landing page for Y then they may be just fine. Certainly, though in this instance, adding rel=next/prev will not hurt and will help Google better understand the series of pages. Really, it comes down to the content and the users.
2. Do you need a rel=canonical to the view all page. Nope again. It may not even be the right thing to do. If that page takes a long time to load (> 5 seconds) then it likely is not the best option here. Alternatively, if the view all does represent the best page for the search engine to index then... again it comes back to the best decision for your users.
--
Other options include noindexing the secondary pages, no following the pagination links for more efficient crawling and filtering page variables in webmaster tools. However, the right technical solution is the one that aligns with the needs of the business and sensible requirements regarding what is best for searchers.
The one point to note here is that we see a lot of badly put together pagination. Rel=next/prev which does not start or end properly (if at all), endless pagination of empty pages etc. Whatever solution you choose try to ensure it works and test thoroughly. Screamingfrog can be a big help here!
Ultimately, try to determine what is the best solution for your site users and then implement the technology solution that best meets your requirements.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Hey, I am sure you will find answers for all of your queries here- http://moz.com/ugc/seo-guide-to-google-webmaster-recommendations-for-pagination
Also, I would recommend you to read these articles-
http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
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
-
Duplicate Page Titles For Paginated Topics In Blog
Hello, I've just run a site audit and it has come up with a duplicate title tag issue for the topics section of our blog. For example it is flagging that the following have the same page title. https://blog.companyname.com/topic/topic-name https://blog.companyname.com/topic/topic-name/page/2 How significant is this as an SEO issue and what are the ways we can go about fixing this? I look forward to any suggestions and guidance that can be provided. Thanks, John
Technical SEO | | SEOCT1 -
Despite proper hreflang and lang attribute implementation using xml sitemaps, I'm seeing sitelinks from different countries. Any help please?
When someone searches for our brand in US, instead of only US links, users are served with canadian or iranian sitelinks. Despite we have properly implemented xml sitemaps with hreflangs, even we have implemented lang attribute in the head section of source code for every country. I'd be thankful for any advice.
Technical SEO | | eset0 -
Someone is building anchor text links with child porn keywords..help :-(
Hey Everyone; I recently found that there are tons of links to my url (30+) from several sites with the anchor text "download child porn, kiddie porn, and the likes". Although the sites linking to us where the person built the links do not have this content (thank god) it is just my url + the horrible anchor text someone is putting. [added image] Obviously I would not do that to my own site especially since I was ranked for over 15 keywords in the top 5 spots on Google and Bing. I am guessing its a competitor and I am wondering that is there any way I can remove them? Is this negative seo? Also could this be the reason my site has dropped off google page 1 last month for all my positions? I am consistently trying to rebuild but my positions are flying all over the place. Im going from ranking #12 one week to #198 the next; then to #60 and finally not even on google or bing anymore; then back to #50, etc for the past month and a half... Its very aggravating and it has hurt a few of my websites; im at a total loss on how to recover now if this is the case...It seems they have started to build these links in January from what I can find on the postings.. Thank you SEOMOZ im so happy im a member now. Any suggestions on how i can get these links off or if it is why my site has lost its original rankings.. Should I just can my website and start all over with a different URL? How can I watch out for this in the future? Any help would be so so so greatly appreciated and valued 🙂 xpVjMw8
Technical SEO | | Circa0 -
Website ranking went from page one to not in top 50 overnight. Help/suggestions?
One of our customer's websites initially ranked very well. For approximately 3 months it sat atop of Google for their optimized keywords. Suddenly, on November 17th, the ranking dropped and they were no longer in the top 50 for any keywords. We went through Google Webmaster tools and found no violations, so we emailed Google to see if we violated something and if they would reconsider. They responded "We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google." This is a site built on WordPress, so we turned off a majority of plugins in case one was somehow affecting the site. They have an incredible amount of business partners that link their website from their partner's website menus, so they have about 15,000 links all with anchor text "insurance." (every page on partner site is seen as a different link). Think this is affecting it? Maybe Google sees it as artificial? (P.S. This has been set up this way for a while before they came on with us). The site ranks on page one of Bing and Yahoo, but nowhere in top 50 for Google. Any suggestions? Appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | Tosten0 -
Google not found errors in webmaster tool help
Hi, Google Webmaster tools sent me a few messages recently about the jump in the number of 'not found' errors. From 0 to 290 errors, ouch. I know what it's from but I think Google is seeing things. We developed another page/subdomain we're working on with links back to the root domain. Basically a complete list of articles page that lists each article and links back to the root domain. Not sure what Google is crawling but the links that would result in a 'not found' error aren't there. Will these disappear over time? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | astahl110 -
Dedicated ip helpful for seo
I read somewhere a while back that having a dedicated ip address was helpful for seo if this true or just another rumor? Also I read you should purchase your domain name for multiple yrs, what do you guys think?
Technical SEO | | TinaGammon0 -
Help - just disappeared from Google
My google listings have disappeared in the last few days. I used to have positions 1, 2, 3, and sometimes 4 on page 1, but since the last update (19th?) it appears I have been dropped? My domainn is www.eseyo.com and the search terms I used to acheive results for were "seo in brentwood" and "seo brentwood" I even created a screencast of my success some time ago for a blog post: http://www.eseyo.com/seo-in-brentwood/ Is there anything that I can do to get these listings back? I have not done anything too naughty in terms of tactics. Purchased a few fiver gigs to get some fake social likes but that is it the rest was all true links and listings. your help and advice most appreciated. Scott.
Technical SEO | | eseyo0 -
Do Backlinks to a PDF help with overall authority/link juice for the rest of the domain?
We are working on a website that has some high-quality industry articles available on their website. For each article, there is an abstract with a link to the PDF which is hosted on the domain. We have found in Analytics that a lot of sites link directly to the PDF and not the webpage that has the abstract of the article. Can we get any benefit from a direct PDF link? Or do we need to modify our strategy?
Technical SEO | | MattAaron0