Link rel="prev" AND canonical

[AdenaSEO]

Hi guys,

When you have several tabs on your website with products, you can most likely navigate to page 2, 3, 4 etc...
You can add the link rel="prev" and link rel="next" tags to make sure that 1 page get's indexed / ranked by Google. am I correct?

However this still means that all the pages can get indexed, right?

For example a webshop makes use of the link rel="prev" and ="next" tags.

In the Google results page though, all the seperate tabs pages are still visible/indexed..
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=1
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=24
http://www.domain.nl/watches/?tab=19
etc.....

Can we prevent this, and make sure only the main page get's indexed and ranked,  by adding a canonical link on every 'tab page' to the main page --> www.domain.nl/watches/

I hope I explained it well and I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Tom

[Everett]

WOW, this is an interesting thread. In theory, rel next prev is what Google wants you to go with. In practice, however, I haven't not seen this work as advertised by Google, and end up going to rel canonical in most cases. Here's one way to think about it:

Allow non-filtered pagination for top-level categories to be followed, but NOT indexed. Give them their own rel canonicals (self referencing) and ensure the intro content (or any other static content on the page) only shows on the first page (which should rel canonical to / instead of /?page=1). This will ensure your product pages all have a path going to them. Use rel next prev here, which "may" help the main/first page rank better by consolidating ranking signals from the paginated set.

For sub-categories and/or filters/facets use rel canonical pointing to the canonical version of that category page.

None of this, however, takes care of the crawl budget issue on enterprise eCommerce sites with crawlable filtered URLs. Therefore, I also use the robot.txt file, or nofollow attributes in links to handle this. I don't often use the nofollow robots meta tag for a variety of reasons.

Again, in the real world rel next/prev doesn't seem to be working very well. I haven't tried it in awhile, but it just doesn't seem to do what Google says it's supposed to do. This is why you see a lot of sites using rel canonical instead. I think we should think about this in terms of where you are in the architecture instead of trying to fit all pages into a single scheme. For example, some sites may even want to allow the first facet/filter to be indexable - such as "Filter by Brand" - because people are searching for it. If that's the case, I'll often advise they turn that into a real category instead of a filter. Another example, if you sell kitchenware and Pots & Pans is a category but Material is a filter you're missing out on a lot of searches for things like "Copper Pots & Pans" or "Stainless Steel Pans". It all depends on the situation, and has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

[GPainter]

Hi Lesley,

Interesting indeed, I'd agree with the colours etc. having a canonical as essentially it would be Duplicated but when writing I was assuming unique products under each category (e.g. TV's each with different size or brand). This might also encompass filters etc. but it depends on how far down that road you want to go. I assume Tom's problem is more for just a categories with X pages all with unique things in. Hopefully you find the above somewhat helpful Tom!

Good conversation thanks Lesley.

[LesleyPaone]

Good pick up on the Walmart issue. I actually took that screen shot when I was making that post, so it kind of confused me to how it changed so quickly. I did a bit more digging and figured out what they are doing. It basically looks like their canonical on their category pages is broken. See this video, http://screencast.com/t/Azyjjuxor8  So when you change pages, the canonical stays the same as your entry page and the rel=next/previous does not change either. But that would lead me to suspect if Google is crawling the site, they see the canonical pointing to the top level of the category. But interestingly enough if they ever did a fetch as Google on a paginated page, or if the crawler started with page 5 that would lead to some weird results Google would have to deal with. So effectively I would say their is broken.

It also seems like Rand might have changed his tune a bit since that article. When I did an interview with him, he said to canonical back to the main category page in faceted navigation situations. "Having 28 separate category pages for women’s pants where the only variations are size and color is probably not a great idea. In faceted navigation scenarios like that, I’d make the color and size filtered pages use a rel=canonical back to the non-faceted women’s pants page."  https://www.prestashop.com/blog/en/seo-expert-series-rand-fishkin-of-moz/

So for a better answer it might depend on how the category pages are structure with the navigation as well.

[GPainter]

I still disagree, a middle ground might be a view all section that you can canonical the downside might be some page load speeds but there are some ways to reduce that. I had a quick look for my self and found that Walmart seems to have updated their game  http://i.imgur.com/RvMboWG.png

A few of the examples you posted are more filters(Query string) than they are true pagination but I get what your leaning towards.

We're also an e-commerce specialist, the problem with copying bigger companies is if something goes wrong they can afford to get through it, can you? Just because they are a bigger company doesn't mean they know better, don't follow what everyone else is doing try to set your self apart, it is possible to set meta tags on paginated content, create more content to make each page unique etc. if 99% of the CMS's you found didn't do it keep looking for the 1% as it is possible

Finally I'll point to Rands own blog here - https://moz.com/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience

"Whatever you do, DO NOT:

• Put a rel=canonical directive on paginated results pointing back to the top page in an attempt to flow link juice to that URL. You'll either misdirect the engines into thinking you have only a single page of results or convince them that your directives aren't worth following (as they find clearly unique content on those pages)."

Thanks for the reply I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the above, i guess I'm somewhat stuck in my ways for pagination and canonical tags!

Hope some of the above helps Tom.

[LesleyPaone]

Tom,

I think you are seeing two differing view points on the issue. We only do e-commerce work, so we have gleaned our suggestions from the best practices in the e-commerce industry. I have done some pretty extensive research around this issue just to see what other companies do, that is why I suggested pointing your canonical back to your category landing pages. One issue I think is thin content. Do people really want to land on page 4 of a pagination?

With paginated category pages you actually run into a lot of SEO problems that are not addresses in 99% of all e-commerce platforms. Duplicate content, meta descriptions, and titles are some of the biggest. I am not familiar with any e-commerce package that will let you have different meta title or meta descriptions for paginated pages. Some might add "Page number x" to the title and descriptions, but that will still trigger duplicate content errors.

Lets look at what other sites in the industry do and how they do it.

Walmart

Walmart points all of their paginated pages back to the main category page. But they also do something interesting worth noting. They use rel=next on everyone as well. Even if the rel=next points to the page itself. See this screenshot of their TV category on page 2.

http://screencast.com/t/eZb9zbgA0u

If you notice the rel=next at the bottom actually points to the page you are on and the canonical points back to the category root.

Target

Target uses a filtering navigation on their category pages. It makes some really unpretty urls too. Below is a screenshot of a page 2 of their TV category.

http://screencast.com/t/oolK0hZy

They also point their category pagination back to the main category landing page as well. Also note that they do not use the rel=next or previous in their page as well.

Macy's

Macy's also points their canonical back at their category root page too. For some reason they have a query string on it as you can see in the image below. But in the next screenshot you can see where that page actually goes.

http://screencast.com/t/l3Jp2lxeBhTK

http://screencast.com/t/sDLTuAOa

Also it it is worth note that they don't use the rel next/previous on any of their pages as well.

Tiger Direct

Tiger Direct is another company that follows pretty much the same pattern as well. You can see by the image below that they point their paginated page back to the root category.

http://screencast.com/t/PsGft6CCgJ

I think the main reason of doing things like this works out two fold for companies. First you are putting more power into the category landing page and second you are providing better user experience. What does a paginated page of a category have to offer that the main page doesn't?

Sure Google might call using them the best practice, but that does not mean they will penalize you for not using them. We personally recommend to people to not use them and to point everything at the category root because that seems to be the standard in the industry. When you are trying to rank a page against other big e-commerce competitors you want to use every trick in the book to get ahead. Generally by not using this one it seems you won't.

[GPainter]

Hi Tom,

To break it down into the two areas:

Option A

Pagination - Google recommends this option it involves a similar set up that you have at the moment (the above links can help with this) you might find you canonical each page to its self perhaps but for the most part canonical is not used. Pros of this is its within Google guidelines and all content is indexed, the negative is that all the content is indexed and you might not have a way to get the page you want ranked (but you can tweak this)

Option B

You canonical all the pagination pages to a category page, this is not within Google guidelines as the pages are not duplicated nor would they really have duplicated content (with some exceptions). This bonus of this is technically you can sculpt all the link juice from all the pages to one place but the negative of this is you don't have a lot of content indexed.

Personal I'm in favor of option A, its in the guidelines its what the whole thing was designed for and if done correctly shouldn't cause you too many problems. The second option whilst i can work can also backfire especially if you not a large company and like most things is a matter of weighing up the pros and cons.

Hope that somewhat helps give you an idea. Really with the canonical (with some exceptions) its an either or scenario.

[AdenaSEO]

Hi Lesley,

Thx. But I'm still confused, Chris says 'use pagination' , you say 'use canonical'.
I don't really know what the best practice is tbh.

Can you explain why you wouldn't use the rel next/prev with this?

Regards,

Tom

[LesleyPaone]

Tom,

What we do with most of our clients is to point the canonical tag on paginated category pages to the root category page like you are wanting to do. It helps with duplicate content issues generated for category pages and also makes your landing page stronger. I would not use the rel next/previous with this though.

If you look around the industry at the bigger ecommerce sites this is what is done. Walmart, Target, and all of the big players with the exception of Amazon use this practice.

[GPainter]

You shouldn't use both as the canonical tag kinda cancels out the pagination which is not ideal.It means some of the products wont be getting indexed, you can always create a view all page and aim to make that the main ranking page however its never a garuntee. The pagination sounds like its the best option to me. All that is happening is Google is giving what it thinks is the best results by trying to sculpt it you might cause more problems than its worth.

Edit okay just to expand some more, you may want to read some more into pagination here - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en

it should help you clear up getting ti correct.

[AdenaSEO]

Hi Chris, Thx for your quick reply. We have a similar situation as the one I described earlier. Currently the code below is on the page. What are your thoughts on this contruction? Because, we use the prev and next AS WELL AS the canonical tag. The canonical to prevent duplicate content. The link prev and next to prevent Google indexing all the seperate /?tab=.. as inidivual pages. I'm looking forward to your response. Regards, Tom

[GPainter]

Hi Tom,

You may find the following helpful - :http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html

In short if you do canonical you would loose the pages (sort of) as technically they are not duplicated. You could try a "view all" page and hope that replaces some of the problems.

Seems to be pagination is working fine on your site so I wouldn't worry too much, if you did add canonical it may do more harm than good for the sake of making a URL look more appealing.

Hope that somewhat helps.

Good luck.