There are three different ways to display additional information on a page for users that Google suggests:
- Pagination
- Load More
- Infinite Scroll
This article will be deep diving specifically into the first option of pagination and best practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What is pagination?
Pagination is a way to display content or products on your site if there is too much to display on one page. It helps improve page load times and also helps improve user experience so users aren’t scrolling down trying to sift through hundreds or thousands of products or content.
Pagination are numbered links typically towards the bottom of the page where a user can go to “next”, “previous”, or select a page number to jump to.
Does pagination affect SEO?
Yes, it affects SEO because Google and other search engines know that there is a sequence of pages that are about the same topic. If pagination isn’t set up correctly from a technical SEO standpoint, it could appear as a series of duplicate pages for search engines.
An example of pagination is if you were on an e-commerce page for jeans, there could be thousands of jeans products that initially load on the page. Ultimately, there could be 50+ pages of jeans results using pagination. If there are no clear signals to Google or search engine bots that these additional URLs displaying the same topic of jeans product, this could look like 50+ near duplicate pages. If technical SEO signals for pagination are set up correctly, it should be clear to search engines what the first page of the series should be and avoid any potential duplication.
What are pagination best practices for SEO?
Below are the main focal points for setting up proper technic SEO pagination correctly:
- Link pages in sequential order
- Use correct URLs
- Don’t use URLs with alternative sort orders or filters
Link Pages in Sequential Order
In addition to linking in sequential order for UX (user experience) reasons, you’ll want to help give Googlebot hints as to what page should be the first page in the paginated series and shown to users. To do that, it’s recommended to link from all pages in the paginated collection, back to the first page. This will give clues to Google that the first page in the series would be a better landing page that the other pages in the series.
Below is what setting up pagination sequentially looks like while linking back to the first page of the paginated series:
Using Correct URLs
This is a two parter – use correct URLs for search engine bots to crawl and give each page in the paginated series a unique URL.
- Using URLs in your pagination that can be crawled is essential for bots and web crawlers to be able to crawl to the next URL. This means using classic <a href> tags.
- Give each page a unique URL. That should include a parameter that includes the page number in the paginated series
- Example: www.pointerseo.com/jeans?page=3
Should I use a canonical for pagination?
No, don’t use the first page of the pagination sequence as the canonical URL. Each page in the pagination should have a self-referencing canonical URL. This is stated by Google as best practices and what is recommended. By putting other proper technical signals in place like linking back to the first page in the paginated series on every page and using unique URLs with page numbers, Google will be able to figure out which page should be the authoritative URL so serve users in the SERP from the paginated sequence.
Do I need unique title tags for pagination?
No, use the same titles and meta descriptions for all the pages in the paginated sequence. Google will be able to recognize pages in the pagination and index them accordingly when best practices are implemented using sequential order and correct URLs.
Additional Pagination FAQ’s
Does Google use rel=”prev” and rel=”next” for SEO in 2024?
Google has been on the record stating that “rel=prev/next is not an indexing signal anymore”. This is because their indexing system is able to decipher what is a paginated page without having to use rel=prev/next.
Does Bing still use rel=”prev” and rel=”next” in 2024?
Yes, Bing uses rel=prev/next to help discover pages and understand a site’s structure. Bing does not use it to merge multiple pages into a single page.