Optimizing Pagination for SEO in 2024: Best Practices, Common Issues & More

If your website uses pagination or you’re planning to add it, it’s crucial to understand how Pagination for SEO can impact your site’s search performance.

While setting up SEO friendly pagination is simple, it can be challenging to get the grips with.

But don’t let that put you off. It isn’t that complicated to understand.

Typically, numbered buttons are used in pagination to help users navigate through different pages.

The following image shows what pagination looks like on a web page.

Examples of Pagination

Some of the common examples of using Pagination as a UX pattern are as follows:

1. Blog Posts

It is commonly used on blog post pages and category pages.

Here’s an example of Flipkart Blog.

2. E-commerce Category Pages

E-commerce brands often use pagination on category pages with many items.

Examples include Myntra, Amazon, and others.

3. Photo Galleries

Websites use pagination to display large collections of images.

The image below from Shutterstock shows this navigation clearly.

There are many examples of pagination as a UX pattern. We’ve highlighted a few to give you an idea of how it looks in practice.

Why Understand Pagination for SEO?

It’s important to understand because it has a direct impact on your website’s SEO.

Getting it right is essential due to the effect of pagination in SEO.

It affects several key aspects of your site. Let’s explore how!

To Optimize Crawl

It helps you to optimize the crawl if done properly.

Duplicate Content

It could create some duplicate content if not handled correctly. This can negatively affect your SEO rankings.

Thin Content Pages

It can lead to the creation of thin content pages.

May Prevent the Crawling of Pages

The implementation of some bad practices could prevent the crawling of some important pages.

4 Pagination SEO Best Practices to Implement

Here are four essential practices to ensure your content is accessible and optimized for SEO. Proper execution of these practices will help you handle pagination properly in SEO.

Link Pages in Sequence

All pages that are there must be linked in a sequence one by one with an <a href>. This can help crawlers find subsequent pages and enables easier navigation.

For example:

Page 3 is linked to Page 2 (previous page) and Page 4 (next page).

rel=prev/next

You might have come across the terms rel=”prev” and rel=”next”.

In the past, Google used HTML link elements rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to show how different pages in a series are related to each other.

For example, rel=”next” points to the next page, while rel=”prev” points to the previous page.

However, Google no longer uses these tags.

So, should we use it? And does using it affect SEO?

The answer is both yes and no. Using these tags won’t cause any harm, but not using them is also perfectly fine.

As for SEO, their impact is minimal since Google no longer relies on them.

Unique URL

Ensure each page in the sequence has a unique URL, as Google treats them as separate pages.

Self Canonicalize the Paginated Pages

Ensure each page has a unique canonical URL and it should be self-referential.

Google recommends this and helps to avoid duplicate content.

Have only Unique Content on these Pages

Each page in the sequence must have unique content, but the titles and descriptions can be the same.

3 Common Pagination Mistakes to Avoid for SEO

Pagination is crucial for SEO, but mistakes can harm your site’s performance. Here are three common pagination issues in SEO to avoid.

Canonicals to the First Paginated Page

Canonicalizing all paginated pages to the first page is a common mistake. Each paginated page should have its own canonical tag pointing to itself.

Duplicate Content

On many websites, especially e-commerce sites, the same content appears on every paginated page, resulting in duplicate content across multiple pages. This should be avoided.

Buttons not Marked up with <a href>

Google only follows page links marked with <a href> tags in HTML. The Google crawler does not follow buttons unless they are properly marked up with <a href> tags.

Note: For better clarity, refer to the image under the subheading “Link Pages in Sequence.”

Other Alternatives to Pagination

There are three alternatives as follows:

Infinite Scrolling

Automatically loads more content as users scroll down the page, eliminating the need for pagination.

Load More

A button that users can click to reveal additional content without reloading the page.

View All

A link or button that allows users to see all content in one place, avoiding pagination or filtering options.

Differences between Pagination, Infinite Scrolling, Load More & View All

Parameter	Pagination	Infinite Scrolling	Load More	View All
User Interaction	Requires users to navigate between pages	Continuous scrolling, no explicit page navigation	Continuous scrolling, no explicit page navigation	Requires a click to load all content
User Experience	Clear page separation but requires navigation	Smooth, seamless experience	Simple and straightforward interaction	Provides a complete view but can be overwhelming
SEO	SEO-friendly if each page is properly indexed	Can be less SEO-friendly if not implemented well	SEO impact depends on implementation.	May cause indexing issues with very large data
Performance	Performs well with large data	Can affect performance with large data sets	Generally performs well with fewer data sets	Can be slow with large amounts of data

End Note

I hope you’ve found this practical guide helpful! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. I’ll continue to create such valuable content.

Frequently Asked Question (FAQ)

Source: Google Search Central