No one likes an endless stream of content (unless you’re scrolling down your Instagram feed). So in SEO, pagination breaks down large sets of content like articles or product listings into manageable, sequential pages.
But if you don’t do pagination correctly, it can create duplicate content and wreck your SEO.
In this article, we’ll dive into the details behind SEO and pagination, with a focus on the two main ways to implement SEO-friendly pagination:
- Creating clear navigational links (using <a href> tags) between pages and using self-referencing canonical tags
- Creating a “view-all” page that displays all the content at once. This view-all page serves as the canonical version, indicating to search engines that it is the preferred version for the paginated content.
What Is Pagination?
Pagination is a way to split up long lists into separate pages. As your blog grows, the list of blogs often becomes too long to show on a single page, so you split it up.
A few years ago, you would include Next and Previous links at the bottom and numbering to let your visitors navigate through your content. But now, it's more effective to focus on clear navigational links using <a href> tags that point directly to each paginated page.
For example, instead of just having "Next" and "Previous" buttons, you might include links like this:
<a href="/blog/page/1">1</a>
<a href="/blog/page/2">2</a>
<a href="/blog/page/3">3</a>
<a href="/blog/page/4">4</a>
<a href="/blog/page/5">5</a>
<a href="/blog/page/6">Next</a>
This allows search engines to easily follow the path between your pages and understand how they are connected.
Every growing website will eventually have to use pagination to keep it usable. This is also true for webshops. Amazon uses pagination on its category pages.
The same is true for news websites, blog category pages, forums, and other sites that contain a lot of content. Pagination ensures that the page loads quickly.
Pagination Issues
And while pagination is useful, developers have to correctly implement it, or it might cause issues such as:
- Wasted crawl budget: crawlers spend time on low-value pages instead of important ones. This can lead to unindexed pages, meaning that crucial content might not appear in search results.
- A lack of internal linking. When pages aren’t linked or structured properly, search engines have a harder time navigating your content. This can limit the flow of link equity (essentially, the value and authority that pass through hyperlinks) and make it harder for important pages to stand out in the eyes of search engines.
- It can create user experience (UX) issues, making it difficult for visitors to navigate and find the content they want. Users may struggle to locate specific articles or products, leading to frustration and driving them away from your site.
Do You Need Pagination?
It depends. You may not need pagination right now if you have 12 blog posts and publish a new blog every five months.
But if you plan to grow the site and add more content, inevitably, you’ll have to use pagination at some point.
Why Is Pagination Important?
User Experience
Pagination makes navigating large volumes of content manageable. Instead of overwhelming users with endless scrolling, it breaks content into digestible chunks, allowing visitors to locate what they’re looking for easily.
For example, as a visitor, scrolling through 1000 articles on one page isn’t great. Splitting the list into different pages helps users find the content more easily.
Internal Links To Deeper Pages
Internal links help search engines determine how your site is organized and which pages matter most. If a page has no internal links, search engines might think it’s unimportant, which could cause it to be overlooked or rank lower.
Linking to a page shows it’s valuable in the context of your site, boosting its visibility. Pagination will also help you build internal links to all your deeper content. Imagine if you only had the 20 latest blogs in your archive. Any older articles might not have internal links and will be considered less relevant. Pagination will fix that!
Pagination Helps Prevent Duplicate Content
When not handled carefully, pagination can lead to duplicate content issues, especially on eCommerce sites where product pages often share similar structures and details.
For example, many eCommerce sites use templates for product pages. While these pages highlight different products, they often have the same structure, introductory text, and meta descriptions. Without a clear pagination strategy, these small variations can confuse search engines.
Search Engine-Friendly Pagination Methods
There are two ways to implement pagination that work for your visitors and help search engines crawl your pages:
Google-Recommended: Self-Referencing Canonicals For Pagination
To help search engines understand the relationship between your paginated content, make sure to include links on each page that point to the next one using <a href> tags.
This way, search engines can easily follow the path from one page to another instead of getting stuck on just one page.
Remember that the crawler doesn't follow buttons unless they’re marked up with <a href>.
In addition to using these links, it's important to implement self-referencing canonicals on each paginated page. A self-referencing canonical is an HTML tag that tells search engines that the current page is the preferred version of that content.
For example, if you're on page 2 of your products, you would include a tag like <link rel="canonical" href="your-url/products/shoes?page=2">. This makes sure that search engines index the correct version of your page.
Alternative: The View-All Page For SEO Pagination
Although Google’s recommended solution may work, some pages aren’t indexed simply because Google doesn’t bother to follow the pagination to the end.
If this is your scenario, you can use the following alternative solution:
- Create a view-all page that contains all the items. This could be on /products/shoes/all, or /blog/seo/archive. Anything that works for you.
- Add the view-all page as a canonical URL to the paginated page. So /products/shoes?page=2 will have /products/shoes/all as its canonical URL.
The canonical URL on the paginated pages signals Google to index the view-all page. You don’t need to no-index the paginated pages.
As a result, Google will likely not index the paginated pages but just the view-all page, and from there, it has access to your entire archive. Every deeper item now has an internal link from an indexed page.
Limitations Of The View-All Page Pagination
A view-all page may not be feasible if you have hundreds of thousands of items due to the size. However, you could remove images or make the preview text smaller.
Alternative Types Of Pagination (And Why You Should Be Careful)
Pagination often consists of clear numbering to navigate the pages. However, other ways of pagination are more user-friendly, although they aren’t necessarily search-engine friendly. The “complicated” pagination types include:
Is The “Load More” Button SEO-Friendly?
Although the load more approach is a user-friendly solution, there is an SEO risk involved. Often, this solution only works with Javascript.
Search engine crawlers don’t use Javascript or only execute it at a later stage, so they can’t find the internal links to deeper content. And if that content isn’t linked anywhere, Google won’t index it.
Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google doesn't click the load more button.
Infinite Scrolling’s Effect On SEO
Infinite scrolling is similar to the load more button, except that instead of clicking a button, the user can just scroll down, and the new content will appear after reaching the bottom of the page.
As with the load more button, this is a Javascript solution that Google doesn’t follow.
What About The rel=next/prev?
You may have heard about the rel=next and rel=previous tags. These were used to identify the next and previous pages.
For example, on /blog/seo?page=3, you would have the following tags in the head:
<link rel=”next” href=”/blog/seo?page=4”>
<link rel=”previous” href=”/blog/seo?page=2”>
In 2019, Google announced it hadn’t used the rel=next/prev tags for quite some time. So, there is no need to add those, but if you have them already, you don’t need to remove them.
Pagination And Sitemaps
You may wonder why you need pagination if you have a sitemap. Through the sitemap, Google can already find all your pages, right?
That’s true, but Google sees internal links as a signal of relevance. A page listed in your sitemap but without any internal links will not be considered very relevant by Google.
Should You Include The Paginated Pages In The Sitemap?
No, don’t include the paginated pages. Include the content itself (e.g., blogs, products, etc.).
However, you can include the view-all page in your sitemap.
How Does Pagination Affect Your Crawl Budget?
Every page that Google crawls takes up some of your crawl budget, which is the number of pages a search engine bot will crawl during a single visit to your site. This can become an issue for larger sites; Google may stop crawling and indexing important pages if you flood its bots with too much content.
If you have a lot of paginated content and you’re worried Google isn’t crawling your entire site because of the crawl budget limitations, optimize:
- Implement breadcrumbs and structured data to help search engine bots understand the hierarchy and importance of your pages. For example, a breadcrumb trail may look like this: Home > Products > Category > Specific Item.
- Avoid creating too many levels of pagination. Break content down logically so that important pages are accessible within just a few clicks.
- Manage the number of pages Google needs to crawl. Marking paginated pages as "noindex" can help reduce crawl demand, but do this only if those pages lack valuable content that you want indexed. Instead of defaulting to "noindex," prioritize making your main content easily accessible and well-linked.
- Maintain a shallow link structure. Distribute link equity efficiently to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your essential content. Ideally, the most relevant items should be three clicks away from the landing page (at most).
Common SEO Mistakes With Pagination
Pagination is a complex topic, and we see some common mistakes. Please avoid the following pagination strategies:
Pagination And JavaScript Don’t Play Well
Most search engines are better at executing JavaScript, but for pagination, avoid using solutions that rely on JavaScript. A solution that only relies on JavaScript guarantees one thing and one thing only: Google won't index your deeper pages.
Do Not Block Crawlers In Robots.txt
There is no need to block crawlers from accessing your paginated pages. Google or other search engines may have their reasons for accessing those, and there’s no need to stop them.
Do Not Canonicalize Page 1
If you’re using Google’s recommended approach, add self-referencing canonicals. People often set the first page of the series as the canonical URL.
Don’t do that: use the view-all page as a canonical if you have one, and otherwise, use a self-referencing canonical.
Avoid Setting Paginated Pages To Noindex (Unless There's A Specific Reason)
If you set the canonical URL of your paginated pages to point to the view-all page, Google takes that as a hint to focus on indexing the view-all page first.
So, while your individual paginated pages can still show up in search results, they might not get the attention they deserve. If those pages have valuable and unique content, it's usually a good idea to keep them indexed so people can find them easily.
How To Track Pagination Performance
After you’ve implemented pagination, track if everything works correctly. You can do this in the following ways:
- See if paginated pages show up in the Search Console. Navigate to the "Performance" section and filter by your paginated pages using the “URLs containing /page” or the view-all page. If you’ve set up a view-all page, you should get the most clicks on Google. While a paginated page may appear in SERPs for specific queries, the view-all page should dominate the traffic.
- Advanced: If you're comfortable digging deeper, use server logs to see which pages Google crawls most often. Access your logs through your hosting control panel or FTP, then open the files with a text editor or log analysis tool. Look for “Googlebot” in the user-agent string to analyze the pages being crawled.
Take It Page By Page
...or step-by-step, and pagination is a crucial part of it! Not only does it help searchers navigate your site, but it also helps search engines find and index all the content you want to rank.
You can choose between self-referencing canonicals for pagination or the view-all page that keeps everything centralized. If you’re just starting with your site, a view-all page will keep it neat. As you grow, it pays to focus on the proper canonical implementation to preserve your crawl budget.
After all, if you keep Google happy, it’ll keep you happy with rankings, too!
