1. Robots.txt
Do NOT set a disallow in robots.txt
. Otherwise, articles or products on paginated pages will be indexed poorly.
Paginated pages' URLs must be different from the URL of the root page.
2. rel="next"
and
rel="prev"
attributes
You should definitely implement them for proper crawling.
Every paginated page should include rel="next"
и rel="prev"
HTML attributes to indicate the relationship between component URLs. Thanks to this markup, search engines can determine that the content of these pages is connected in a logical sequence.
Add a tag to the <head>
section of the first page (http://website.com/category) that points to the next page, as shown below:
<head>
...
<linksrel="next"shref="http://website.com/category?page=2"><a href="http://website.com/category?page=2" ><="" p=""></a>
...
</head>
Since that's the root page, no rel="prev"
needed.
On the second page, add links pointing to the previous and next URL. For example, on the second page, you can add the following lines:
<head>
...
<linksrel="prev"shref="http://website.com/categoty?page=3"><a href="http://website.com/categoty?page=3" ><="" p=""></a>
...
</head>
Since this is the last URL, no rel="next"
needed.
3. Indexing paginated pages
On the 2nd and subsequent paginated pages, the source code should include a line in the body of the <head>
tag, which prohibits bots from adding a page to the index of search engines, but allows them to follow the links:
<head>
...
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
...
</head>
4. Sorting pages
Ideally, these pages shouldn't generate new URLs. But if they do, you have to make sure they're not being indexed.
In the source code of the sorting page, add this line to the body of the <head>
tag to prevent it from being indexed by the search engines:
<head>
...
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
...
</head>
5. Page titles
They don't have to be unique.
6. 1st paginated page duplicate
The first paginated page should not exist! Usually, this is a duplicate of the root page.
Set a 301 redirect from the 1st paginated page to the root page.
Successful Pagination: a Mini Case
- Online store of fishing products in Spain.
- All paginated pages are open for indexing.
- Pagination in general categories (like fishing). All products of the section from spinning rods to hooks are paginated.
- Pagination of products in small categories (for example, hooks) and category + brand (Rapala wobblers).
Solution
Implement the above pagination strategy for the online store + remove pagination completely from the root categories such as fishing (only leave logos of internal categories).