The Ultimate Guide to Pagination for SEO

SMX West 2012

>Adam Audette>@audette

President, RKG

www.rimmkaufman.com

2

Pagination: Gettin’ Jiggy With It

3 Ways to Get Jiggy>Classic SEO Pagination technique

Page 1 is canonical Component pages noindex

>View All technique Elegant Hard to get implemented

>The “Fresh” method rel next / prev Assorted other signals

Classic Pagination Method

>Primary Goals Surface only page 1 in results (the canonical) Control inbound SEO experience (as much as possible) Items/products on component pages get crawled

Secondary goal: get jiggy

Classic Pagination Requirements

pp. 2-N

Annotations:

• pages 2-N annotated with noindex, follow

• pages 2-N self-referencing rel canonical

• pages 2-N contain unique titles, URLs, and meta data

Classic Pagination Method

pp. 2

• Hi-top fade

pp. 3

• Bel-Air

pp. 4

• One-strap overall

p. 1

Fresh Prince

Classic Pagination Method

p. 1

pp. 2-N

Classic Pagination Method

>Results Page 1 is displayed as the ranking URL in results Component pages get crawled; but equity is not directly passed

to canonical Component pages in series get crawled but not indexed,

therefore don’t compete with page 1

Result? Pretty jiggy!

View All Pagination Tactic

>Goals Surface only the View All page in results Consolidate scoring signals to View All

View All Pagination Requirements

Annotations:

• pages 2-N specify View All as rel canonical target

• View All page must load fast

• View All contains all data in the series

View All

pp. 2-N

View All Pagination Tactic

View All

pp. 2-N

View All Pagination Tactic

>Results View All is displayed as the ranking URL in results Component pages transfer scoring signals to View All High-quality View All pages (if fast) can perform well

Result? Nerdier Than Carlton

Side Note: View Alls

>Challenges View All pages must be fast (≤ 3 seconds to load) Big sites (esp. ecomm) sometimes dislike them (see above) … but users love them! (if they’re fast)

“Fresh” Pagination Tactic

>Goals Surface only page 1 in results (the canonical) Control inbound SEO experience (as much as possible) Consolidate scoring signals to canonical

Secondary goal: even more jiggy

“Fresh” Pagination Requirements

pp. 2-N

Annotations:

• Pages 2-N annotated with rel next, prev

• pages 2-N self-referencing rel canonical

• pages 2-N contain unique titles, URLs, and meta data

• (Optional) pages 2-N annotated with noindex, follow

“Fresh” Pagination Tactic

p. 1

pp. 2-N

[ rel prev / next ]

Result? Jiggy’est of all

“Fresh” Pagination Tactic

>Results Page 1 is displayed as the ranking URL in results Rel prev / next consolidate signals across the series rel canonical (self-referencing only) pulls any URL dupes (Optional) noindex, follow pulls component pages from results

Side Note on Gettin’ Fresh

>Important to keep in mind Pages with rel next/prev can still be shown in results

But this is an extreme “edge case” Can optionally use noindex

Use of rel next/prev consolidates signals across the entire series

Another Side Note

>Big innovations at Google Search Quality?

rel next/prev is a “…strong hint for Google to identify the series of pages and still surface a component page in results.”

Note rel=alternate hreflang=x Google uses these new tools to consolidate signals and still

make decisions about surfacing URLs in search results at search time

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Recommendations

>When you have a great View All Add rel canonical targets to the View All on all component pages

in a series Ensure the View All contains all the data found on the component

pages Ensure the View All loads in at least 3 seconds

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Recommendations

>When View All isn’t an option Use the rel prev/next method to consolidate signals across the

series Advantage over Classic method which relied on noindex to keep

out of index but get equity through the crawl Use self-referencing rel canonical (Optional) Use noindex

The Freshest!

Thank you!

Adam Audette

@audette

aaudette@rimmkaufman.com