Pagination, updated 2019

Pagination is a web/SEO term used for a series of content that is divided into a list of several pages. For example, on e-commerce websites, category pages often implement pagination to divide a series of products into multiple pages.

On blogs, pagination is used when a list of articles spans multiple pages. Sometimes, long articles also use pagination to divide the article into a series of several pages.

This article is based on the one by Lyli Ray, SEO Director at Path Interactive in New York.

In 2011, Google deployed and imposed rel=prev and rel=next tags as a way to manage pagination for SEO. The pagination tags were intended to tell Google when URLs were part of a multi-page series, which allowed all indexing signals and links to be consolidated into a single page in the series.

These tags helped search engines organize paginated URLs and ensure that they were not treated as duplicates or lightweight content. It also helped consolidate all the value of the backlinks to the paginated URLs into a single unit, so the paginated series benefited as a whole from all the backlinks it received.

On March 21, 2019, Google reported that the pagination tags (rel=prev and rel=next) had been deprecated entirely. The announcement was made on Twitter and took many SEO specialists by surprise, given that the implementation of pagination tags was a well-known best practice in SEO, and that several thousand hours and development resources had been invested in implementing these tags as a fundamental technical SEO strategy.

This has left many SEOs, UX professionals, and web developers wondering what to do… At SMX Advanced in Seattle, I went through the different implementation options for pagination and the best practices and pros and cons involved in each method. Here are the 3 implementation options that have all been confirmed by Google’s John Mueller as the current best practices for managing pagination for SEO :

Paging Method 1:

Continue to use multi-page pagination with self-referencing canonical tags for each page in the series. Keep rel=prev and rel=next if you’re already using it.

With this method, each URL in the paginated series is treated the same as any indexable page on your site: add a self-referencing canonical tag, and include anchor links (<a href>) to each page in the series as an internal link on the page.

For bonus points, add internal links to deeper pages in the series. For example, instead of only including the “Previous” and “Next” links, consider adding links to “1, 2, 3, 4… 10” because it will reduce the search depth of your paginated URLs and the links they contain.

When using this implementation, it is important not to “noindex” or block paginated URLs using robots.txt. Similarly, avoid adding rel=canonical tags on deeper paginated URLs on the first page of the series. Search engines need to be able to access each paginated URL to be able to browse the links in it. Preventing search engines from accessing URLs with any of the above methods will prevent them from crawling your old products, articles, or other content contained in the paginated list, which can significantly cut the PageRank of these pages and therefore affect their ranking.

If you have already implemented the rel=prev and rel=next tags, you do not need to remove them. Bing and other search engines still use tags, and they are used for web accessibility plus W3C compliance.

Paging Method 2:

Use a “See all” page and channel any paginated or parameter URLs to the “See all” page.

With this implementation, a page should contain all the components of the paginated list, i.e. all the links to the products or articles. Use this page as the canonical “See All” page, which will serve as the single indexable page for the entire paginated series. Any parameters added to this URL or any paginated URL derived from it must be canonicalized on the “View All” page.

The downside of this method is its potential impact on page performance. Listing dozens or dozens of products or articles on a single page, especially if they contain thumbnails of images, can slow down the page load. Consider implementing lazy loading, hyperlinks, or AJAX-enabled faceted navigation to help improve performance and make it easier for users to navigate your content.

Paging Method 3:

Use a “View More” button or infinite scrolling in combination with the History API and anchor links to paginated URLs.

If you’re using a “View More” button or infinite scrolling, be sure to include links to actual paged URLs and don’t rely on JavaScript events to load paged components. Links to these paginated URLs must be written using a link <to href> anchor. Consider combining your infinite scrolling experience with paginated URLs and on-page anchor links to gain UX and SEO benefits simultaneously. Here’s a Codex example of what this implementation looks like in practice. The History API is often used to dynamically change URLs as the user scrolls through URLs, but make sure that this method is used in conjunction with href> links <to paged URLs so that search engines can access paged URLs.

Restricting access to paginated URLs can significantly reduce crawling of their page components. Conversely, fixing pagination can create huge benefits such as a higher crawl rate, reduced crawl depth, and higher PageRank (SEO value) flowing into your paginated URLs and the content they contain.