Pagination tags

[Andiamo]

I'm working on a website with paginated content. There's a "clean" first page - /product-category.asp - and then each page indicates its location - /product-category-page-1.asp. Since there's no "View All" page, and since the first page technically has two URLs (/product-category and /product-category-page-1), should I implement the canonical link element on the clean URL and just leave it at that?

[aakk9999]

What I would do is noindex pagination page 2 onwards instead (be careful not to noidnex the first page!).

And do not use canonical link element - it is not designed for this situation and if you use it, this would result on your products/categories on page 2 and subsequent pages potentially not be indexed (unless there is an alternative link to these pages). Canonical link element should be used to stop content duplication, and the page 2 and subsequent pagination pages are not "duplicates" of the first page as they have different set of product.

[Andiamo]

Then I'm not sure I understand. If you're no indexing page 2 onward anyway, why would you care if those pages aren't indexed due to usage of the canonical link element?

[aakk9999]

Because canonical link element and "noindex" are not the same.

- Google will still follow outbound links on page that is noindexed.

- If you use canonical on pages 2+ then Google will not follow outbound links from these pages as they have canonical set to another page. Canonical link element sends the following message to Google is: ignore this page, the real one is this other one specified in canonical link element.

[Andiamo]

Got it - thanks for clarifying!

[robzilla]

should I implement the canonical link element on the clean URL and just leave it at that?

Ideally, you would script your pagination so that all links to page 1 point to /product-category rather than /product-category-page-1, and avoid the whole SEO problem.

I wouldn't noindex paginated pages, by the way. Use link rel="next" and rel="prev" to let Google know how to read those pages, and/or set up parameters via Google Webmaster Tools. Paginated pages (usually) contain valuable links and/or content that I would generally want indexed.

[aakk9999]

Use link rel="next" and rel="prev" to let Google know how to read those pages

Good point, robzilla, and this is also Google recommended way of handling pagination:

Pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk]

Now, if you choose to include rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup on the component pages within a series, you’re giving Google a strong hint that you’d like us to:

- Consolidate indexing properties, such as links, from the component pages/URLs to the series as a whole (i.e., links should not remain dispersed between page-1.html, page-2.html, etc., but be grouped with the sequence).
- Send users to the most relevant page/URL—typically the first page of the series.

So the rel="next" and rel="previous" is the ideal solution. There is no harm of using noindex for paginated pages though as it does allow juice to flow and links on paginated pages are followed (the solution often used before Google introduced rel="next" and rel="previous"). On the other hand using canonical link element is definitely not recommended for the reasons mentioned previously.

[phranque]

There is no harm of using noindex for paginated pages though as it does allow juice to flow and links on paginated pages are followed (the solution often used before Google introduced rel="next" and rel="previous").

the next and prev link types were part of the HTML 4.0 specification which preceded google:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/types.html#h-6.12

the next and prev link types also preceded the noindex attribute and meta element.

[aakk9999]

Thanks phranque :) Let me reword my sentence to say what I meant, as it was misleading:

There is no harm of using noindex for paginated pages though as it does allow juice to flow and links on paginated pages are followed (the solution often used before Google decided to use rel="next" and rel="previous" to consolidate indexing properties of paginated pages).

[phranque]

just to be clear:

...Consolidate indexing properties, such as links, from the component pages/URLs to the series as a whole...

and

rel="next" and rel="previous" on the one hand and rel="canonical" on the other constitute independent concepts.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

[Robert Charlton]

Here's a slightly more general Google support page on the same topics, with a video by Maile Ohye.

Pagination - Google Support
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744 [support.google.com]

I think it's helpful on a product site to sort the pages of your product categories by order of popularity, so that your most popular products appear on the first paginated page. Note Google's treatment of a sequence of pages, with my emphasis added to this excerpt from the article...

Use rel="next" and rel="prev" links to indicate the relationship between component URLs. This markup provides a strong hint to Google that you would like us to treat these pages as a logical sequence, thus consolidating their linking properties and usually sending searchers to the first page.

I also feel that if a category runs to too many pages, you should examine the possibility of breaking it into smaller categories if it makes sense to do so.