Pagination problem

[MarkizSEO]

I have a category page "Funny stories" with 10 stories per page and every month posting a new story. Category for now have 6 paginated pages, all set up correctly by Google guidelines - "next" and "prev" tags, self-canonical, /page/1 redirected to root, root don't have rel="prev", last page don't have rel="next" ect...

Problem - for most important keyword ranked page (position 12) is the second page - page/2 while root category page has a much worse position.
Root page is indexed and shows up for some other similar queries but not so often.

Everything I found on the internet about the problem is this one sentence in blog post with tips about pagination - "Only in rare circumstances would Google choose to return a paginated page in the SERPs."

Do anyone know what can be this "rare circumstances"? Any similar experiences?

[NickMNS]

Pagination is a signal that tells Google to consider all the pages in a set as a single page. The result should typically be that the first page is returned of the set but this is not always the case as the exact page returned depends on many factors of varying weights.

[JesterMagic]

Pagination is a signal that tells Google to consider all the pages in a set as a single page

Maybe with a multi page article but in the cast of categories (with pages of list of articles) or a forum topic it indicates the content is conected

[tangor]

@MarkizSEO

Welcome to Webmasterworld! (others will post a link to TOS and other Forum stuff) ...

Most times g is inconsistent in this regard. I don't have any recommendations ... Then again, I don't don't code this way.

[not2easy]

You do not mention what the site structure (or CMS platform) for the pages in question is, but because you mention a "Category page" it sounds as if it might be a WordPress site. Because WP offers many ways to sort and list content, you want to have the individual posts or pages indexed at their permalink rather than their Category URL - but that can depend on how the permalinks are structured. If the content can be found multiple ways at different URLs, then any canonicals should point to the individual permalink, not to a particular set of similar topics.

There is an older discussion on the topic of pagination and canonicals with links to Google's recommendations that might be helpful, no matter what type of URLs: [webmasterworld.com...]

[MarkizSEO]

Thanks a lot for comments and your time, more info here:

Its Wordpress and I don't have problem with multiple URLs pointing to the same content (different posts are one every paginated page) or with canonicals. Every page have only self-canonical + "next" "prev".

Here is structure:

www.domain,com/blog/funny-stories
www.domain,com/blog/funny-stories/page/2/
www.domain,com/blog/funny-stories/page/3/
www.domain,com/blog/funny-stories/page/4/
....

Posts are sorted by publish date and most recent are on the first page. It's frustrating when SERP shows page 2 with older posts. How this can be relevant or more relevant than recent posts on page 1?

Additionally, I get hit by March google update and this category page have big drop in traffic - from 300K organic monthly to 10K in October (I almost shoot myself between eyes btw). In the same time, page 2 starts with organic traffic.

I have 2 ideas for now one:

- URLs are static like "/page/2/" and not with parameters"?page=2". Static pages automatically get more authority than pages with parameters, regardless "next" and "prev" tags (honestly, don't believe for real but now I'm desperate)

- I have one story with lot of traffic (10K organic monthly) and because posting new stories, link to this story get on page 2. Maybe is this enough for Google and it's now more relevant because of the link to this great story :)

Timeline is messed up and page 2 popped up in SERP before this story gets on it but there was many Google updates in meantime so...

Page 1 have 300+ backlinks (DR 90, 78, 75, 70, 65 ... and less) and page 2 have round 0 :)

[martinibuster]

Additionally, I get hit by March google update...

Did you also get hit by the Yoast 7.0 attachment setting bug?
One way to check is to see if your sitemap has a site map for your attachments. If your sitemap is showing links to attachments (images) that are showing as individual (thin) pages then that's something you need to fix.

Sometimes there are no sitemaps. So another way to diagnose is to do a site: search of your site and see if any attachments are showing up as individual thin pages.

ABOUT CATEGORY PAGES
On your category pages, do you have a noindex, follow meta tag on the first page of your categories?

Good luck,
;)

Roger Montti

[MarkizSEO]

Tnx Roger,

I fix Yoast bug couple days after update so that's not problem. To be sure, I check everything by your suggestions and also Cover report (all "Valid" and "Excluded" pages) in new Search Console.
There's no nofollow or noindex on category pages or links to categories from main menu

I just compare whole HTMLs, page1 vs page2, looking for any differences like strange tags, scripts or anything on one of them - Except standard stuff like links and content, everything else is identical.

I love Google :)


(sarcasm, I'm not a masochist)

[pavanear]

hello guys,
I am also facing the same problem now I fix the issue thanks for sharing the knowledge

[martinibuster]

Hmm... Maybe there are external links pointing to the second page?

[EditorialGuy]

Pagination is a signal that tells Google to consider all the pages in a set as a single page. The result should typically be that the first page is returned of the set but this is not always the case as the exact page returned depends on many factors of varying weights.

We have a number of older multi-page evergreen articles that I linked together with "prev" and "next" several years ago. Google still returns results for the individual pages, and some of those "inside" pages rank extremely high (number 1 or 2) for their subtopics.

So, in my experience, pagination can be a win-win if the secondary/inside pages have a logical reason for existing as independent pages.

[MarkizSEO]

Hmm... Maybe there are external links pointing to the second page?

No Roger, zero external links (checked with Ahrefs and in Search Console)

Plan:

I will create 8 subcategories and sort all stories by topics. Root page will get only links to subcategories, copy and "Last 5 stories" list. ist.
Every paginated page will be redirected to root.

Root page will be stronger because of authority from page 2 (and others) and website will rank better for more specific keywords - subcategories relevant.

Does that make sense?