What is Pagination in SEO

What is pagination in SEO? It is using multiple different pages to show the results of a list. You usually see it on eCommerce pages and news sites. Whether it’s pagination for a top ten list, a set of photos, or different products offered by a store, SEO treats them all the same.

When you use it properly, pagination can be extremely helpful for SEO. When used poorly, it can be an SEO nightmare.

Problems with Pagination for SEO

There are many times where pagination is necessary, like in eCommerce or to enhance the user experience. However, you need to know the problems of pagination for SEO to avoid the pitfalls of the style. Below are the problems you can run into when pagination is used poorly.

Crawlers May Not See It All

Googlebot and other search engine crawlers will only click so far off the main page. This limitation means that the more pagination you have, the greater the chance that search engines will miss pages and not index them properly.

Duplication

Pagination can lead to a ton of duplication even if you have individual products or a better user experience. You will likely repeat some of the information on each page. Pagination of similar products can also lead to duplicate meta descriptions. Duplication can confuse search engine bots and lead to fewer hits on each page.

Thin Content

When you use pagination, there is a chance that you will limit the amount of new and useful content on each of the pages. You may have a low content to ad ratio when you do that, which will hurt your search engine optimization.

How to Maximize SEO When You Use Pagination

When you have to use pagination, there are things to do to make sure you are still getting the best SEO. These actions will increase each page’s chances of being seen in a search, which will help you get more hits.

Create More Categories

The more categories you have for every topic, the less bulk pagination you will have. Narrow the topic down to a more manageable size. On top of helping with SEO, more categories can help customers find what they want easier.

Link All Pages to the Main Category

Once you have made more categories, it is easier to link the new smaller list of items to that category’s main page. By connecting everything to the main page, you make it a lot easier for the search engine to find and index the whole site. Better indexing avoids items getting missed.

Add a ‘View All’ Page

Even though this might lead to an infinite scroll style page, offering an option to post all your items on one page can help you with SEO. You can add the option fairly easily, and it won’t harm visitors who would rather have the user experience of pagination.

Conclusion

Pagination can be a really useful tool when used properly. If misused, it can lead to problems with your SEO. When you take the right steps with the tips above, you can maximize your SEO with pagination and help your business flourish.

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