Pagination
Splitting content across multiple pages (product categories, blogs).
In brief
Pagination is the splitting of long lists (products, articles, comments) into sequential pages with navigation elements (1, 2, 3 …). Properly configured pagination improves UX and helps search engines index all content without losing link equity.
SEO for pagination
Previously, pagination used rel=«prev»/«next». Google stopped supporting these attributes in 2019. Now the search engine treats each paginated page as an independent URL.
Best practices (post‑2019)
- Each paginated page must have a unique URL (e.g., /category/page/2/).
- Use self‑referencing canonical: page 2 points to itself (not to page 1).
- Unique Title and H1: 'Buy Laptops – Page 2'.
- Do not block paginated pages with noindex — otherwise bots won’t find old products on deep pages.
What to avoid
- Using rel=«prev»/«next» — Google ignores them.
- Canonicalising to the first page — this leads to deep pages being dropped from the index.
- Continuous numbering without navigation shortcuts (recommended: '1 2 3 … 10').
For very deep pages (e.g., page 10+ out of 50), you may consider noindex if they get no traffic and are highly similar to previous pages. But first evaluate search demand.
FAQ
Common questions
Through normal crawling of 'Next' and 'Previous' links and analysing the URL structure. rel=prev/next are no longer needed.
Usually no — just add the main category page and filter pages with unique content. Dozens of pagination pages rarely belong in a sitemap.
Implement the History API so that each new content batch changes the URL. Otherwise, bots will see only the initial page.
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