How to Fix Pagination Issues

What are Paginated URLs?

Paginated URLs are individual links created for subsets of content within a series, commonly seen in blogs, product listings, or search results. Each paginated URL typically contains a query string or a numerical variable that indicates its position within the sequence. This structure allows users to navigate through large amounts of content by breaking it into manageable sections.

This can be handled within URLs in a couple different ways:

https://example.com/blog/?page=2

https://example.com/blog/page/2/

Neither of these implementation methods are inherently “right” or “wrong”. Both can be optimized and handled properly.

Paginated URLs facilitate easier navigation, allowing users to find the content they want quickly. When configured correctly, these links help search engines crawl and index your web pages more efficiently as well.

However, poor management of pagination can lead to issues such as content duplication, broken links, and misindexed pages. Ensuring proper use of paginated URLs plays a vital role in maintaining website performance and protecting your SEO rankings.

Why is Pagination Important for SEO?

Pagination is critical in SEO because there are many ways to easily handle paginated content incorrectly, risking harm to your site’s performance through inefficient crawling and indexation, diluted link value flow, and poor user experience and behavior signals.

Optimizing pagination is essential for several reasons:

• Enhances User Experience: Well-structured pagination enables users to find content efficiently, keeping them engaged and reducing frustration.
• Improves Crawl Efficiency: Search engines can navigate paginated content more effectively, ensuring all pages get indexed properly and boosting visibility in search results.
• Prevents Duplicate Content: Proper pagination mitigates the risk of displaying similar content across multiple URLs, which can negatively impact rankings.
• Increases Time on Site: Smooth navigation encourages longer visits, positively affecting your SEO metrics.

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Common Pagination Issues & Resolutions

Pagination issues often cause frustration for website owners, as they can be challenging to correct depending on your CMS and various points of configuration through defaults and plugins.

A common issue specific to URL segment-based pagination URLs is that the /page/ segment (or equivalent) is often a phantom directory, returning a 404 and creating a disjointed URL structure. This is a typical problem for WordPress sites, especially with default permalink settings configured.

Here’s an overview of more general pagination problems along with effective solutions:

Broken Links

Broken links leading to non-existent or incorrect pages hinder navigation and frustrate users.

Solution: Regularly check and update links using tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console to ensure they direct users to valid pages.

Canonicalized Paginated URLs

Paginated URLs should ideally be canonicalized to the clean, parameter-free URL (page 1). This is typically a category, tag, or other feed page. Sometimes, by default, these pages have self-referencing canonical links, which can lead to inefficient crawling and wasted crawl budget.

Solution: Ensure the correct canonical settings are in place for your paginated page templates.

Preventing Paginated URLs From Being “Followed”

Ideally, you will want search engines to follow but not index deeper paginated URLs. Allowing search engines to follow links on paginated URLs is essential for them to discover deeper content for efficient indexing and rank management.

Solution: Ensure that paginated pages do not contain “Nofollow” meta robots tags.

Blocking Paginated URLs via Robots.txt

For the same reasons that we want search engines to be able to follow paginated URL links, you will want them to be accessible to crawlers. Often paginated URL patterns are blocked within the robots.txt file, which prevents search engine bots from discovering the linked content.

Solution: Review your site’s robots.txt file to ensure paginated URLs are accessible.

Duplicate Content

Similar content may appear across multiple URLs due to improper pagination setup. This can often occur due to the sorting method within a feed.

Solution: Use canonical tags to signal the preferred version of a page to search engines, reducing the risk of duplicate indexing while maintaining a clear content structure.

Incorrect Page Numbers

Incorrect numbering can confuse users and search engines alike.

Solution: Maintain a clear structure in your pagination by ensuring correct sequencing throughout all pages. Regularly audit your pagination setup to catch any discrepancies.

Missing Pagination Tags

Failure to utilize pagination tags can mislead search engines about the relationships between paginated pages. While these tags aren’t required or utilized by all search engines, it is still best practice to have them in place to be as transparent and intentional as possible with your content structure and accessibility.

Solution: Implement HTML link rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags in the <head> section of your HTML for clearer indexing pathways. This helps search engines understand the flow of paginated content.

JavaScript & AJAX Loading

Some websites use “infinite scroll” or an AJAX “Load More” approach instead of traditional page-by-page URLs. While these techniques can improve user experience, they can also create visibility issues if the content is loaded exclusively via JavaScript and is not present in the initial HTML. Search engines may struggle to discover or fully index the deeper portions of your content, especially if there are no fallback links.

Solution: Ensure that search engines can access all of your content. Provide a clear, crawlable structure—even if you rely on JavaScript—to guarantee every important piece of content is available in a format search engines can read. This can include:

• Adding a paginated link structure as a fallback to infinite scroll.
• Using server-side rendering or dynamic rendering solutions to display the full content for crawlers.
• Verifying that JavaScript-based pagination does not hide essential content from users or search engines.

Properly implemented infinite scroll or load-more functionality can offer a smooth user experience, but always confirm through testing and auditing that all key content is actually reachable by both visitors and bots.

How to Monitor Pagination for Website Health

To maintain website health, regularly check pagination efficiency:

1. Use Google Search Console: Monitor indexing status and identify errors related to paginated URLs.
2. Track User Behavior: Analyze analytics data to identify navigation issues or high bounce rates on paginated pages.
3. Conduct Regular Audits: Periodically review your website’s pagination rules and behavior using audit tools to ensure all paginated pages function correctly.
4. Utilize Web Crawlers: Use web crawlers to detect any issues with pagination setup and ensure that all links are working as intended.

Our Website Health Scan is a great way to get a sense of the paginated URLs on your site and how they’re handled.

By ensuring that your paginated URLs are organized and clearly linked, you help both visitors and search engines find everything they need efficiently. Properly implemented pagination not only enhances user satisfaction but also supports better indexing by search engines, ultimately improving your site’s overall performance in search results.