pagination and seo - making it easy
DESCRIPTION
A look at pagination problems and solutions. I did this presentation at SES Chicago 2011.TRANSCRIPT
Pagination
@stonetemple
Who Am I?
Co-author of The Art of SEOPresident of Stone Temple Consulting
25+ person SEO and PPC firmTrainer for Instant E-TrainingFounder of Web Site Publishing Companies
Publish web sites, grow them, then sell them2 significant exits so far
On Twitter: @stonetemple
E-Commerce Catalog
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Accessing the Products
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Article Pagination
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Into Multiple Pages
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A Lot of People Do Not Like It
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But Sometimes Articles Are Really Long
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Faceted Navigation Example
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Overview of the Costs
• Wasted crawl budget• Wasted link juice• Example:
– 1000 product category pages– Average of 5 paginated pages per product
category
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Chances are …
that these pages will never rank:
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Calculating Pagination Costs
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Wasted Crawl
Budget
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Wasted Link Juice
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Faceted Navigation Costs
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Wasted Crawl
Budget
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Waste of Link Juice
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Why is the Link Juice Wasted?
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Paginated pages often seen as poor quality
No Unique Value Add to this Page
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Deep Site Architectures Problematic
1
2
3
4Is something 4 clicks from the home page important?
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Flat Site Architectures Better …
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2
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Enter: The Bear
Google ReleasedPanda onFebruary 23, 2011
User EngagementIs a Ranking Factor
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Search Results Interaction
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Intitle:“Women’s shoes"42,000,000 Results!
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Traditional Solutions
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Reduce level of pagination
Put more content on each pagee.g. 50 products per page instead of 20
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Less Waste
of Crawl
Budget
Down from 1250
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Less Waste of Link Juice
Down from 20%
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NoIndex
1 2 3 4 5
NoIndex
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NoIndex Code Sample
<head>other head section stuff here ...
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" /></head>
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Summary of NoIndex
• Does eliminate “poor quality” pages problem• Does NOT save crawl budget• Does NOT save link juice• Products/Content on pages 2 to 5 are not in
index– Can’t help bring you search traffic
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Rel=Canonical
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5
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Rel=Canonical Code Sample
<head>other head section stuff here ...
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.yourdom.com/shoes/womens/view-all"/>
</head>
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Summary of rel=canonical
• Does not save crawl budget• Most likely conserves link juice• Not accurate, making search engine behavior
unpredictable• Products in pages 2 to 5 are not in index• Suggestion, not a directive
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View All PagesRed
Green
Blue
Yellow
All Colors:Red,Green,Blue,Yellow
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Looks Something Like This to Users
View All
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View All With Rel=canonical
Red
Green
Blue
Yellow
All Colors:Red,Green,Blue,Yellow
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rel=canonical with View-All Page
• Does not save crawl budget• Most likely conserves link juice• Accurate!• All products in the index• Suggestion, not a directive• View-All page may be slow to load• May offer a poor user experience
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Enter Rel=Next, Rel=Prev
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Rel=Next, Prev for an Article
Rel=next Rel=next
Rel=prev Rel=prev
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Rel=Next, Rel=Prev for Products
Rel=next
Rel=prev
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Rel=Next, Rel=Prev Code Sample
<head>other head section stuff here ...
<link rel="next" href="http://www.yoursite.com/products?prod=qwert&p=3"/>
<link rel="prev" href="http://www.yoursite.com/products?prod=qwert&p=1"/>
</head>
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Summary of rel=next, rel=prev
• Does not save crawl budget• Most likely conserves link juice• Accurate• Products in pages 2 to 5 are in index• Suggestion, not a directive
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Thank You!
Eric [email protected]@stonetemple(508) 485-7751www.stonetemple.com For a One Sheet SEO Checklist, email me, or
drop off a business card
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