The State of the Web: Pagination and Infinite Scroll

SLIDESHARE.NET/DEEPCRAWL
STATE OF THE WEB:
PAGINATION AND INFINITE SCROLL
ADAM GENT // DeepCrawl //
@Adoubleagent

@Adoublegent brightonSEO
Web development
practices which divides
content across multiple
pages (components).
Navigate using links.
Pagination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagination

Web development
practices which divides
content across multiple
pages (components).
Navigate by scrolling.
Infinite Scroll
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/infinite-scrolling/

How search-friendly is pagination
and infinite scroll on the web?

SEO friendly Excluded150 websites

That’s a nice SEO test.. …it would be a shame…
..if someone… ...messed it up.

“It's been the case for quite
some time now that we
don't use the rel=next and
rel=previous.”
John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google

SEO
community.

THAT’S SO UNFAIR!

SEO info all
out of date!

How to optimize and manage
pagination (post rel=next and rel=prev)?

How do Google’s systems
handle pagination?

https://www.example.com/category
<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/category?page=2" />
https://www.example.com/page?=2
<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/category?page=3" />
<link rel=“prev" href="http://www.example.com/category" />
https://www.example.com/page?=3
<link rel=“prev" href="http://www.example.com/category?page=2" />
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
Previously

Consolidate divided pages into one
piece of content in Google’s index.
1 2 3 4
(Past).

Help Google choose the most relevant
page for queries (usually first page).
1 2 3 4

“We don’t treat pagination
differently. We treat them
as normal pages.”
John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google,
https://www.deepcrawl.com/blog/news/google-
webmaster-hangout-notes-march-22nd-2019/#link8

New: Paginated pages are indexed separately.
1 2 3 4

Why does it matter how
Google treats pagination?

Pagination provides access points

Result of SEO basics when ignored
on pagination redesign.

We need to go back
to SEO basics.

Search-friendly criteria:
1. Paginated pages use unique URLs
2. Pagination includes crawlable internal links
3. Paginated pages are indexable
4. Paginated pages have unique content
5. Paginated pages have rel=next and rel=prev

SEO friendly Excluded150 websites
UPDATED criteria

I can’t cover everything I found…

…of pagination tested did not meet
basic search-friendly criteria.

Pagination Lazy load Infinite Scroll

…of sites with infinite scroll and lazy load
did not meet basic search-friendly criteria.

CrawlabilityInternal Links Indexability

Link Architecture

Understand the importance of pagination
in the internal link structure.

@Adoublegent brightonSEO@Adoublegent brightonSEO
Link architecture and click depth
https://moz.com/blog/site-architecture-for-seo

“Clicks from the home page
helps Google understand
which pages are important.”
John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-click-depth-matters-
seo-url-structure/256779/

PageRank dampening factor
Less and less PageRank is
passed to each level as it
has to pass through more
nodes (pages).
PageRank is passed from
category to paginated pages but
decays due to dampening factor.
10
8.5
1.8
1.8
0.38
0.38
https://blog.majestic.com/company/understanding-googles-algorithm-how-pagerank-works/

Pagination adds click depth

…for websites using pagination, infinite scroll
and lazy load web-designs in crawl data.
Avg. Click Depth: 18

How Site Pagination and Click Depth Affect SEO

Stepping by two pages, Previous and Next

Step by one plus, first and last, next/prev links

Review your internal link schemes on
pagination, infinite scroll and lazy load to
reduce click depth.

Reduce click depth with internal linking

An SEO’s guide to site architecture

Indexability

Important paginated pages which provide
access points to deeper level pages should
be indexable.

Excluded
URLs
IndexIndexingParser
Content
extraction
Canonicalization,
soft 404 errors,
noindex, etc.
Google-selected
canonical URLs are
indexed
Duplicate content, noindex, 4xx
errors, redirects, URL not selected
as canonical, etc.

Long term excluded pages internal links
are not followed and dropped from index.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-long-term-noindex-
follow-24990.html

Excluding paginated
pages from the index
will remove internal
linking and can create
orphaned pages.

Avoid using rel=canonical and noindex on
important paginated pages.

Pagination URLs included
Total URLs 62,072
Pagination URLs excluded
Total URLs 26,125
Identify pagination dependencies

Crawlability

Make sure paginated pages have unique
URLs and can be discovered by crawlable
links.

“Without your pages’ URLs,
our systems cannot crawl,
index, and ultimately
present your information in
Search.”
Google Developer Search documentation
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-
indexing

…of pagination mapped unique URLs to
paginated pages when tested.

Used fragment identifiers (#) in pagination.
Search engines can’t
crawl content after the #.

“Google can follow links
only if they are an <a> tag
with an href attribute.”
Google Search Console Help document
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9112205

…of pagination did not use crawlable links to
paginated pages when tested.

Designs did not use anchor links with href

Anchor links used event scripts in href.

Understand the basics
of how search works.

Think about internal
linking and pagination.

Test. Test. Test again.

A technical SEOs guide to pagination
(post rel=next and rel=prev)
<link rel=“next” href=“ https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/technical-seo-
library/pagination-seo-guide/”>

The state of the web:
Pagination and infinite scroll on the web
<link rel=“next” href=“Published Soon”>

May the test be with you!
Any questions? Send me a Tweet.
@Adoublegent

The State of the Web: Pagination and Infinite Scroll

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