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
How does Google now understand the relationship between paginated pages?
Through normal crawling of 'Next' and 'Previous' links and analyzing the URL structure. rel=prev/next are no longer needed.
Should I include paginated pages in the XML sitemap?
Usually no — just add the main category page and filter pages with unique content. Dozens of pagination pages rarely belong in a sitemap.
What about infinite scroll?
Implement the History API so that each new content batch changes the URL. Otherwise, bots will see only the initial page.