Catalog pagination: how to avoid losing indexing
LightSEO · Technical
Catalog pagination: how to avoid losing indexing
Products from the second and later pages of a category often never get indexed at all. The search crawler doesn't reach them, let alone a shopper coming from search.
The problem
What breaks with pagination
Identical meta tags on every page. Pages 2, 3 and 10 have the same Title and Description as the first one – to search engines, these are duplicates.
The category text repeats. An SEO text duplicated on every pagination page lowers the value of all of them.
Products on deep pages don't get indexed. The crawler never reaches page ten, and half the catalog stays invisible.
Setup
How to do it right
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Unique meta tags
Each page's Title gets its number: "– page 2". That way the pages stop being duplicates.
📝
Text on the first page only
The category description block is shown on the first page only.
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Links to every page
The pagination block should link to specific page numbers as well as "next" – this way the crawler goes deeper.
Options
Dynamic loading instead of pages
A "show more" button is convenient for shoppers. But if products are loaded only by a script, search engines can't see them.
The solution is a combination. Visually, products load dynamically, while the code keeps regular links to the pagination pages.
Infinite scroll is the worst option for SEO. Without fallback links, part of the catalog simply drops out of the index.
Part of your catalog missing from search?
We'll check indexing, set up pagination and show you how many pages Google actually sees.
