How to Properly Optimize Pagination for SEO
Optimizing pagination pages professionally is one of the most discussed topics on all SEO platforms. Correctly optimized pagination helps search engines to scan and index these pages and their content more quickly. Additionally, properly configured pagination contributes to improving the user-friendliness of the website, especially when it comes to an online shop with a large number of products in a category. Let’s take a closer look at the essence of this topic.
What is pagination, and why is it necessary?
Pagination is a collection of pages within a specific section of a category or subcategory, divided into separate parts through numbering.
This means that if your website has approximately 300 models of a particular product, visitors will see them on 10 pages, each with 30 products.
Pagination pages are created to avoid overloading the first page with a large number of products and to prevent displaying hundreds or thousands of products on the homepage. An overloaded page would take a long time to load, causing users to leave the website.
Types of Pagination
- Page Division – in this case, products are distributed across separate pages. Typically, at the bottom of the page, there is a navigation block – a paginator that contains links to page numbers, as well as ‘Next’ and ‘Back’ buttons. The implementation of this type of pagination looks as follows.
- ‘Load More’ Button – the user sees the first page of products, but to view more products, they need to click on the ‘More’ or ‘Load More’ button.
In this case, all products are loaded on a single page, which can negatively impact user navigation. Improper implementation can also affect page loading times.
- Infinite Scrolling – the list of products is automatically loaded as the user scrolls down the page.
With this approach, the page grows in volume as more products are loaded, potentially complicating navigation for the user, especially when trying to find a specific product on a page with hundreds of results.
Haben Sie Fragen?
At first glance, the first option, page division, seems the safest. However, social networks and the increasing popularity of mobile devices have encouraged users to develop the habit of ‘scrolling’ – flipping through Instagram or Facebook feeds in search of interesting content. Given this condition, many online shops use a combined pagination method. It combines page division and result loading with the ‘More’ button. This way, users can choose whether to navigate through pages of products or load all products on a single page to search for their desired item.
If you have questions or face difficulties in setting up pagination in your online shop, you can contact our agency. We specialize in online shop development, SEO for online shops, and the development of online shops on Shopware 5/6.
