Pagination and SEO: Why Do You Need It and How to Avoid Common Mistakes

In this example, the web page dynamically populates with new content as I scroll, and implements lazy loading to render new images when they appear onscreen. No other online business can provide the exact same online experience as you, and a well-curated content will help your business stand out and convert visitors into leads and customers. Another leading contender in the Finch alternative for API integration is Merge.

If a user leaves and then returns to the page, they’ll find themselves back at the top. Consider placing infinite scroll on individual pages and testing engagement and performance. This way, you’ll determine whether it’s worth a full-scale transition for your site.

User Functions

The maximum limit can be 100, however, in case the limit is not defined, the default limit is 20. In case the total number of records do not fit into a single page, the next_url field will have a link to the next page with the remaining records. In case the next_url field displays null, then no records exist for subsequent pages. Developers can also use the starting_after or ending_before query parameter to specify pagination based on object ids. The ending_before query parameter is useful for backwards pagination. To kickstart the integration journey with Freshteam API, developers can go through this quick start guide.

The next or previous pages were visited only in 9.7% of sessions, which indicates that people used pagination without any jumps. Users executed at least one jump in the remaining 1.6% of sessions. We can end up with pages with little content if we break content categories as a single article spread across several pages. Pagination helps improve user experience by speeding up load times, as the page only needs to load a small section of content. Smaller content pieces are also more manageable and prevent users from getting overwhelmed. Further, people can quickly locate content and pick up from where they left off, as pages often have unique URLs that users can return to.

Why Use Pagination?

When sites with high site authority link to your site, it is an indicator that your site is also high authority. There is also a likelihood that the crawl budget will be spent on the pages that the pagination directs to, and other significant pages may never be crawled nor indexed. Since SlideShare is a big aggregated site, the best way to help users go through their site is to provide pagination alphabetically or if it contains numbers.

• The problem is that, according to Google developer Martin Splitt, Google’s website crawlers do not typically scroll down pages, and only read what appears to viewers on initial page load.
• There are paginated sites, which divide pieces of content by different pages, and infinite scrolling sites, which place everything on one page.
• By hiding much of your content on a page and loading it only when requested by scroll, infinite scroll might prevent proper indexing of your content by search engines.
• This is particularly true on mobile devices since the mobile browser doesn’t get a chance to “breathe” as the user quickly scrolls.
• Users executed at least one jump in the remaining 1.6% of sessions.

But it isn’t easy, especially when you are dealing with a large number of API integrations. Using ‘old’ pagination techniques is entirely unavoidable as the ‘old’ approaches are still important, especially when it comes to internal linking. Internal linking will make it easier for search engine bots to find paginated pages. Items on your paginated pages need to be ordered based on priority. Paginated pages containing the most relevant content are only a few links from the landing page. Websites may need to use multiple pages for easier navigation, better user experience, buyers journey, persona, etc.

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Since mobile screens are substantially smaller than desktop screens, they can only display a fraction of the content at a time. If you can guarantee the page has enough content to be user friendly, this should not be an issue. If a page lacks a substantial amount of content, Google may deem it unworthy of indexation and the content will live on practically unseen. Pagination may lead to a thin content issue with something like a multimedia slideshow, where each page houses only one image.

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Pagination can be an effective way to make large amounts of content more manageable and user-friendly. However, it should be used thoughtfully and sparingly; otherwise, it can become a hindrance rather than a help.

Ease of Implementation

The primary purpose of them is to group your content into pages on the backend so Google recognizes it as an indexable series. When it comes to providing a better user experience, sometimes scrolling is the better option, and there are a lot of JavaScript plugins and jQuery elements to make this possible. To get to the previous position, a lot of scrolling could be required.

If an error occurs during data retrieval, only the affected page needs to be reloaded or processed, rather than reloading the entire dataset. This helps isolate and address errors more effectively, ensuring smoother error recovery and system stability. Since pagination retrieves data in smaller subsets, it reduces the amount of memory, processing power, and bandwidth required on both the server and the client side. This efficient resource utilization can lead to cost savings and improved scalability. Retrieving and processing smaller chunks of data reduces the response time and improves the overall efficiency of API calls.

Pagination vs Infinite Scroll: Which Is Better for SEO?

E-commerce and news pages, for example, have no choice but to use pagination. We’re now able to address the found issues after gathering data on how our site actually handles pagination. It’s important to verify how pagination is actually implemented on our site what is pagination to ensure that it’s working properly. Tracks ad performance and user engagement, helping deliver ads that are most useful to you. UX designers must cater to end users and business stakeholders and, hence, must pay close attention to factors such as SEO.

Below you’ll see the call for the next page of results, and the response which doesn’t contain a next link. Note the limit parameter in this call is set to 5, so the response shows items 0 through 4. Let’s say your initial call is asking for all the pages in a Confluence instance; the result could be a massive response with hundreds of thousands of pages.

Disadvantages of Pagination

It tempts users to continue scrolling in search of rewarding information,  making them view all the content on the page. However, remember to only use the number of pages necessary to clearly organize your content, as too many pages can lead to SEO issues. For each website, search engines set a limit on how much content is scanned and indexed.