simona6

Do paginated pages need unique H1 tags?

by @simona6 (193), 1 year ago

I’ve been looking at this question for a while. And since it is SEO related, I thought I’d raise it here.

In SEO WordPress tools we can add “Page 2 of 15” in the Title tag and Meta Desc. But you cannot do the same within the H1 tag.

Most SEO ranking tools that scan your site, will raise any paginated page, like Blog, Product Category etc, as having a duplicate H1. Such as 15 pages of Mens Shirts, each H1 “Mens Shirts”, has the same, thus 14 duplicates.

Because the code has Prev and Next in it, and the URL shows the page/14, does it matter at all that they are duplicate?

I’ve seen a lot of high ranking sites that have a Blog, and you can go to page 5 or 50, and the H1 is still “Blog” or “News”.

Does it matter?

I have a developer who can make each page have its own, such as "Blog - Page 2...". But do I need to?

All the SEO checker tools, flag them as duplicates.

Belt and Braces: is it best to have Blog Page 2, Blog Page 3..... or Mens Shirts Page 2, Mens Shirts page 3... etc?

Or does it 100% not matter?

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binayjha
by @binayjha (4619), 1 year ago

It 100% doesn't matter. Search engines treat paginated pages differently. They append the page 2 content to page 1 and treat the whole as a single piece of content.

Normally, different URLs are treated as different piece of content. Which is in case of the tools as you mentioned above.

simona6
by @simona6 (193), 1 year ago

Is there an SEO scanner tool that takes the pagination code into account, as the one we know of, doesn't. so it reportings 100s of "Duplicate H1s" and we feel if they cannot make it work correctly, it's not good enough.

ms
by @ms (3850), 1 year ago

It doesn't matter. Effectively, it's the same page, just longer therefore divided into multiple pages. So it doesn't matter if you are on the page 1 or 5, the title of the paginated page still applies and makes perfect sense. If you want to add Page X of Y or something like that, I think it's all fine, just make sure you append it in the very end of the title so it doesn't affect tab recognition in browser.

Just a side note - if someone bookmarks page 5 because of a product they like and potentially might buy in the future, meanwhile you add more products that will take place before it, desired product could easily move to page 6+. Visiting bookmarked page 5 looking for the product could be little bit confusing then.

simona6
by @simona6 (193), 1 year ago

I get that - just considering when a page loads, and the user is told on what page they are, it might be better for them, thus better for SEO.

Just puzzles me a little bit, as to why these SEO tools flag them all up, when it is not a problem. Whether you run tools on Commerce Categories, or Blog pages etc, they all get flagged. And according to various forums, none of them should be flagged.

The response is: technically it is a duplicate H1. But when you report that back to a client, it doesn't look good.

I've checked loads of commerce websites, some well known, some not. None of them have Page X within the top. I've checked high ranking other sites that have blog. They don't do it either.

Just frustrating when these tools flag them - and shouldn't. And if it simply checked for next/prev code, they could resolve it.

ms
by @ms (3850), 1 year ago

If you're not using link tags with rel attributes it could be an issue, but I assume you have those in place (header) and correct.

Otherwise, can't see an issue really.

binayjha
by @binayjha (4619), 1 year ago

I am agree with @ms.

simona6
by @simona6 (193), 1 year ago

It's a proper WordPress theme. So it has all the tags. Just bizarre how no SEO Tools SEE that it is paginated, and all throw the duplicate error.

binayjha
by @binayjha (4619), 1 year ago

We ignore such warnings, @simona6.

simona6
by @simona6 (193), 1 year ago

Oh me too now. I've got them disabled. But why do they all do it, if they are suppose to know what is a paginated page. If your site is Commerce, or has a blog, chances are, more pages on your website are paginated, than non-pag pages..... And yet, it throws the warnings.

Annoying! In fact once I did that and we got better results, it then in fact warned us about issues on the login page, which isn't in the site map, or anywhere else!! Just super super fussy.

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