The Internet Marketing Driver

  • GSQi Home
  • About Glenn Gabe
  • SEO Services
    • Algorithm Update Recovery
    • Technical SEO Audits
    • Website Redesigns and Site Migrations
    • SEO Training
  • Blog
    • Web Stories
  • Contact GSQi

Archives for October 2021

How to identify ranking gaps in Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) SERP feature using Semrush

October 19, 2021 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

When performing a competitive analysis, it’s smart to run a keyword gap analysis to determine the queries that competitors rank for that your site doesn’t rank for. It can often yield low-hanging fruit that your content team can execute on. As part of that process, it’s also smart to analyze Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) SERP feature for queries your site already ranks for, or doesn’t rank for (to determine what those additional queries are and which sites are ranking for them). I find this step is skipped often for some reason and it can also yield powerful findings that you can start to execute on quickly.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the process of identifying ranking gaps in People Also Ask (PAA) using Semrush, which provides outstanding functionality for mining PAA data.

What we’re going to accomplish:
For this tutorial, I’m going to filter queries leading to a site by top ten rankings and then layer a secondary filter for surfacing queries where a People Also Ask module also ranks (but the site doesn’t rank in the default PAA listings). In other words, you rank in the top ten, but you don’t have content ranking in PAA for those queries for some reason. I’ve found that can yield very interesting findings that sites can execute on pretty quickly.

For example, in the screenshot below, a site ranks in the top ten for 3,359 queries when it also does not rank in the default People Also Ask (PAA) module:

Viewing Google ranking gaps in people also ask via semrush.

Step-by-step instructions for identifying PAA gaps via Semrush:

1. First, fire up Semrush and enter the domain name you want to analyze.

Enter domain name in semrush.

2. Access the Organic Research reporting.
Click Organic Research in the left-side navigation, which will bring us to a powerful set of features for analyzing the search performance of the domain, subdomain, directory, or url you enter.

Viewing Organic Research reporting in Semrush.

3. View all rankings for the domain via the Positions tab.
Click the Positions tab, which will yield all queries that a site ranks for in the top 100 listings (based on Semrush data).

Viewing the positions tab in Organic Research in Semrush.

4. Filter by top ten results:
Next, we are going to filter the results by queries where the site ranks in the top ten (so these are queries where the site ranks very well already, but might not have content that ranks in People Also Ask). I’ll cover the second part of this step next, but start by filtering by queries ranking in the top ten by clicking the Positions tab and then selecting Top 10.

Filter by top ten rankings in Semrush.

5. Layer a secondary filter for PAA:
To complete this step, we want queries ranking in the top ten, but where the site doesn’t rank in People Also Ask (PAA), which can provide a great opportunity to fill gaps content-wise. To view these queries, click “SERP features”, then “Domain doesn’t rank in” and then select “People Also Ask”.

Add a filter for when a site doesn't rank in people also ask via Semrush.

6. Analyze the data:
Now that you have two filters selected, you will be presented with all of the queries where the site ranks in the top ten but doesn’t rank in the default PAA module. When you scan the list, definitely spot-check the live search results to see which questions are listed in People Also Ask, which sites are ranking there, the content ranking for those queries, etc. Again, you can identify content gaps, format gaps (like video), and more. It’s a quick way to help your content team identify opportunities (and some gaps you find might lead you to face-palm). :)

Final report showing ranking gaps in People Also Ask via Semrush.

7. Export the data:
You can always export the results if you want to use that data in other programs like Excel. You can export the data in Excel or CSV format.

Export ranking data in Semrush.

And there you have it. A quick and easy way to identify ranking gaps in PAA via Semrush. It only takes a few minutes to run, and you’ll have a boatload of PAA data to go through (where your site ranks, but not in PAA). By the way, if you’re looking for other posts I’ve written about Semrush tools, then check out The Link Authority Gap which shows you how to compare the most authoritative links between websites.

PAA Gaps – Final tips and recommendations:
Before I end the tutorial, here are some final notes and recommendations based on helping clients go through this process over time. Semrush is like a Swiss Army Knife for SEO research, so make sure you are getting the most of out the tool.

  • Live graphs – Remember that the graphs in Semrush are live graphs, so they change based on the filters you select. Therefore, you can see trending over time for ranking (or not ranking) in PAA when you already rank well in the organic search results. It’s a cool way to visually see your progress.
  • Advanced filtering – Use advanced filtering in Semrush to fine-tune your analysis. For example, combine filters like search volume, keywords, directory, subdomain, urls, etc. You can filter the data multiple ways in Semrush (and combine those filters for advanced reporting). Play around there… you might find some great combinations that surface important data.
  • PAA by country – Run this analysis by country! Just change the country you are analyzing in the reporting, and voila, you have a fresh set of queries where your site doesn’t rank in PAA.
  • By device – Be sure to check both mobile and desktop data. Similar to country, just select desktop versus mobile in the filters to see each resulting dataset. You might find some differences there.
  • Spot check the results – Make sure you are spot-checking the actual SERPs. PAA can obviously change (and Semrush isn’t always perfect), so make sure you really aren’t ranking in PAA for those queries. Then form a plan of attack once you identify the gaps.
  • PAA formats – Keep an eye on the format of content ranking in People Also Ask. As I mentioned earlier, video could be ranking there as well. Understand the types of content Google is ranking based on query and choose the right formats for the job.
  • View historical rankings – You can easily change the dates via Semrush! For example, you can look back in history and run this analysis for previous months. Have you improved, declined, or remained stable? How has Google changed with regard to PAA for those queries?

Summary: Identifying PAA Gaps Via Semrush can be powerful.
It’s hard to overlook People Also Ask when an analyzing the SERPs and the feature often contains important questions that people are searching for based on the original query. By using the process I detailed in this tutorial, you can surface and export queries where your site already ranks in the top ten search results, but doesn’t rank in PAA. In my opinion, it’s a great way to identify low-hanging fruit that your content team can dig into quickly. You never know, you might find some quick wins… or many of them. Have fun.

GG

Filed Under: google, seo, tools

What happens to crawling and Google search rankings when 67% of a site’s indexed urls are pagination? [SEO Case Study]

October 7, 2021 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

There has been a lot of confusion and debate over the years about how to best handle pagination from an SEO perspective. It doesn’t help that Google changed on this front, which has led to even more confusion about the best path forward. For example, Google announced in March of 2019 that it stopped supporting rel next/prev for consolidating indexing properties from across a paginated set (and… it realized that was the case for years – just nobody knew).

That shocked many in the SEO community and had site owners and SEOs wondering which was the best way to handle pagination moving forward (if changes were needed at all!) For example, should pagination be indexable, should site owners use “noindex, follow” instead, or should they just canonicalize pagination to page one in the series? Since pagination is present on so many different types of sites, and can lead to a large number of additional pages on a site, site owners and SEOs wanted to address the situation the best they could.

But is that important? Will choosing the wrong path cause serious problems SEO-wise? And what if a majority of your pages indexed are pagination? These are all good questions and I hope this case study will provide at least a few answers based on a client I’m helping with a lot of pagination (comprising 67% of indexed pages). Yes, 67%.

So, did this cause big problems SEO-wise, is Google spending too much of its time crawling pagination that it’s missing fresher, more important content, and are rankings being impacted (GASP)?? Let’s begin.

Google’s stance on handling pagination over the years:
Since I’ve helped many large-scale sites over time with a lot of pagination, I’ve been able to see (and experience) the evolution of how Google handles that pagination. That experience led to me writing a blog post covering how to set up pagination for SEO, which contains all of the latest updates and announcements from Google. And there are several updates I’ve had to cover…

Back in 2012, Google’s Maile Ohye published an outstanding video covering SEO best practices when providing pagination. In that video, Maile explained the various ways you can set up pagination based on content type, including articles split into multiple pages and category pagination (like for e-commerce retailers). In that video she also explained how to use rel next/prev to consolidate indexing properties from across a paginated set. The blueprint that Maile mapped out in that video became the foundation for setting up pagination SEO-wise, and I often referenced that video in my audits, posts, and presentations.

Here is a screenshot from Maile Ohye’s video from 2012 explaining more about rel next/prev for pagination. Note, rel next/prev is not supported anymore for consolidating indexing properties across pagination. More about that next:

Former Googler Maile Ohye's video covering pagination SEO best practices.

Google Nukes rel next/prev (and nobody noticed):
As I mentioned earlier, in 2019 Google dropped a bomb on SEOs and explained that it doesn’t support using rel next/prev anymore to consolidate indexing properties from across a paginated set. And to add insult to injury, they also explained this had been the case for years! It’s worth noting that it’s still good to use rel next/prev for accessibility purposes, but it will have no effect SEO-wise.

As you can guess, SEOs went ballistic (although I think it’s fair to say we’re happy that they told us!) Google realized this out after checking some of its systems and noticed rel next/prev wasn’t being used for indexing and ranking purposes. Whoops.

Google's John Mueller explaining rel next/prev isn't supported anymore.

As someone that has helped many companies set up rel next/prev when using pagination, that last point got me thinking… If rel next/prev hadn’t been used for years by Google, and the companies I’ve been helping didn’t even notice that Google stopped supporting it (rankings were unaffected), then maybe Google was pretty darn good at handling pagination.

In other words, maybe we were getting all bent out of shape for no reason. Again, the clients I helped that had a lot of pagination didn’t see any major movement or drops based on Google removing support for rel next/prev. And that also matches what Google’s John Mueller has been explaining for a while. Heck, he even explained that in the tweet thread from 2019. For example, he said “most seem to be doing pagination in reasonable ways that work…” I’ll cover more about John’s recommendations next.

Google's John Mueller explaining that most sites are doing pagination in reasonable ways.

Google’s John Mueller Peppered With Questions About Pagination:
Ever since Google stopped using rel next/prev to consolidate indexing properties, Google’s John Mueller has been asked many questions about the best way to set up pagination. And John has provided some great advice in his Search Central Hangout videos.

John explained that Google has a lot of experience dealing with pagination (as long as it can identify pagination easily). And since it has a lot of experience dealing with pagination, it really shouldn’t have a big impact on a site SEO-wise. It can just “work”.

Also, John often explains the differences between splitting article content into multiple pages and having category pages that contain pagination (listing pages that lead to other urls). Those are two very different scenarios and can be handled differently from a pagination standpoint, if needed.

He has also explained that for category pagination (like an e-commerce category page), you can have all of the pages indexable (which is preferable), you can use “noindex, follow”, or you can even canonicalize to page one in the pagination. It really depends on how well your content is crosslinked, how important the pagination is for discovery, for passing of signals, etc. You can read my post about pagination to see the latest updates from Google about this.

Here is one of John’s latest videos about setting up pagination covering most of what I just explained (at 13:16 in the video):

It’s also worth noting that Google just published some outstanding best practices for e-commerce SEO (where they cover how to handle pagination as well). In that document, they explain to provide self-referencing canonical tags for each page in the pagination (and avoid canonicalizing to page one in the series). That means all pagination should be indexable.

ecommerce best practices for pagination from Google

Warning: Nuance Ahead! -Two important points for SEOs and site owners about handling pagination:
As with most things in SEO, there is nuance involved with handling pagination. First, the size of your site is important since you don’t want too much pagination to hamper crawl budget. As John explained, if you don’t have hundreds of thousands of pages (or more), then you shouldn’t really have to worry about pagination impacting crawl budget. But if you do have that many pages, then it’s important to make sure Google is focusing crawling on your most important pages. And that might lead to handling pagination differently across a site. More on crawl budget soon in the case study below.

The other thing I wanted to point out is that I’m a firm believer you shouldn’t have excessive pagination per sequence. For example, I would avoid providing thousands of pages of pagination per paginated set (like one category with thousands of pages of pagination). I think it’s fine to have many paginated sets (if needed), but I would only provide a reasonable number of pages per set (which would be based on your site, content, etc.) That number can vary per site, but I wouldn’t overload your pagination with thousands of pages per sequence. I would do what’s best for users and search engines.

For example, here’s a site with close to 3,700 pages of pagination in one category…

Excessive pagination per set.

The Case Study: Background information, pagination setup, and indexing levels.
The site I’m covering in this case study has a crawl footprint of about 200K pages (between indexed and excluded urls). I can’t go into too much detail about what the client focuses on, but you can think of them as a site that provides a wealth of information about categories, organizations, products, and reviews of those products. There is also a blog on the site containing in-depth content focused on their niche.

From a pagination standpoint, there is quite a bit of it across the site. That’s primarily on the category, organization, and review pages. Since there are many products and reviews that aren’t crosslinked well on the site (based on how the business operates), the pagination is important for discovery (for Googlebot and for users). For that reason, we definitely wanted to make sure the pagination was indexable and that Google could follow the links on the paginated urls to the product pages, the review pages, etc.

I’ve been helping this company for a long time and helped them craft their pagination strategy as far back as 2012. They have been using the approach that Maile Ohye described in the video I covered earlier. That’s where each page in the pagination contains self-referencing canonical tags, contained rel next/prev (now deprecated), and provided a strong text navigation to the paginated series at the bottom of each page. Remember, this was the recommended setup for a long time. The site has had this set up for years… and you can learn more about that setup in my post about setting up pagination.

Paginated urls using self-referencing canonical tags.

Indexing Levels: Holy pagination Batman!
Based on how much pagination is on the site, it is currently a large percentage of indexed urls. To be specific, the pagination makes up 67% of total indexed pages. Yes, more than two-thirds of indexed urls are pagination! The horror!! :)

Number of paginated urls indexed.
Total indexing in GSC's Coverage reporting.

These are not necessarily pages that we want to rank in the SERPs (other than the first page in the set), but we definitely want Google to discover all of the destination pages from the pagination. And remember, rel next/prev was supposed to take care of that for us by consolidating indexing properties from across the paginated set and (usually) surfacing the first page from the set in the SERPs. That’s not supported anymore as I covered earlier. More on rankings soon.

Crawl Budget and Crawl Stats
With that many paginated pages on the site being indexed, what do crawl stats look like? Is Googlebot churning through many paginated pages and missing important, fresher pages?

First, crawl budget is really only something that larger-scale sites need to worry about. For example, Google states that sites with 1M+ unique urls or medium-sized sites with 10K unique urls with “rapidly changing content” need to worry about crawl budget.  This site has 18.6K urls indexed and a total crawl footprint of under 200K urls. So, it’s not a small site, but not huge either.  

In addition, it’s important to understand that all pages are not crawled with the same frequency (based on importance). Google’s John Mueller has explained this point many times over the years. So, although there might be a lot of pagination on the site, that doesn’t mean Google will continually crawl all of that pagination instead of your fresher (or more important) content.

Here is John explaining this (at 12:42 in the video):

The site’s new content does get crawled relatively quickly. In addition, checking the crawl stats reporting, you can see that fresher content being crawled recently and pagination does not overwhelm the reporting. So despite the site having 67% of its indexed pages being pagination, it’s fine from a crawl budget and crawl stats perspective (in my opinion). That makes sense based on what Google has explained over the years about crawl budget.

Performance over time. How does trending look?
OK, this is where the rubber hits the road. Is having that much pagination indexed impacting rankings or organic search performance at all?

In a word, nope.

The site’s performance has been extremely stable over years (and through a number of broad core updates). They have seen strong growth over the long-term as well (especially from 2012 when I first started helping them).

Here is the past 16 months of trending from GSC:

Stable trending from Google organic search despite many paginated urls indexed.

Here is search visibility trending over the past two years:

Stable visibility trending despite having many paginated urls indexed.

And here is search visibility trending since 2012:

Strong visibility growth over time despite many paginated urls indexed.

How about pagination ranking in the search results (beyond page one)? Are paginated pages being surfaced in the SERPs and driving traffic?
No, not really. It accounts for a very small percentage of traffic from Google Search. For example, over the past three months, there have been 1.62M clicks from Google web search. Pagination accounted for just five thousand of those clicks.

Pagination accounts for just .3% of total clicks from Google Search over the past 3 months:

Clicks from Google Search to paginated urls.

I think the most important thing to remember for this site is that the various “product” pages aren’t being linked to sufficiently from other areas of the site (based on the company’s business model and how the site needs to be set up). So, the pagination is important for making sure Googlebot can get to many of those destination urls. And that’s why it’s important to make sure the pagination is indexable, that it uses self-referencing canonicals, etc.

Final tips and recommendations for sites with a lot of pagination:
So there you have it. A site with 67% of its indexed urls being pagination and it’s chugging along just fine in the SERPs. I’m not saying this approach is what every site should use, but just like Google’s John Mueller has explained many times, Google has a lot of experience handling pagination. It often just works… To end this post, I’ve provided some final tips and recommendations for sites dealing with a lot of pagination.

  • Pagination setup: Setup-wise, you have several methods at your disposal for handling pagination. The path you choose depends on the type of content you are dealing with and your internal linking structure. See my recommendations above about content split across multiple pages versus listing pages (like categories), and how well those destination pages are linked across the site.
  • Indexable vs. Non-indexable: It’s important to understand that if you noindex pagination, then links on those pages can be dropped by Google over time. So if you want to make sure Google is finding those destination urls via the pagination (and passing signals), I would have the pagination indexable. As this case study showed, it can work very well.
  • Canonicalizing Pagination: If you are canonicalizing all pagination to the first page in the series, it’s important to understand that rel canonical is just a hint for Google. It can still choose to index certain pages if it believes that’s the right thing to do. I have covered this in several blog posts over the years. Don’t assume canonicalized pages are actually being canonicalized. This is one reason I’m not a huge fan of canonicalizing pagination to the root page in the set.
  • Crawl Stats and Log Files: Don’t just check indexing levels. I would check the crawl stats reporting in GSC as well (and log files if you can get them). As I covered earlier in this post, not all pages are crawled with the same frequency. Google can crawl certain urls on your site more frequently based on crawl demand. That means pagination might not be crawled as much as your homepage, important category pages, product pages, etc. Don’t assume that high indexing levels for pagination means there’s a problem. It could be totally fine.
  • Tracking Performance: Make sure you track all of this over time and determine if pagination is causing issues SEO-wise (which I doubt for most cases). Again, Google can handle pagination very well and has a lot of experience doing that (as long as it can identify the pagination easily). Using pagination when it’s necessary is fine (and can be good). I would worry more about the number of paginated pages per set than the total number of paginated pages that are indexed on the site. Like I said earlier, make sure your pagination makes sense for both users and for search engines.
  • Google’s Recommendations: Finally, listen to Google’s John Mueller and read Google’s documentation. Google has a lot of experience handling pagination across sites, and it can often just “work”. I recommend implementing a pagination solution based on your own situation, analyze that setup over time, and make sure it’s working for you.

Summary – Yes, your site can be fine SEO-wise with a lot of pagination indexed.
If you are dealing with a lot of pagination across your site, I hope this case study was helpful. I know there’s been a lot of confusion over the years about pagination and SEO, and especially since Google nuked rel next/prev in 2019. As I explained in this post, Google has a long history of handling pagination and it typically will not cause many problems across a site rankings-wise (as long as it’s set up properly). The approach you take really comes down to your own site, the type of content, and the internal linking structure. And if you end up having a lot of pagination indexed, then so be it. As this case study proved, it can work out just fine for you.

GG

Filed Under: google, seo

Connect with Glenn Gabe today!

Latest Blog Posts

  • Continuous Scroll And The GSC Void: Did The Launch Of Continuous Scroll In Google’s Desktop Search Results Impact Impressions And Clicks? [Study]
  • How to analyze the impact of continuous scroll in Google’s desktop search results using Analytics Edge and the GSC API
  • Percent Human: A list of tools for detecting lower-quality AI content
  • True Destination – Demystifying the confusing, but often accurate, true destination url for redirects in Google Search Console’s coverage reporting
  • Google’s September 2022 Broad Core Product Reviews Update (BCPRU) – The complexity and confusion when major algorithm updates overlap
  • Google Multisearch – Exploring how “Searching outside the box” is being tracked in Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA)
  • Sitebulb Server – Technical Tips And Tricks For Setting Up A Powerful DIY Enterprise Crawler (On A Budget)
  • Google’s Helpful Content Update Introduces A New Site-wide Ranking Signal Targeting “Search engine-first Content”, and It’s Always Running
  • The Google May 2022 Broad Core Update – 5 micro-case studies that once again underscore the complexity of broad core algorithm updates
  • Amazing Search Experiments and New SERP Features In Google Land (2022 Edition)

Web Stories

  • Google’s December 2021 Product Reviews Update – Key Findings
  • Google’s April 2021 Product Reviews Update – Key Points For Site Owners and Affiliate Marketers
  • Google’s New Page Experience Signal
  • Google’s Disqus Indexing Bug
  • Learn more about Web Stories developed by Glenn Gabe

Archives

  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • GSQi Home
  • About Glenn Gabe
  • SEO Services
  • Blog
  • Contact GSQi
Copyright © 2023 G-Squared Interactive LLC. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Are you ok with the site using cookies? You can opt-out at a later time if you wish. Cookie settings ACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. You can read our privacy policy for more information.
Cookie Consent