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How To Properly Set Up Pagination With Sorting Parameters Using Rel Next/Prev And Rel Canonical [SEO Tutorial]

March 30, 2017 By Glenn Gabe 17 Comments

How to set up pagination using rel next/prev and rel canonical.

While helping companies improve overall quality, I’m typically neck deep in performing technical audits and analyzing crawl data. And with many large-scale sites, it’s not uncommon to come across a heavy amount of pagination used throughout those sites. Now, pagination is totally fine to have and can help both users and bots get to your content through organized categories. But, it’s important that your pagination is set up properly from an SEO perspective, so you can get the most bang for your paginated buck. Unfortunately, I’ve seen so many pagination flaws during my audit travels, it’s not even funny.

Based on the botched setups I have seen, and the confusion surrounding pagination, I’ve been jokingly telling clients that I need to write a blog post about how to properly set up rel next/prev when a pagination uses sorting or filtering. Because if I did, I could just point new clients there versus explaining it over and over. So, I finally decided to write it up. :) And yes, I know there are many posts out there about pagination and SEO. But, I wanted to provide one detailing the exact setup that I recommend (based on Google’s official recommendations and my experience helping many large-scale sites that employ pagination).

This post will cover a number of topics under the pagination umbrella, including how to set up rel next/prev, how to handle sorting and filtering parameters, and how to combine rel canonical with rel next/prev. My hope is that this post can clear up some of the confusion surrounding pagination and SEO.

Your Goal and How Google Should Process The Setup
First, let me quickly explain why this is important. When using pagination, you often have several pages of content within a specific category. For example, pagination is prevalent on ecommerce sites that might have hundreds of products under a certain category. Or you might have sites with reviews that might have dozens or more reviews per product.

From an SEO perspective, it might not sound great to have dozens of category pages indexed by Google. But you absolutely could, as long as you know Google is handling those pages properly. The catch is that you should use rel next/prev in the code of your component pages so Google can consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set. That means Google can treat your paginated set as one, versus dozens of separate pages containing a list of products. And when Google does that, it can surface the right page from the paginated set in the SERPs based on query, but it will still treat the paginated set as one (signals-wise).

Using rel next/prev to consolidate indexing properties.

Warning: Don’t Canonicalize All Component Pages To The First Page! Set Up Rel Canonical Correctly
Also, and this is important to understand, if you canonicalize all component pages to the first page in your pagination, then Google can’t index any of the additional content. So you are diminishing the power of the paginated set by canonicalizing each component page to the first page. It’s simply not the right setup. I’ll cover how to use rel canonical the right way with pagination soon.

A Note About Google Resources for Pagination and Rel next/prev
Before we begin, I wanted to mention that there are some great resources from Google explaining more about this topic, and I highly recommend checking them out. For example, there’s a great video from former Googler Maile Ohye covering how to use rel next/prev in detail. And then Google has written several blog posts about pagination, including one about common mistakes that site owners make when implementing rel canonical on their sites. There’s a part about not canonicalizing all component pages to the first page in the pagination. Between my post today and those resources, you should be ready to rock and roll pagination-wise. Let’s get started.

How To Properly Set Up Rel Next/Prev with Filtering: Step-by-step
It’s best if I use an example that’s easy to understand, so let’s say we have an ecommerce site named “Glenn’s Baseball Gloves”. Hey, I coach baseball and I’m helping my players choose the right gear now. :) Let’s set up the pagination for a category of pre-broken in baseball gloves. Here we go!

1. Our Ecommerce Category
The category url is https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm. The category contains 75 products and we’re going to provide fifteen gloves per page. So, we’ll have five component pages in the pagination. Page two will have the following url: https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2. Then page=3, page=4, etc.

Handling pagination on an ecommerce site.

2. Filtering or Sorting The Pagination
We will also provide sorting for our pagination. To keep this simple, let’s provide sorting by price. So if the user chooses to sort “Price High-To-Low”, the pagination will reorder the gloves and show the most expensive gloves first. The sorting parameter will be price=X, where X could high or low.

Sorting by price on an ecommerce site.

So we might end up with a url that looks like this:

https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2&price=high

3. Rel next/prev
This is the easy part. You will need to add rel next/prev tags in the head of each component page that provides the next url in the pagination, and the previous. The only exceptions are the first and last pages in the pagination. That’s because the first page will have a rel next tag, but won’t have a previous tag. And the last page will have a rel prev tag, but won’t have a next tag. All other component pages should contain both rel next and prev.

For our root category page https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm, we’ll use the following in the head of the document:

Remember, the first page will not contain a rel=”prev” tag since there isn’t a previous page!

And our page=2 url will contain the following tags in the head of the document:

Important note: I’ve seen many sites use ?page=1 in the rel prev tag when pointing back to the root category page, when that’s not the actual url. The url actually doesn’t contain any parameters, so it’s just https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm without page=1.

You should complete the tags for the remaining component pages and then include just a rel prev tag on the last page (since there’s not a “next” url). For example, the final page in the pagination (page 5) would contain the following rel prev tag in the head of the document.

4. Rel canonical
When setting up the pagination, I highly recommend using self-referencing canonical tags on each component page. Rel canonical and rel next/prev are separate concepts and can be used together on the same url. Again, these should be self-referencing canonical tags for each component page.

The root page should contain a self-referencing canonical tag, page=2 url should as well, so on and so forth. Remember, we want Google to index each of the pages so it can consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set. Don’t simply canonicalize all component pages to the first page. That’s not the right setup. Google even lists that in their common mistakes blog post for rel canonical! See screenshot below.

Don’t do this!
Don't canonicalize all component pages to page one in the pagination.

Here is an example of what we should implement based on our fictitious website:

The root category url https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm would contain the following rel canonical tag:

and then the second url in our pagination https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2 would contain:

Again, DO NOT canonicalize all component pages to the first page in the pagination. That’s not the proper setup (as documented above)! And rel canoncial should contain the url with the page parameter, but not contain any sorting or filtering parameters. I’ll cover more about that next.

5. Handling Sorting or Filtering In The Pagination
This part seems to confuse a lot of people, just based on the number of parameters being handled and how it ties to rel canonical and rel next/prev. If filtering or sorting parameters are provided, then you should include them in rel next/prev tags, but not include them in rel canonical. Rel canonical should only contain the core url for the component page without the filtering parameters. Google’s Maile Ohye explained this in her video about pagination.

Also, it’s important to keep a consistent order for your parameters. In my opinion, you should always start with the core url and page parameter (page=X). Then layer on filtering parameters, but keep the order consistent. Don’t use page=X&price=Y&size=Z on one component page and then page=X&size=Y&price=Z on the next. Or worse, don’t move the page=X parameter to after the filters! Make it easy for Google to understand the structure so it can consolidate indexing properties without running into trouble.

For our example, let’s say a user sorted by price, the first page would contain the following rel next tag and rel canonical tag:

Then page 2 would contain:

And page 3 would contain:

Notice how rel next prev carries the sorting parameters from one url to the next, while rel canonical only references the core url. We would follow the same formula for page four. And the final page (which is page 5 in our example) would contain the following tags. Remember, the final page would not contain a rel next tag since there isn’t another page in the pagination:

Rel=Got It?
And that’s it! Now you are handling rel next/prev correctly on each component page of the pagination, as well as rel canonical. And you are also providing consistent sorting parameters via rel next/prev. And you’re not canonicalizing all component pages to the first page (which is the wrong way to go).

Now Google can understand the structure of your pagination, consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set, treat the pagination as one signals-wise, and then surface the correct url in the SERPs based on query. Groovy. :)

A Note About Indexation
You will probably see indexation increase when checking the Index Status report in Google Search Console (GSC) as Google crawls and indexes the component pages in your pagination. This is especially true for those sites that were once canonicalizing all component pages to the first page in the pagination. This is totally normal to see, so don’t freak out if it starts to rise. Indexation should level off as Google indexes all of your component pages.

Indexation will increase when using rel next/prev correctly.

Summary – Consolidate Indexing Properties With The Right Pagination Setup
The next time you’re faced with providing a heavy amount of pagination by category, you can use the setup I covered in this post. It’s based on Google’s official recommendations and it’s something I have helped clients with many times in the past. So don’t fall victim to common pagination problems. Instead, let Google crawl and index all of your component pages, but tie them together via rel next/prev. And then use rel canonical to send clear signals about which pages should be indexed. Pagination shouldn’t be scary and I hope this post made the setup a little less intimidating… Now paginate away!

Facebook Ads for eCommerce – How To Combine Custom Audiences, Lookalikes, and Unpublished Posts to Target Customers and Similar Users

August 12, 2013 By Glenn Gabe 6 Comments

I used to be extremely critical of Facebook Ads in the past. But that’s before Facebook released a boatload of functionality for enhancing your campaigns. Sure, marketplace ads, or ads running the right sidebar, have seen declining engagement over the years, but that’s just a fraction of what you can do now with Facebook Ads. And I’m finding many advertisers don’t know about the powerful options available to them.

For example, there’s FBX (or retargeting on Facebook), news feed targeting, mobile-only targeting, promoted posts, custom audiences, lookalike audiences, unpublished posts, etc. And with this enhanced functionality comes better targeting and performance. Now, I still think paid search can reach someone who is searching for a specific solution at the exact time they need it, and social advertising can’t do that (yet). But, using advanced targeting within Facebook can absolutely make an impact, and on multiple levels.

In this post, I’m going to explain one method of using three pieces of functionality in Facebook Ads that might change your view of social advertising. It has for me, and I’ve been using this technique for some time now. It leverages unpublished posts, custom audiences, and lookalike audiences to target your current customers, and users similar to your customers, when you are running a specific promotion or sale. It’s a great way to make the most of your current assets, and at a relatively low cost.

Meet Unpublished Posts
I find many business owners have no idea what unpublished posts are. If you fit into this category, then today is your lucky day. Unpublished posts enable page owners to create page updates that don’t get shared with their entire fan base. In addition, you can run ads based on the unpublished posts and use a wealth of ad targeting to reach the right audience (which can include current customers). Interesting, right?

The easiest way to create an unpublished post is to use Power Editor. And if you’re running Facebook Ads and not using Power Editor, you should start today. It offers a lot of functionality and targeting options not available in Ads Manager (which is what advertisers use on Facebook’s website).

By clicking “Manage Pages” in Power Editor, you can actually craft a page post. But since we want an unpublished post, you can create the update and not publish it. That’s ultra-important, since we want to use the post as an ad, and not an update that’s broadcast to your entire fan base.

So, if you’re an ecommerce provider running a specific sale, you could create an update focusing on that sale, with an understanding it will reach a very specific audience (and not every fan). I’ll cover how to target specific parts of your customer list soon, including people that are similar to those users. Once you create your post, you can click your account ID in the left pane to return to your ads dashboard (in Power Editor).

Now we’re ready to talk about custom audiences and lookalikes.

Meet Custom Audiences and Lookalikes
I wrote a post earlier in the year about custom audiences in Facebook. You should read that post to learn how to set them up. You’ll need a custom audience in order to use the method I’m covering in this post (since that’s the audience you will target, and it’s also the list you will use to create a lookalike audience).

Custom audiences enable you to upload a list of current customers, based on your in-house email list. Then, Facebook will match up the list with users on the social network. Yes, you read that correctly. That means you can target your in-house email list (or parts of that list) via Facebook Ads. Awesome, right?

Once your custom audience is created, you can use that list to target current customers with specific promotions and sales. And you can use unpublished posts to reach them. Did you catch that? I said unpublished posts. That means getting your targeted promotion in front of your current customers (whether they are fans of your page or not).

Great, but what’s a lookalike?
Lookalike audiences enable you to base a new audience (set of Facebook users) on a custom audience (your current customers). Facebook reviews a number of characteristics about your custom audience (your current customer base), and then finds people similar to your customers. Yes, once again, eye-opening targeting opportunity ahead.

Imagine you had five custom audiences set up, all containing specific customers for specific categories of products. Then you could use lookalikes to find similar people (which you can then target via Facebook Ads). The old days of Facebook ads seem so caveman-like, right? :)

How To Set Up Lookalikes
Once you have set up a custom audience (following my tutorial), then you can easily select that audience in Power Editor, and choose “Create Similar Audience”. Choose “Similarity” in the dialog box and Facebook will find users that are similar to your in-house list (based on a number of criteria). It could take up to 24 hours to create the list, but I’ve seen it take much less time than that (especially for smaller lists).

Combining Unpublished Posts, Custom Audiences, and Lookalikes
OK, we have covered unpublished posts that contain targeted messages about new promotions or sales. We have also covered custom audiences based on our in-house email list. And, we have covered lookalike audiences, which enable us to target similar people to our own customers. Now we are ready to tie them together.

1. Create a New Campaign
In Power Editor, you can create a new campaign and set the campaign parameters like name, budget, etc.

2. Create a New Ad
Click the “Ads” tab to create your ad. Under “Type”, choose “Ad”, and then select the radio button labeled “For a Facebook Page Using a Page Post”. That will enable you to choose an unpublished post for your ad.

3. Choose a Destination
For “Destination”, choose your Facebook Page. Note, your page’s image and title will still link users to your page, but the post itself can drive users to the sale landing page on your website. Your post itself is where you should place the link to your landing page (on your own site). In addition, you should add tracking parameters to your destination urls for your unpublished post (so you can track each campaign via your analytics package).

4. Select An Unpublished Post
Now, choose your unpublished post to use that post as the actual ad. Note, you can also create your unpublished post at this stage (using Power Editor). That’s a nice feature that was recently added.

5. Choose your placement:
OK, how awesome is this? You get to choose where your unpublished post shows up. For example, in the News Feed (Desktop and Mobile). This is the most powerful placement in my opinion. Your ads will show up directly in someone’s news feed versus along the right side.

6. Choose Your Targeting
Under “Audience”, you can choose targeting, based on the goals of your campaign. Note, this is not where you will choose your custom or lookalike audience, although the tab is titled “Audience”. You can choose location, age, gender, etc. if you want more granular targeting than just the custom audiences we created earlier.

7. Choose Your Audience (Yes, this is what we’ve been waiting for.)
Under “Advanced Options”, you’ll notice the first field is titled “Custom Audiences”. If you start typing in that field, your custom audience should show up (based on what you named the audience when you created it). Once selected, it should show up in the field. You can leave the rest of the targeting options located below as-is.

Clarification Side Note:
To clarify what we’ve been doing, this ad will target your current customer list. When you create a second campaign, you can choose your lookalike audience. Then you can run both campaigns and target both your current customer list and people similar to your current customers. And since they are in separate campaigns, with separate tracking parameters, you can track performance by audience. Awesome.

8. Select Your Pricing and Status Options
For this example, let’s choose CPC and enter the desired cost per click. Facebook will provide a suggested CPC to the right. Once completed, you’re ready to rock.

9. Upload Your Campaign
Click “Upload” in Power Editor and your ad will be uploaded to Facebook, where it will need to be approved. Once approved, you’ll receive a notification that your unpublished post is live.

Why this approach works:

1. Exposure and Sharing
By using this approach, you can get your latest sale or promotion in front of your current customers as they browse Facebook, while also providing a great opportunity for that sale or promotion to get shared. For example a current customer might like your update, and it could hit their friends’ news feeds, which can provide even more exposure and opportunities to land new customers.

2. Engagement
Even though the unpublished post is technically an ad, it still looks and works like a typical page post update. That means users can like, share, and comment on the post. And yes, users often do like and comment on unpublished post ads. Remember, the unpublished post ad is hitting users’ news feeds (both desktop and mobile), so there is a strong chance they will be exposed to your ad. And if it’s crafted well, then there’s a chance that a certain percentage of that audience will engage with the post. It’s a great way to engage your current customers, while also engaging similar people (via a lookalike audience).

3. Page Likes
Gaining more page likes is an added benefit to using this approach. Sure, you want people to click through to your sale landing page and buy, but you probably also want more page likes (so you can reach more people with your organic status updates down the line). I’ve seen unpublished post ads work extremely well for gaining more page likes (across industries). For example, a recent campaign I launched increased page likes by 7% during a one week period. Not bad, when you take into account the other benefits from running the campaign (like exposure, sharing, engagement, and sales – which I’ll cover next).

4. Sales (and other important conversions)
Using this approach can yield a low CPA, high ROAS method for increasing sales for specific promotions. I’ve run campaigns where the CPC was under $0.40 per click, and depending on the specific campaign, return on ad spend (ROAS) can be extremely strong. For example, 2000 clicks at $0.40 per click is $800. A conversion rate of 2.0% and an average order value of $75 would yield $3000 in revenue and 275% ROAS. That’s just a small and quick example, but unpublished page post ads could yield a shot in the arm pretty quickly.

And from a B2B standpoint, with average order values typically much higher than B2C, the ROAS could be even greater. Even a handful of sales could generated thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in revenue. For example, a recent campaign I launched for a client focused on items starting at $1000 (and some were up to $5000 per item). Even one sale at $5K based on the campaign I mentioned before would yield a strong ROAS.

And let’s not forget other important micro-conversions on your website. For example, newsletter signups, which can be a great driver of revenue for any ecommerce provider, app downloads, requests for more information, etc. all fall under this category and can start forging a relationship between prospective customers and your business.

What’s the Downside?
OK, I love using this approach, but social advertising brings some unique challenges with it. Since what we’ve covered is an actual page post, and not a straight ad, users can interact with it. That means both positive and negative interaction can occur. For example, you might have some unhappy customers post their negative feedback in the unpublished page post ad. How you deal with that situation is for another post, but I always recommend addressing the problem directly (in the post). But again, there are several situations that can arise, and I’ll try and address them in a future post. Just keep in mind that users can comment, and those comments might not always be positive.

The Power of Unpublished Posts, Custom Audiences, and Lookalikes
After reading this post, I hope you better understand the power of using unpublished posts along with custom audiences and lookalike audiences. Unfortunately, the features and functionality I covered in the post are not readily apparent to many Facebook advertisers. And that’s a shame, since they can be extremely effective for businesses looking to engage current customers and new audiences, while also increasing sales. I recommend testing this approach soon to see if it can be effective for your business.

You can start today. Create a custom audience, create a lookalike audience, and use Power Editor to create unpublished post ads. You may never look back. :)

How To Find Keywords Triggering Product Listing Ads Using AdWords and Google Analytics [Includes a Custom Report for PLA’s]

October 16, 2012 By Glenn Gabe 3 Comments

If you’re an ecommerce retailer, then you have probably heard of Product Listing Ads in Google AdWords. Product Listing Ads (PLA’s) are powerful ad units that enable you to display image thumbnails in the search results for products you sell on your site. As you can imagine, the visual nature of the ads yield more ad real estate and can greatly help with click-through rate (since the ads are hard to overlook.) And with the holidays quickly approaching, standing out from your competitors is an important aspect to landing new customers.

Here is a screenshot of product listings ads in action:
Interested in a Keurig Coffee Maker? I bet the ads on the right will catch your eye.
Product Listing Ads for Keurig Coffee Makers

Are you looking for a new golf driver? Again, the PLA’s on the right will probably catch your attention:
Product Listing Ads for Golf Drivers

Google Shopping Goes Commercial
This past spring, Google announced that Google Product Search was moving to a full commercial model and would be called Google Shopping. No longer would you be able to have your product ads show up for free (blended in the organic search results). Google originally set a target deadline of October 1^st, 2012 for the transition so ecommerce retailers could get familiar with product listings ads (which would be the mechanism for displaying products in the search results). The ads would be cost per click-based (CPC), like PLA’s have always been.

This was a big move for Google, as many ecommerce retailers relied on shopping results to gain free clicks to their sites from prospective customers searching for products. Now, in order to have similar results, those ecommerce retailers would need to pay. Therefore, many ecommerce retailers jumped on board the product listing ads bandwagon (as they should).

Google Shopping Transitions to Commercial Model

Optimization is Important
When you run product listing ads, you don’t bid on keywords. Instead, Google reviews your merchant center feed and then matches your ads with queries that it believes are relevant. In my experience, there are times I see Google displaying product listing ads for queries that aren’t directly tied to the product at hand, or that are more category-driven. This can yield untargeted visitors, higher costs, and lower ROI. And that’s exactly what you don’t want in SEM. Therefore, it’s important to optimize your product listing ads campaigns over time in order to increase performance.

It’s Hard to Determine Out of the Box
Given what I listed above, where do you find the keywords triggering your product listing ads? Unfortunately, they aren’t so easy to find out of the box. In addition, finding the keywords triggering your ads also depends on how you set up and structured your product listing ads campaigns. For example, are you using product targets to segment your merchant feed, are you lumping all products in one ad group, etc?

Today, I’m here to help. I’m going to list two ways to find the keywords triggering your product listing ads and I’ll include a bonus custom report at the end of this post that provides even more information for you to analyze. Let’s get started.

Two Ways to Find Keywords Triggering Your Product Listing Ads
1. The AdWords UI
The first place you can find the keywords triggering your product listing ads is in the AdWords UI (managing your campaign on the web). First, click the campaign holding your product listing ads (which should be a campaign that’s separate from your other search or display network campaigns). Then click the “Keywords” tab.

Keywords Tab in Google AdWords

Next, click “Keyword Details”, and finally “All”. This will reveal all the raw search queries that have triggered your product listing ads and that drove traffic to your site (by ad group). Then you can adjust the columns in the report and export the report to Excel.

Matched Search Queries for Product Listing Ads in AdWords

2. AdWords Reporting in Google Analytics (Match Search Queries + Second Dimension)
The second way you can find the queries triggering your product listing ads is to access your AdWords reporting in Google Analytics. You can click the “AdWords” tab, and then the “Matched Search Queries” link to view all matched search queries for your campaigns. Then, you can add a second dimension for “Ad Group” to view a list of raw search queries by ad group. This is extremely powerful if you segmented your merchant feed using product targets (as mentioned earlier). For example, imagine viewing all raw search queries by major brand, product type, etc.

Next, you will need to filter this report based on your naming convention for product listings ads in AdWords. That’s because the report will initially contain all ad groups and matched search queries (and not just queries for your product listing ads). You can use the filter box in your reporting to filter your ad groups to isolate the ad groups for your product listing ads. For example, if your ad groups for product listing ads begin with “PLA”, then you can filter the report to select ad groups that contain “PLA” in the title. When you do this, you will be left with all of your ad groups for product listing ads and the matched search queries that have driven traffic to your site. Then you can export this report to Excel for further analysis.

Filtering Product Listing Ads in Google Analytics

Bonus: Product Listing Ads Custom Report in Google Analytics
All of what I listed above works well, and can be extremely useful, but there’s a quicker way to drill into this data. You can use custom reporting in Google Analytics to create a new report that enables you to drill into campaign, ad group, raw search query, and then landing page by query. Sounds awesome, right?

Well, I’ve built that report and provided a link to it below (so you can use it for your own campaigns). If you are logged into your Google Analytics account, then clicking the link will launch the report in your account (just the structure, not the data). Then you will need to tailor the report structure for your own campaigns. For example, I created the report to isolate a campaign with “PLA” in the name. You’ll need to identify your own product listing ads campaigns based on your own naming convention.

Once you do, you’ll be able to drill into your campaign, ad groups within that campaign, matched search queries per ad group, and then the landing page from each query. The report will enable you to quickly identify negatives to use per ad group, and will help you double check landing pages per query. Note, the landing page (destination URL) is based on your merchant center feed, and depending on the retailer, there can be thousands or tens of thousands of products in a feed. It’s always good to double check the destination URL’s to make sure the right queries lead to the right product listing ads, which lead to the right product detail pages. If not, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.

Click the link to access the product listing ads custom report I built.

Summary – Make the Most of Your Product Listing Ads
As I mentioned earlier, product listing ads are a powerful ad unit for ecommerce retailers. And now with Google Shopping moving to a full commercial model, it’s critically important for retailers to get a handle on their PLA’s. You can use the methods I provided above to find the search queries triggering your ads and driving prospective customers to your site. In addition, you can use the custom report I provided to drill into your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and landing pages. Then it’s up to you to analyze your newly-found reporting in order to refine your efforts. And that’s the name of the game in SEM.

Have a killer holiday season.