Ecommerce, SEO & Pagination

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I'm trying to workout if there's something wrong with our pagination.

We include the rel="next" and "prev" on our pages.

When clicking on page 2 on a product page, the URL will show as something like -

/lockers#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list&

However, if I search site:http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lockers in Google, it seems to find paginated pages:

http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lockers?page=2

I have a feeling something is going wrong here, but haven't worked massively on Pagination before. Can anyone help?

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

I see some issues:

1. you say you use rel=next and rel=prev. When I go  to provided url and look at the source code, i see only rel=next and ALL of them are linked to ?page=2. Definitely look into that.
2. when i hover over page numbers, it shows me url structure as ?page=x, not the post request, so, there might be some miscommunication in the code. At the same time, ?page=x are existent and not redirected to post request pages (I assume that's what you want to be happening). So that might be an issue as well.
3. It seems to me that what's happening is if i click on pagination button, i get to ?page=x, then internally from page the post request is being sent and it changes the displayed URL. If this is true, then ?page=x will be displayed in SERPs, because POST url change is happening after page is accessed.

Hope it's not super confusing

[DmitriiK]

Just dug a little more.

Yes, my #3 thought seems to be correct. Basically, there is ajax or js which intercepts request and does its work.

However, I think that for rankings you actually would want ?page=x to rank, because if js is disabled in browser, then post request url might not work, you won't be able to bookmark and, if you change backend filtering, it won't exist.

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Thank you for your comprehensive response.

I see the issue no. 1 which I can get fixed.

Is it an issue for the post URL and the link to be different? Should the ?page=2 redirect to the post request URL? Or can this be left as it is?

I don't work on code so I am not sure how to identify whether there is something wrong here.

Thank you

[DmitriiK]

Honestly, I think there is no really an issue with what's happening on your website. It can be a bit awkward for users to see different urls from expected ones, but most "standard" users don't look at browser's address bar anyway.

P.S. No, don't redirect ?page=2 to POST request.

[BeckyKey]

Ok thank you for your input