Whats the negative effect of incorrect canonical to first page in paginated set?

[QubaSEO]

Hi,

I have a new client that has pagination handled incorrectly on their website....

They have it setup as follows:

• example.com/article?story=cupcake-news&page=1
• example.com/article?story=cupcake-news&page=2
• example.com/article?story=cupcake-news&page=3
  etc etc

rel=canonical from page 2 to page 1
rel=canonical from page 3 to page 1
etc etc

i.e. they aren't using rel=prev, rel=next

To get them to invest in the development time need to change this I need to explain to the client how what they have is negatively affecting things? Anyone?

Thanks in advance!

[danatanseo]

Hi QubaSEO,

This is how I would explain this to a client whose knowledge of SEO is limited:

"The way your site is currently set up, all content located on pages that are not 'Page 1' in a series of pages, is not being crawled or indexed by search engines. It is being given zero value. As a result, you are missing out on gaining relevant traffic from searchers looking for the content that you have on pages other than page 1."

If they have spent money and time creating that content on pages 2, 3 etc), or if they are an eCommerce site and they care about selling all of their products (not just products displayed on page 1), then they are significantly inhibiting their return on that investment.

You probably already have this https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en

[QubaSEO]

Hi Dana,

Thanks for helping out! It's an ecommerce site.

You mention that "content not on Page 1 is not being crawled or indexed by search engines". Wouldn't the pages still be crawled and the products that they list still be crawled and indexed? It's just that Page 2/3/4/5 etc wont be indexed because of the canonical? If this is the case the only negative effect I can see is that if the product combination on a page 2/3/4/5 happened to convey relevance for a particular search query then the page wouldn't be returned in the listings?