Conquering Pagination – A Guide to Consolidating your Content

A topic sure to make any SEO neophyte’s head spin, approaching and handling pagination can seem a daunting prospect at first. Pagination is a wily shapeshifter, rearing its ugly head in contexts ranging from e-commerce, to newspapers, to forums. Bottom line is, if you’re in the business of on-page optimization, it’s not a question of if you’ll have to deal with pagination problems – it’s a question of when. Luckily, we’re here to give you some advice to get you started, and answer some of the more thought-provoking questions that can arise in tricky situations.

So what exactly is pagination, you ask? In a very basic sense, pagination occurs when a website segments content over the span of multiple pages. On an e-commerce site, this will take the form of product and category listings. On a news site, articles may be divided up across multiple pages or arranged in the form of a slideshow. On forums, groups and topic threads will typically span at least 2-3 pages. Even blogs, which tend to feature article previews ordered from latest to oldest, will run into pagination issues on their homepage.

“Big deal”, you may say. “I see this happening all over the place, so what is the problem with paginated content?” From an SEO perspective, pagination can cause serious issues with Google’s ability to index your site’s content. Let’s explore a few of the potential issues that arise when you paginate your content without taking the proper precautions:

• Crawler Limitations
  

  When Googlebot is crawling your site, the depth (or levels of clicks deeper into the content) it travels will vary depending on the site’s authority and other factors. If you have a tremendous amount of paginated content, the odds that Googlebot will travel through all paginated content to reach and index the final pages decreases significantly.

• Duplicate Problems
  

  Depending on the context of the pagination, it is very likely that some elements across the series of pages may contain similar or identical content. In addition to this, you’ll often find that identical title tags and meta descriptions tend to propagate across a span of paginated content. Duplicate content can cause massive confusion for Googlebot when it comes time to determine which pages to return for search queries.

• Thin Content
  

  In situations (such as the aforementioned news sites) where articles or product reviews tend to be segmented into multiple pages, you run the risk of not providing enough original content for the individual pages to be indexed separately. More importantly, this also creates the risk of running too low on content-to-advertisement ratios, which can set your site up for devastating Panda penalties further down the road.

So how do you deal with Pagination?

Your best option is always optimal site design. There are a number of ways that these problems can be prevented before they begin. When planning the design of an ecommerce or similar site, consider the following measures you can take to cut down on large-scale pagination issues:

1. Increasing the number of categories, which will decrease the depth of each paginated series
2. Increasing the number of products per page, which will decrease the number of total pages in the paginated series
3. Linking to all pages within the now manageable paginated series from the first page, which will alleviate any crawl-depth and link authority flow problems

However, in many real world scenarios, the damage has already been done and a site structure overhaul is not an option. Luckily, Google has given us a variety of methods to better steer the crawlers through our deep crypts of paginated content. As an SEO, you have three weapons in your arsenal to preemptively deal with any problems that may arise out of pagination:

Option 1: Remove your paginated content from the index

There are many situations where simply taking the paginated content off the table is the best solution. If there are no particular advantages to having this content indexed and searchable, then the easiest solution is to implement a <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"> tag within the <head> section of every page in the paginated series, excluding the first page. You’ll want to make sure to include the “FOLLOW” tag here if this is a listing series of any kind – this will ensure that page authority will travel into the individual destination pages throughout the list, despite the list itself being precluded from Google’s index. Including the “FOLLOW” tag may also help some link authority that is arriving at pages within the paginated series to travel back to the indexed first page and the rest of the site.

Advantages	Disadvantages
The least complex of all solutions.	While it does solve potential pagination problems, it also eliminates the paginated content from Google’s index.
Great for situations in which there is no logical reason to index the paginated content.

Option 2: View-All Page and rel=“canonical”

Google’s preferred first choice for handling most pagination issues is to create a separate “View-All” page apart from the paginated series and include all of the items within this single page. Once you’ve created the View-All page, you can then place a rel="canonical" tag within the <head> section of each paginated component page, pointing to the View-All Page. (e.g. <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.site.com/view-all-page"/>). This will essentially tell Google to treat each specific page in a paginated series as a segment of the View-All page and queries will return the View-All page as opposed to a relevant segment page of the pagination chain.

Google states that this is their preferred method of guiding Googlebot through paginated content, and that users typically prefer a view-all page. Whether users actually prefer a view-all page is debatable and certainly depends on the context of each situation. There is one large caveat to this method – the View-All page has to be manageable enough to load within a “reasonable amount of time”, which is generally regarded as 2-4 seconds. This makes it a great option for consolidating text-only product and category listings that exist within 5-20 pages of paginated content. Conversely, it makes this a poor choice for consolidating paginated articles with many images and product or category listings with hundreds of pages.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Relatively simple implementation	Not a solution for massive or image heavy series of paginated content
Google’s first choice solution	Some businesses may be unwilling or unable to implement a View-All page for product listings
All content within the pagination sequence will be represented on the search engine via the View-All page
Can present a more user-friendly navigation method.

Option 3: Rel=“prev”/“next”

Our final option for dealing with pagination problems may be the most complicated, but it is arguably the most versatile. Google now recognizes the rel=“prev” and “next” HTML attributes as a method of indicating a sequence of paginated pages. The implementation can be tricky, and you have to be exceptionally careful when applying this method. Let’s take a look at how this works.

You have four pages of paginated content:

By using rel="prev"/"next", you’re essentially creating a chain between all sites in the pagination series. You’ll begin the chain with Page 1, adding the following code to the <head> section of the page’s HTML:

(Page 1):

<link rel="next" href="http://www.site.com/page2.html">

That’s the only step we have to take for the beginning of the chain. Now we move on to Page 2. Consider that Page 2 is now in the middle of the chain, so we have to attach it both to the page before it, and to the next page in the sequence. Page 2 would have the following code in the <head>:

(Page 2):

<link rel="prev" href="http://www.site.com/page1.html">

<link rel="next" href="http://www.site.com/page3.html">

Now just as you might have assumed, since Page 3 is also in the center of this sequence of linked pages, we have to continue to implement the code in a similar manner:

(Page 3):

<link rel="prev" href="http://www.site.com/page2.html">

<link rel="next" href="http://www.site.com/page4.html">

And so we’ve reached Page 4, the last in our chain of paginated content. The last page should only contain a rel="prev" attribute in the <head>, as there are no further pages within the sequence:

(Page 4):

<link rel="prev" href=" http://www.site.com/page3.html">

Using this complete sequence of rel="prev"/"next", Google is able to consolidate this group of paginated content into a single entry in their index. This essentially tells Google to treat the sequence of paginated content as one entry within their index. Typically, the first page will be returned to the user as it is usually the most relevant to a query regarding the paginated series. However, Google has noted there as scenarios where a more relevant page within the sequence is returned if the query is particularly centered around the content on that page.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Unparalleled flexibility	Implementation can be complicated
Allows resolving pagination issues without use of a View-All page	Requires proper execution of the chain in order to be effective
Can be executed properly with only minor changes to HTML

An important thing to note with rel=”prev”/”next” implementations is that they can be used alongside canonical tags. While this will become particularly useful in the advanced concepts section, it is worth noting that if you’re in the practice of using self-referential canonical tags, they will function the same way within a rel=”prev”/”next” chain.

Advanced Pagination Concepts

Now that we’ve tackled the basics, its time to take a look at some of the more interesting questions and scenarios you’ll run into once you start getting comfortable with pagination.

Setting a Benchmark

If you have access to your server logs, it’s fairly simple to determine the success with which Googlebot is currently crawling your unadjusted paginated content. Before any changes are implemented, we recommend choosing a few paginated series within your site and determining how many pages deep into the series Googlebot is crawling. Once you’ve determined this you can then perform search queries to investigate how many of these pages Google is choosing to include in the index.

This will give you a starting point benchmark that will enable you to determine the success of your efforts. After you have implemented your changes, you can revisit the server logs upon Googlebot’s return to determine whether crawl-depth and indexation rates have improved.

AJAX and Javascript scroll setups

You’ve likely ran into infinite scroll setups on ecommerce sites in which the content will continuously load as you scroll towards the bottom of the screen. While this is a nice feature to improve the user experience, AJAX and Javascript reliant navigation functions should always be implemented using Progressive Enhancement.

Ensuring that the site will function properly for users that have Javascript disabled is not only considerate to your users, but it also allows you to implement the pagination solutions discussed in this guide beneath the enhanced user experience features. This will enable Googlebot to properly crawl and index your content while you provide advanced Javascript navigation features for your visitors.

Relevancy Signals: View-All Pages vs. rel=“prev”/“next”

You may find yourself in the fortunate position to be able to choose whether to implement a View-All page orrel="prev"/"next". Although we do have indicators from Google suggesting that View-All is the preferred method for handling these pagination issues, there are certain contexts in which a rel="prev"/"next"implementation could prove more beneficial, as far as relevancy signals are concerned.

Consider for a moment that Google has stated that both View-All Page canonicalization andrel="prev"/"next" sequences consolidate all incoming link authority into the pages that ultimately will rank for queries related to them. The View-All page will naturally consolidate this link authority via the canonical tags pointed towards it and the ranking page in the sequence of rel="prev"/"next" will inherit the link authority via the properties Google uses to link the component pages together in the index.

Now that we’ve established link authority will be similar in both methods, we’re left with one very interesting question: What about the other relevancy signals that affect the page’s ability to rank? What happens to the unique URLs, the title tags, the meta descriptions, the H1/H2s and other factors? We know that the canonicalization that occurs when using the View-All method will effectively register these factors moot – Google knows to look to the canonical page for these items.

But if a series of pages linked together via rel="prev"/"next" contain unique title tags and URLs, and any one of these pages has the opportunity to rank for a query based on them, then they could potentially retain these relevancy signals as opposed to having them washed away via canonicalization.

Clearly, this is not a consideration for a simple paginated product or category listing with similar content across the series of pages. There is no unique relevancy factor to be found with “page1.htm” vs. “page2.htm”, and no ranking advantages to “Dresses Page 1” as opposed to “Dresses Page 2”. But what about a situation like the one below?

The truth is, no one really knows exactly how Google treats the rel="prev"/"next" sequence within the index. However if we do know that in at least some cases, pages further into the sequence than the first page will be returned in the SERPS, it’s safe to assume that the URL, title tag, and other factors will still play some role in determining relevancy to any given query.

Parameters and rel=“prev”/“next”

In some cases when dealing with rel="prev"/"next", your paginated URLS will contain parameters that do not change the content of the page, such as unique session ID’s. An experienced SEO will tell you these are bad news – if you don’t give Google specific instructions on how to deal with these situations you may wind up with duplicate content problems.

You always have the option of just telling Googlebot to not crawl certain URLS using “URL Parameters” in Webmaster Tools, but what if you’d like to preserve link authority that is coming in to these parameterizedURLS? We can make that happen, using rel="prev"/"next" in conjunction with canonical tags.

First, you have to make sure that all pages within a paginated rel="prev"/"next" sequence are using the same parameter. Second, each parameterized URL can also canonicalize to the non-parameterized version of the URL. For example, we’ve got the same 4 pages of paginated content, but this time the user is being tracked via session ID 55:

Filtered Content and rel=“prev”/“next”

Now let’s say you’re working with parameters that filter the content within a paginated series. For example, say we’ve got a parameter on a paginated set of product listing URLS that filter via brand, such as:

Page 1: http://www.site.com/page1.html?brand=nike

In this situation, the content on each page will depend on this variable. For example:

Page 1: http://www.site.com/page1.html?brand=adidas

Page 2: http://www.site.com/page2.html?brand=adidas

Will be returning a completely different set of products than:

Page 1: http://www.site.com/page1.html?brand=reebok

Page 2: http://www.site.com/page2.html?brand=reebok

If you believe there is value in having each filtered product type in Google’s index, your best plan of action is to create separate paginated sequences for each brand filter. You won’t be using canonical tags in this situation, since the content will be unique depending on the parameter. Here’s an example of how to handle this scenario:

Sorted Content and rel=“prev”/“next”

The last type of parameterized URL type we’re going to look at is sorted content. You’re more likely to find this type of parameter in a forum or blog type setting, though it will exist frequently on ecommerce sites as well. For example:

When you first arrive at the page, the URL might read:

Page 1: http://www.news-site.com/page1.html?order=oldest

But there may be an option to view the newest items first, resulting in this URL:

Page 1: http://www.news-site.com/page1.html?order=newest

There’s currently a fair amount of debate in the SEO community as to how to treat this type of situation. Though some would suggest attempting a separate rel=”prev”/”next” sequence for both “newest” and “oldest” sort method URLS, in our opinion this would essentially be indicating to Google that you would like them to index multiple paginated sequences of identical content. The only difference between these two paginated groups would be that the content is displayed in a different order, still putting you in dangerous territory for duplicate content.

Ayima recommends taking the safe route on this, and presenting only one sorted paginated sequence to Google for indexing. The default sort method should carry a rel="prev"/"next" pagination method:

The alternate sorting method, in this case newest, should be blocked from indexation. This is most quickly accomplished using URL Parameters in Webmaster Tools, specifying the parameter and allowing Googlebot to crawl only the default value.

These solutions may seem complicated at first, but they are easily manageable if you address each instance of pagination separately and apply the proper rule for each scenario. It may be helpful to consult this flow chart provided in order to simplify the decision making process:

We’ve seen many situations in which rel="prev"/"next" are implemented incorrectly, so be sure to double-check your chains upon completion. Dealing with these problems can be painful, but with careful planning and thorough implementation you’ll be successfully guiding Google through your site before pagination has a chance to ruin your day.

Reference URL : http://www.ayima.com/guides/conquering-pagination-guide.html

How to persuade customers they can trust your content

One of the tests of how successful your business is to check how much your customers trust you.

Unlike a quick sale, trust takes time, effort and diligence to earn. There are several ways in which a business can gain the trust of its customers. While providing them with the best-quality products and services works well, having transparent and realistic marketing practices in place can also go a long way in inspiring customer confidence.

As a marketer your job is two-fold. You’re not just entrusted with the faith that your existing customers have reposed in your business, you also have the additional responsibility of winning over new customers.

At no point is it an option to pick just one of the two groups and focus on them. It’s a constant balancing act and one that is richly rewarding if done right.

Using content is a great way to establish trust between your company and customers. However, creating trust-inspiring content can be a tricky affair, and if not done carefully, it can backfire.

Read on to learn about some tried and tested ways of using content to not just dazzle your target audiences, but also win over their trust and long-term loyalty.

Empathize with your audience

Before you try to win your audience over, you need to understand them. Observing customer behavior closely will help you here.

Investing in social listening tools like Mention is a great way to learn more about your users and how they feel about your brand. Discover the themes that resonate with your audience and create content around them to win them over. Shared values are a solid foundation to build lifelong relationships with your customers.

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Digging into your website’s analytics will also yield detailed customer profiles that will help you understand what your customers want and how they behave.

In addition to your regular analytics, try business dashboards like QlikView and shared visual analytics tools like Tableau to unearth data about how your audience interacts with your content at various online touchpoints.

The information you unearth can then be plugged back into your content to make it more meaningful and targeted to each stage of the purchase funnel.

A brand that speaks that same language as its users is a lot more likely to claim and retain their loyalties than one that does not.

Be interesting, yet honest

People care about stories, not about boring facts and figures. This is evident in how quickly celebrity gossip is lapped up by the masses while factual documentaries dealing with more serious problems enjoy only niche audiences. Tap into this fascination for stories by creating content that tells your customer about your brand but in interesting story-like formats.

Some examples of interesting storytelling ideas include slice of life stories from your employees that tell users the little things that go into building their favorite brand.

Or you could have a video testimonial from an existing customer telling the story of how your product transformed their life. You could even share the story of how your business came into being to build an emotional connection with your audience.

Here’s the story of how Varun Agrawal went from failing his engineering course to founding Alma Mater, India's biggest college memorabilia company, worth more than a million dollars: 

By baring your vulnerable side, you’re telling customers that you trust them with your story. Going by Robert Cialdini’s Principle of Reciprocity, you are sure to earn their trust back in kind.

A key aspect to keep in mind when storytelling is to keep your stories genuine. Users can smell a rat from a mile away and beat a hasty retreat as soon as they realize that they’re being fibbed to.

Keep up with trends

The most highly desired target demographic for brands right now is the controversially named millennials. The reasoning behind this is that as 16-30 year olds they are more likely to be the most ‘on-trend’ when it comes to technology, fashion, lifestyle, even politics. 

Make sure you stay on the top of your game by keeping yourself abreast of the latest industry trends. Not only will you become a trusted source of the latest news for your audience, you’ll also be respected for being relevant to what your audience seeks out.

Burberry goes for a decidedly younger look with ads featuring Emma Watson, targeted at 'millennials'. 

However, do not lose your brand identity in this quest for cool. Strike a balance between being trendy and experienced to make sure you’re taken seriously and not dismissed as the flavor of the week.

Give users new reasons to keep coming back to your content by giving them something distinctive and new every time they visit your page.

Establish your authority

Content is your calling card on the internet.

Publish funny memes and GIFs regularly? Users will flock to you to be entertained. Write great movie reviews? Movie buffs will flock to your site to read your reviews before shilling out dollars on the latest box office bonanza. Pride yourself on your detailed research reports and whitepapers? Expect users to quote you and look up to your brand as an authority in its domain. 

Talk show host and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, uses her substantial clout to promote new and upcoming authors through her eponymous Book Club. 

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Whatever your industry niche may be, work on developing content that commands this level of authority.

It’s impossible to fake quality. It’s also impossible to ignore quality. So when your users see quality content coming from your stables, the association of high quality rubs off onto your business and its image as well.

Have a content creation schedule

Before you say “Meh” remember that human beings are creatures of habit. From the toothpaste you use to your morning cuppa and your choice of smartphone, habit forms the basis of a lot of critical actions. More often than not, users trust cozy familiarity over the fresh-in-town upstarts.

Tip your hat to your users’ need for a routine by committing to a content calendar. By having a content creation schedule in place, you will not only keep your target audience engaged, but also portray yourself as more trustworthy and dependable to them.

It is extremely important that your audience keeps receiving updated and relevant content about your brand at regular intervals. Whether you publish infographics or blogs, do so in a consistent and predictable manner to let your audience know that you are active, present and constantly working to provide them with the desired information and solutions.

Be consistent

Taking a cue from the previous section, consistency should not end with posting regular content updates. It is even more critical to develop a distinct brand voice and tone, and maintain them across all the content that you publish, whether online or offline.

Avoid the unpredictability of being laugh out loud funny one day and boringly authoritarian the next. Any compromise on that front and your credibility and professionalism can become questionable.

Consistency in design, layout, colors and artwork across all your content channels helps your brand come across as more stable and reliable. In order to trust you, you will have to consistently give your audience what they expect of your brand.

Coca-Cola has managed to retain the essence of its brand through consistent imagery and typefaces over the last 130 years. 

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Make your content easily accessible

Out of sight is truly out of mind in our cluttered digital world. While it is a lot less effort to pick one content marketing platform and focus all your energies on it, this approach may not get you the best bang for your buck.

Understand that your audiences are voracious content consumers and flit from one medium to another in a matter of seconds.

To make sure that you reach them and leave a lasting impact in their minds, it is essential that your content is present on all the channels that are favored by your target audience. It doesn’t necessarily have to be completely new pieces of content for each channel. Repurposing existing content to suit the format of a new channel is a quick fix that is light on the pocket and effective in reaching out to larger audiences.

National Geographic has adopted Facebook’s Instant Articles format to reach wider audiences.

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The more extensively you distribute your high-quality content, the easier you will make it for audiences to find and access your brand. This in turn, will bring you positive word of mouth and solidify your position in your industry. It will also make it easier for customers to trust you.

Be factually correct and support your claims

It is so easy to get carried away in your own yarns that the line between facts and fabrication get blurred ever so lightly. Trouble is, it’s equally easy today for consumers to discover the truth behind your claims.

In such a scenario, the only workable option is to stick to the absolute truth in every piece of content you create, curate and publish. Make sure that the information you provide in your content is 100% factual and all your facts, quotes and statistics are supported with authoritative third-party citations.

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Users become apprehensive when they come across information that isn’t adequately cited. Fact checking and citing your references will show your readers that you care enough to be honest and precise. This is the first step towards winning your users’ trust.

Respond to questions and feedback

It makes sense to answer customers’ questions and respond to their feedback (positive and negative) at the earliest, without making them wait too long. This way your audience will know that you’re always around to solve their problems and respond to their queries when they need you to, and eventually view you as trustworthy.

Reference URL : http://tinyurl.com/nk3djl6

How can marketers use TV ads to drive searches?

How can marketers use offline ads to drive brand and product searches? In this post I'll look at some examples, stats and suggested best practices. 

Using TV and other offline ads to drive search behaviour

Driving search isn't necessarily the prime purpose of offline ads, but marketers should be aware that many are likely to respond to ads using the web. 

They may be watching TV with their smartphones, tablets or laptops to hand. Or they may see an ad on the train and respond by opening a mobile browser. 

In these scenarios, marketers need to do as much as they can to make sure customers get to the correct website or landing page. 

Displaying a URL is one way to do this, another is to display a call to action to search for a particular term. 

Here's an example from Sonos which I used in a previous post on customer reviews. 

It's beautifully simple and the call to action couldn't be clearer:

People who search for the term are greeted by a search results page full of five star ratings, which gets the point across very nicely.  

Of course, you need a product that's good enough to generate such great reviews first, but if you do have that, why not make the most of it? 

Why use a search call to action? 

I'm going to call them search calls to action for now because that's how I've referred to them before, and I don't know of an alternative term. 

Anyway, here are some convincing reasons to use them: 

1. It's quicker for users. It's easier to search then enter a URL.
2. It's more memorable. You have a matter of seconds to convey the message and it's also easier for viewers of the TV ad or billboard to remember a three or four word phrase. 
3. People are multi-screening. Your target audience is likely to be watching TV with a smartphone or other internet device to hand. 
4. Attribution. If you have aligned the TV or offline ad with a PPC campaign around a particular phrase, it's possible to track (at least partially) the success of the ad. 

Why display a URL instead? 

Of course, it's possible to do both...

1. A URL, if used, takes people straight to the correct landing page. 
2. Securing the top position in organic search isn't always easy, so brands need to be careful that any online searches go to the right landing page if using a call to action. 
3. Unlike URLs, using search CTAs in offline ads means that brands need to spend money on PPC ads. 
4. Competitors can muscle in on these searches. If they see competitors using search calls in ads, they can quickly bid on related terms to 'steal' some of the traffic. 

Stats

• According to the IAB, 78% of US adults who watch TV use another device while doing so.  
• The smartphone is the predominant second screen: Two in three smartphone owners multiscreen while watching TV; over half of all computer or tablet owners multiscreen. 
• A study by Marketing Science found that TV ads did prompt users to browse online, and that 'action-focused ads' increase the likelihood that users will go online and make a purchase. 

Examples and best practices

What constitutes best practice here is yet to be determined clearly as there seem to have been relatively few studies into this topic. 

However, that won't stop me suggesting a few... 

Keep the URL or CTA on screen for long enough

It may seem obvious, but many TV ads feature a URL or search term for just a fraction of the ad's length. Give them time to see it. 

In the BT ad below, the URL is shown for just two seconds of a 50 second ad.  

Yes. it's a simple URL to remember, but just a few more seconds increases the chance that people will see and recall the URL.

Make sure you rank for likely search responses

This Barclay's ad calls for people to search for 'Barclay's Blue Rewards'. 

Sure enough, the brand occupies the top slots in the SERPs, while no competitor brands rank on page one. 

Back it up with PPC ads

PPC ads ensure that, as people search for the term they've been asked to, or other terms related to the product, you're guaranteed to be top of the page. As in the Barclay's example above. 

Ensure that landing pages back up the ad

If people search for a specific URL or term after viewing an ad, the landing page should reinforce the ad. 

Here, the Barclay's page uses the same imagery as the ad, and begins to describe the features of the product. 

This reassures searchers that they've reached the right page and ensures that the transition between TV ad and website is as smooth as possible. 

Landing pages should mobile-friendly

As the previous stats show, people are more likely to have a smartphone to hand than any other device, so landing pages have to be mobile-friendly. 

Again, Barclay's gets it right: 

In summary

I think this is an area where marketers have plenty of room for improvement.

For TV ads to be successful in driving online searches (and ultimately sales) then the whole campaign needs to be joined up.

Barclay's here provides a good example, but others are guilty of failing to ensure search positions before ads are broadcast, not displaying URLs or CTAs clearly enough, or not reinforcing the ad message on the landing page.

Reference URL: http://tinyurl.com/qh75pfq