paginated pages
Pages using rel=next and rel=prev indicate multi-part content sequences
What it is
crawler.sh flags a page as paginated when it contains <link rel="next"> or <link rel="prev"> tags in its HTML head. These tags indicate the page is part of a multi-page sequence. This is check #14 in the SEO analysis.
Why it matters for SEO
Paginated pages need careful SEO handling:
- Indexation strategy - Search engines need to understand the relationship between paginated pages. Without proper signals, they may index each page independently, diluting ranking signals across the sequence.
- Content discovery - Products or articles on later pages (page 5, page 10) may be harder for search engines to discover and index.
- Crawl depth - Deep pagination increases the number of clicks from the homepage to reach content, which can reduce crawl priority.
- Duplicate content risk - Paginated pages often share templates, headers, and boilerplate text, which can appear as near-duplicate content.
Why it matters for AEO
AI answer engines may process paginated sequences differently than single pages. If your content is spread across many pages, AI systems might only process the first page and miss important information on subsequent pages. Ensuring pagination is properly structured helps AI systems understand the full scope of your content.
How to fix it
Paginated pages are not necessarily a problem - this check is informational. Review your pagination strategy:
Best practices:
- Use
rel="next"andrel="prev"to indicate page relationships - Each paginated page should have a self-referencing canonical (don’t canonicalize all pages to page 1 unless they truly duplicate it)
- Consider a “view all” page for short sequences where performance allows
- Ensure paginated pages have unique titles (e.g., “Products - Page 2”)
Common issues to check:
- Pages canonicalizing to page 1 when each page has unique content
- Missing
rel="next"/rel="prev"tags - Paginated pages blocked by robots.txt
- Deep pagination creating content that’s too many clicks from the homepage
What crawler.sh reports
In the CLI, paginated pages appear under the “Paginated pages” section of crawler seo output. Each affected URL is listed. In the desktop app, they appear in the SEO Issues card. This is an informational check - the pages aren’t necessarily problematic, but they should be reviewed.
