pagination and duplicate content with one paragraph in each page with totally different listing

Question

I have a module in my site which can be accessed like sitename.com/module/

This module has pagination.

In the first page i have two paragraphs which describe about the site. This will appear in all pages and pagination links can be crawled.

So page 1 will have two para and a set of listing and page 2 will have the same para with totally different set of listing.

So here the paragraph is duplicated were as the listing below the paragraph are nonidentical that is they are unique for all pages.

Also the title tag and description are duplicated for all pages....

Assuming that I am adding page 2, page 3 to title tags and description... will it make a difference... will that too be considered duplicate content... (because only the words page 2 are page 3 is extra in the title and description of all pages... The rest of the title text ares same... like 'once upon a time page 1' for first page and once upon a time page 2 for the second page and so on.

I assume to following to not to be penalized by search engines as duplicate.

1. I can make that paragraph appear only in first page and I can hide for all other pages
2. If I do the above then the title, description will be duplicate though I add extra text like 'page 2' in the title and description and in the content above the to para
3. Or instead of the above 2 points i can use canonical URL for pagination.

This this correct? besides my questions are:

1. Can I have duplicate title tags while using canonical URL?
2. While using canonical URL and duplicate content in title with the string 'page 2'... will it makes a difference. for example the title is 'once there lived a king' and then other pages will have 'once there lived a king page 2', etc...
3. If using canonical URL can I have a paragraph in all pages or should I show it on only first page to prevent duplicate content.
4. Of I am not using canonical URL and showing the same static para in all pages with different listing and 'page 2', page 3 in title... will it become duplicate content?

I hope this makes sense, if you find anything is confusing then please specify in comments so that i will update my question according to your suggestion.

Answer 1

What are you hoping for from pagination?

• Users to click through multiple pages to find what they are looking for?
• Googlebot to be able to find all your items and crawl their pages?
• A way to distribute "pagerank" to each of your products so that the individual product pages work well?
• Organic search engine traffic to each of the paginated pages?

These are typically what people who implement paginated listing pages are hoping for. Unfortunately, none of those will happen. I will address them one at a time.

Users Using Pagination

My experience is that users don't like using pagination. When I've looked into the usage data on sites that have pagination, 2% to 10% of users even click on the pagination. Other users tend to find something on page 1, use search to find what they are looking for, or prefer using filters to narrow down the choices.

Googlebot Will Find Everything

This is one place where pagination can still be used. Googlebot will be able to find everything by crawling all the paginated pages. However, it is not the best way to tell Googlebot about your site. A sitemap.xml file will serve the same purpose.

Passing Pagerank

Pagination is an extremely bad and inefficient way to pass pagerank around your site. Take the case where page 1 has 10 products and a link to page 2. 90% of the pagerank from page 1 will go to the products. 10% will go to page 2. The 10 products listed on page 2 will have 10% of the pagerank that the products on page 1 had. Page 3 will have 1% of the pagerank that page 1 had. By the time you get to page 4, there is not enough pagerank to matter.

Getting Search Traffic to Land on Each Page

First there is the pagerank issue. The only page in the pagination chain that will have enough pagerank to rank for anything is page 1. Then there is the duplication issue which you are asking about. Why would Google index two pages with so much similar content? Then there is the keyword targeting issue. Are you going to target page 2 at a different keyword than page 1? If it is targeted at the same keyword then the first page with more pagerank will just rank. If its targeted at a different keyword, why wouldn't you build a better landing page targeted at that keyword?

So What To Do

• Implement sitemap.xml
• Implement filters to allow users to narrow the list of items they see
• Link your product pages to each other to more efficiently pass pagerank and let Googlebot find all your products through links. You can use "similar products", "related products", "people who looked at this product also looked at X".

If what I have written here doesn't convince you to get rid of pagination entirely then:

• Instead of canonical, use the recommended rel=prev and rel=next to let Googlebot know about the pagination
• Use the same title and same text on each page of the pagination. Googlebot won't index and send traffic to page 2, but there isn't much you can do to make that happen anyway. Even if the pages aren't indexed, they will still be crawled and Googlebot will be able to use them to find all your products.