Will pagination affect google rank on old page names

[feemish]

I have good ranking on some of my pages which I dont want to lose.

Some of these pages have lots of products on them and would benefit from pagination... however might this affect the ranking of the old 'full product list' page name?

Ie

If I have a good ranking page;

http://ashop.co.uk/acatalog/nice_ranking_page.html

How do you think it would be affect by changing it to

http://ashop.co.uk/acatalog/nice_ranking_page-p1.html
http://ashop.co.uk/acatalog/nice_ranking_page-p2.html
http://ashop.co.uk/acatalog/nice_ranking_page-p3.html

I know 'http://myshop.co.uk/acatalog/nice_ranking_page.html' would still be on site, but it would be at a lower level with each of the paginated pages above it..

[Mike Hughes]

They will be different pages with different page names, titles, content and links. I don't think the ranking will be the same and I don't see any reason for them to rank better so logically it suggests the ranking will be worse.

You can probably manage the move to minimise the impact by using redirects from the existing pages and I kind of believe in principle that you shouldn't let a short term SEO impact prevent you from building a better site for your users. The improved usability and user experience should compensate for any loss of traffic and the SEO position will improve over time putting you in a better position long term.

[feemish]

thanks for your thoughts

[peblaco]

Paginated pages do not get indexed on search engines, or they should not, because the SellerDeck 2014 adds a canonical tag link on paginated pages linking to the full section page instructing search engines to index only one page nice_ranking_page.html.

[feemish]

Thats fantastic info Louise thanks a lot. Clears up the issue for me

[feemish]

I can see the rel="canonical" pointing to the 'master' page on paginated pages, as you describe, which removes the worry I had about ranking.

I've just noticed that on a SPP product page, there is also a rel="canonical" link, but this just points to the SPP product page. However, exactly the same text appears on the SPP page as it does for the product on its section page. (if you have for example 'image on right text wrapped around')
Does this matter?
Should the SPP page have a canonical link to the section page?
and could that be enabled?

[peblaco]

If Product Page is ticked it has it's own canonical tag because by default there is usually a product summary layout without a product description which links through to the more detailed Product Page with a product description.

[feemish]

Thanks for your interest

I have sections of products and each product has its own product page to click through to,

On the sections I have 'image on right text wrapped around' chose for product layout..
So the product description appears on the section pages.

(I have done this because this is how my current live page is set up and it has good rankings... so I dont think I want to remove all the product description text from the section page and have it only on the product pages (SPP))

However this means that the same product description text appears on both the section page and the product page. I am wondering if
A/ that matters?
B/ the product page could be made to be canonical linked to the section page. So google doesnt worry about the repeated text..

Ideally I would like to have no prodcut descriptions on the section page, (and just have it on the product page) but I am worried about removing it as it will drastically change the page, and possible lose the good ranking?

Perhaps I am over thinking this.

[peblaco]

For user experience, visitors don't need to click through to a Product Page if you are showing them the same thing again. I don't know if Google would have an issue because of duplicate content, but I expect they wouldn't recommend it.

[feemish]

Thanks for your thoughts.

The SPP is what google recommends after all.. so I think I should be going that way... and it would look better to have my sections without the text, and have the text only on the product pages for sure..

I'm just a tad worried about taking all the text off my section pages which rank so well presently.

But maybe because they will still link to the same text.. albeit on linked pages.. that it wont actually make much difference.

SPP is a nice layout for sure, and it also makes linking to social media for specific items work easily.
too many benefits to ignore.

[peblaco]

As an alternative you could use the product summary with a short description to retain some text, then on the Product Page have a longer description, one method is to use the extended info description for the Product Page.