SEO Compatible Pagination

Quote from: Mark at Feb 20, 2007, 09:08 AM

Assuming you are using Ditto 2:

&summarize = number of results per page
&paginate = 1
&paginateAlwaysShowLinks= 1

Then add this after the Ditto call:

<div id="ditto_wrapper">Page <strong>[+currentPage+]</strong> of <strong>[+total+]</strong> Articles <div id="ditto_pages">[+previous+] [+pages+] [+next+]</div></div>

Thanks, Mark. This was WAY to easy...

However, how would one go about a more SEO-Friendly approach for pagination? I am using Ditto for output of External Articles (100+), with ~50 articles per page... however, page.html?start=50 would never be indexed in the SERPs, and thus I wouldn’t obtain the benefit of links/content from pages 2 through N.

I am sure this issue has come up before, any recommendations?

The only way I see it being possible is to not use Friendly Alias path and then grab the number to the right of the last / as the start ID. However, this would neither be reliable nor optimal.

Theoretically you could write a rewrite rule to transform /x to ?start=### but that would be specific to one page...

Quote from: Mark at Mar 15, 2007, 11:53 PM

The only way I see it being possible is to not use Friendly Alias path and then grab the number to the right of the last / as the start ID. However, this would neither be reliable nor optimal.

Theoretically you could write a rewrite rule to transform /x to ?start=### but that would be specific to one page...

Indeed. I may just end up doing that, as the RewriteCond would easily allow for specifically targeted rewriting...

I wish I could use mod_rewrite to take "articles2.html" and convert to "articles.html?start=50" ...only I’m pretty sure you can’t perform calculations on referenced patterns during rewrite process, or even at all for that matter.

However, I really don’t see the articles growing THAT exponentially, so a few manual one-liner rewrite rules per page really isn’t that awful an idea in this particular case.

Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll let you know how it goes...