How should I set up pagination on category pages in 2024?

How should I set up pagination on category pages in 2024?

'Q: rel=next/prev is dead. So what do I actually do with page 2, 3, 4?'

Short answer: Use real crawlable links between pages, self-canonical each page, and never canonical page 2 back to page 1.

The longer version: Build it like this.
— Make pagination links true anchor tags with unique URLs (?page=2), not buttons that fire JS only.
— Each paginated page self-canonicals to itself. Page 2 is not a duplicate of page 1; it has different products.
— Don't noindex deep pages by default — that can strip the links to products on them. If crawl budget is a real problem, address it with a 'view all' or better internal linking instead.
— Avoid infinite scroll as the only path; pair it with paginated URLs so crawlers reach product 200.

Example: a store canonicalized every page to page 1; products only on page 4 fell out of the index entirely. Self-canonicals brought them back.

Rule of thumb: each page of results is its own page, so it gets its own canonical.

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