Are you a WordPress user who has been experiencing issues with paginated page URLs? If so, you’re not alone. Many website owners have faced the problem of spam sites linking to non-existent paginated pages on their WordPress sites, causing Google to want to index these pages. In this article, we will walk you through how to remove paginated page URLs in WordPress, specifically for static pages.
But first, let’s understand what paginated URLs are and whether or not you actually need them. A paginated URL is one that ends with the format “/page/{number}/” and is typically used when displaying threaded posts on a page. By default, WordPress automatically creates these pages for archives such as categories and for standard pages.
For archives, WordPress has a “smart” code that knows how many paginated pages exist for the archive. If you try to access an archive using a URL like “/page/99999/” and there aren’t that many paginated pages, you will receive a 404 error. However, static pages don’t have this “smart” method for paginated URLs. It is impossible for WordPress to know if a static page has pagination or how many paginated pages exist. This means that if you try to access a standard WordPress page using the paginated URL format, you may be able to infinitely view the page using any “/page/” URL format and any number at the end.
For SEO reasons, it is recommended to redirect these unnecessary paginated URLs to the main page with a 301 redirect or return a 404 error. But when do you actually need paginated URLs? You only need access to paginated URLs on pages that display posts with next and previous links or numbered pagination that refreshes the page to display the next set of posts. If you are displaying paginated posts on standard pages, it is recommended to use an AJAXED pagination, such as a “load more” button, to allow users to view more posts without having to refresh the page.
Now that you understand what paginated pages are and how they are used, let’s dive into how to remove them in WordPress. The code snippet provided in the article can be used to prevent paginated URLs from all standard pages. It checks if the page being requested is a standard page and paginated. If so, it redirects it back to the main page without the “/page/” in the URL. However, be cautious when using this code and ensure that you are not using any sort of pagination on your site pages that you want to keep intact.
If you have some pages that do require pagination, you can modify the code snippet to exclude those pages. Simply modify the “$excluded_pages” array to be a comma-separated list of the page IDs you wish to exclude. All other pages that aren’t part of this variable will redirect if the user tries accessing the paginated version of that page.
If you only want to remove the paginated URLs from the homepage, you can do so by setting your site to use a static homepage. After setting your static homepage, the paginated pages should be removed. However, if this doesn’t happen automatically, you can use the provided code snippet to redirect the paginated homepage pages back to the homepage.
Now, the question arises: is it necessary to remove these paginated URLs? Technically, if you don’t have links on the page to the paginated sub-pages, search engine bots should never find them. However, if you previously had pagination on the page and removed it or your site was backlink spammed, Google may have indexed your paginated pages. While WordPress does add a canonical meta tag to avoid duplicate content issues, it doesn’t hurt to remove the paginated pages since they aren’t needed.
In conclusion, removing paginated page URLs in WordPress can help improve your site’s SEO and avoid any potential duplicate content issues. The provided code snippets make it easy to redirect these unnecessary paginated URLs to the main page or return a 404 error. Whether or not you choose to remove these URLs is up to you, but it’s always a good idea to ensure your site is optimized for search engines.
