Google’s webmaster trend analyst, John Mueller, has recently advised webmasters to not completely follow big sites when it comes to SEO. This topic was discussed in a Reddit thread where a person asked whether the webmasters should listen to Google’s advice or follow the footsteps of big businesses.
Primarily this question was asked regarding canonical tags for pagination. The person who posted the Reddit thread pointed out that according to Google, canonical pages should point a canonical tag at themselves. But on the other hand, big sites point their canonical tag on the first page in a series.
According to John Mueller, many experts get it wrong after following big sites about SEO. The big sites can succeed in search ranking despite the things done wrong.
He noted that technical SEO follows a logical process and there is a right and wrong way to do things. The use of canonical tags is for those pages which need to get indexed. When a person uses a self-referencing canonical on every page, it ensures that all pages of a series get indexed automatically. If every page in the series has a canonical tag and is pointing to page one, then Google will only index the first page in the series. So, if a person is facing such issues on a regular basis, it is best to consult popular SEO agencies, like the Naples SEO when it comes to canonical tags on the pages.
Mueller shared that using canonical tags on each page has its own share of benefits and disadvantages. He said that the advantage of a per-page canonical is to ensure all links to all pages will be found. The disadvantage is that it would be difficult to rank the paginated pages.
Several users in the Reddit thread advised using self-referencing canonical in a paginated series.