Pagination in search engine optimization vs programmer?

Question

Search Engine Optimization

Good day.
One programmer has a project on opencart - an online store with pagination.
Pagination pages began to rank, which, obviously, will be announced as duplicates of promoted pages.
We remembered, googled and got 2 main options for solving the problem:
1) Write rel="canonical" from all pagination pages to the first one in the /category/ category;
2) Set rel="canonical" from all pagination pages to /category/?limit=100
Google's recommendations for rel="prev" and rel="next" were decided to be ignored.
As a SEO, I like the first option more, so that the /category/ category page is promoted, but this page will not have all the products, and /category/?limit=100 has it, but to promote such a url ... brrr.
From here we have 3 questions:
1) which of the options would you choose?
2) will rel="canonical" work if it is added to the head using a java script activated on the page?
3) maybe there are already ready-made adequate modules that correctly add rel="canonical" to opencart for pagination?

Answer 1

I would do the canonical according to the 1st option and that's it. Even if there are some pagination pages of the online store in the index, it's normal. Another entry point. But if you are very annoyed, you can ask in the search console not to scan (url parameters).

Answer 2

It needs to work for:
1. id1: id-categories in the URL: /category/50
2. id2: unique names of categories in transliteration /category/raznye-tovary
Do not forget to specify the main one in step 2 (canonical).
3. page1: so we write in the URL: /category/50/1
Transitions - are done through .htaccess in Apache through mod_rewrite.
In the header (for the canonical tag) - you need to edit the site's PHP code.

Answer 3

Maybe try another option?
Uniqueize TDKh1 on these pages by adding "-page N". And for all pages, except for the first one, we remove the SEO text. Yes, it’s a bit tedious, especially the programmer will not like it much, but in this way the necessary pages will remain in the index and there will be no duplicates. And by the way, in this case, you can just use next/prev for the paginator.
And yes, what you add to the head via JS will not work properly.

Answer 4

The first option
Damn what the fuck zhs, this is some kind of tin, a crutch drives a crutch

Answer 5

Of course, the first option is just canonicals from paginations to the main category page. I don’t know about the module, I haven’t met it, but putting canonicals on pagination is a very simple task, especially for a programmer

Answer 6

1. Use 1 option.
Why are they on it?
- A person will use pagination if he wants to
- The search engine will successfully run through all the pages just with the help of prev next and index all products
3. Look at pagination in ocStore, it seems to be implemented there ok

Answer 7

I'd rather not install modules, it's better to fix everything by hand, in fact, everything is very simple there.
It is necessary not only to register canonicals, but also to remove duplicates that are created in Opencart.
I wrote a detailed article about this:
https://in-it24.com/stranicy-paginaciy-opencart-2/
it’s better not to hang extra modules, but do everything yourself, wisely!