Handling Pagination on the Home Page with SEO Strict URLs

A classic SEO Strict URLs edge case appears when pagination is rendered on the site home page. Instead of a clean route, the next page can become something like domain.ru/index.html?pg_start=1. Technically it works, but visually and canonically it is not what you want.

Why It Happens

The home page is a special resource. Depending on how friendly URLs are configured, Evolution CMS may still treat it as index.html internally. Pagination snippets then append their query parameters to that physical file name.

Main Risks

• duplicate versions of the home page
• ugly pagination URLs in search results
• confusing canonical behavior for crawlers

Practical Fixes

• Make sure only one canonical home URL is indexed.
• If the listing lives on the front page, explicitly set canonical tags for the first page.
• Consider moving a paginated news list to its own section instead of the root page.
• Check the pagination snippet output and rewrite rules together, not separately.

What to Review

domain.ru/
domain.ru/index.html
domain.ru/index.html?pg_start=1

If all three resolve, the site needs normalization. The cleanest long-term setup is to keep the home page canonical, avoid exposing index.html publicly, and move heavy paginated content into a dedicated section where URL rules stay predictable.