Rel=cannonical vs. noindex.follow for paginated pages

[fthead9]

I"m working on a real estate site that has multiple listing pages, e.g. http://www.hhcrealestate.com/manhattan-beach-mls-real-estate-listings

I'm trying to get the main result page to rank for that particular geo-keyword, i.e. "manhattan beach homes for sale". I want to make sure all of the individual listings on the paginated pages, 2,3, 4 etc. still get indexed.

Is it better to add

to all of the paginated pages, i.e.manhattan-beach-mls-real-estate-listings-2, manhattan-beach-mls-real-estate-listings--3, manhattan-beach-mls-real-estate-listings-4, etc. or is it better to add noindex,follow to those pages?

[Dan-Petrovic]

My choice with be a rel canonical, however have you considered using rel prev and next?

[Vahe.Arabian]

Agree with Dean on this one. Using rel prev and next is a more direct approach. A good answer for him!

[fthead9]

I did look into that and my issue is the pages are dynamic. In order to implement it we'd have to create a script to create the correct tag sequence on the fly. Since the pages already load relatively slowly with all of the images I'd prefer a static solution so it doesn't cause the pages to load any slower. Do you have any experience with implementing the rel=prevandnext? Did the script cause any delays? Thanks

[Dr-Pete]

I actually find NOINDEX, FOLLOW a bit easier to implement and very effective in most cases. If you use rel-canonical, Google would prefer that you canonical to a "View All" version of the page (not to page 1 of search results). Practically, though, either will work.

I've also had decent luck with rel=prev/next, although implementation is very tricky. One other problem is that Bing doesn't honor it.

This subject can get very tricky, and no one (even Google's own reps) seem to have the one "right" answer. I find, in practice, that it depends a lot on the site and scope. Adam Audette has an article that shows just how complex pagination can get:

http://searchengineland.com/five-step-strategy-for-solving-seo-pagination-problems-95494