Pagination on related content within a subject

[BabelPR]

A client has come to us with new content and sections for their site. The two main sections are "Widget Services" - the sales pages, and "Widget Guide" - a non-commercial guide to using the widgets etc.

Both the Services and Guide pages contain the same pages (red widgets, blue widgets, triangle widgets), and - here's the problem - the same first paragraph. i.e.

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Blue widget services

Blue widgets were invented in 1906 by Professor Blue. It was only a coincidence that they were blue.

We stock a full range of blue widgets, we were voted best blue widget handler at widgetcon 2013. Buy one now

See our guide to blue widgets here

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Guide to blue widgets

Blue widgets were invented in 1906 by Professor Blue. It was only a coincidence that they were blue.

The thing about blue widgets as they're not at all like red widgets at all. For starters, they're blue.

Find more information about our blue widgets here

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In all of these pages, the first paragraph is ~200 words and provides a great introduction to the subject, and the rest of the page is 600-800 words, making these pages unique enough to justify being different pages.

We want to deal with this by declaring each page as a paginated version of a two page article on each type of widget (using rel=prev/next). Our thinking is that Google probably handles introuctions/headers on paginated content in a sensible way.

Has anyone experienced this before? Is there any issues on using rel="prev" and rel="next" when they're not strictly paginated?

[Dr-Pete]

Are you saying to treat "Service > Blue Widgets" as page 1 and "Guide > Blue Widgets" as page 2? I think Google would likely ignore rel=prev/next in that context, but it's hard to say. You might be better off using rel=canonical. I'm not sure that both version have great search value, honestly.

I've seen rel=prev/next used on a series that wasn't strictly paginated, but where there was a clear order. Unfortunately, it can be really tough to measure the effectiveness of rel=prev/next, even on fairly large sites.