Pagination with parameter and rel prev rel next

[Red_educativa]

Hi there:

I have a doubt about how using the pagination and rel prev | rel next, I will try to sum up this example of pagination:

the page number 1 is SEO friendly in order to index it, It also gets metarobots: index, follow.

The other ones (pagination), instead, have noindex, follow. In fact, these URLs are not SEO friendly because of they have the parameter "?"  to set up pagination, so for this reason, in the past, It has been decided not to index them.

Would you suggest also to use rel="prev" rel="next" in this situation? Or would it be better to set up the others ones (pagination) in "SEO friendly" and then, to set up the rel prev | rel next?

Thanks a lot in advance for helping

Greetings

Francesca

[jorgen_juel]

Hi @Red_educativa S.L.,

I would suggest using rel="prev/next" in this situation, yes.

When you are specifying a "rel" attribute you are specifying a relationship between the current document and the linked one. The value "prev" and "next" is specifying the relationship to be "The next [previous] document in a selection".

If you instead would use nofollow, google's spiders will not crawl the page. A nofollow value is "Links to an unendorsed document, like a paid link.".

However, this being said, it would be good for SEO to include a "view all" page. This will include all the content on a single page.  You should then use rel="canonical" on the link to the view-all page (this will send users from search results to your view-all page. If you instead wish to use your first page in the series, you should only use rel next and prev (not rel canonical).

Have a look at this video from google for more information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njn8uXTWiGg

I hope this helps.

--
Jørgen Juel

[Red_educativa]

Hi Jørgen.

At the moment, I will apply rel ="prev" | rel="next" in order to set up pagination...currently pagination has "noindex, follow". I agree with you about "view all", I think it's the best option, in the future I'd like to set it up...

Thx for replying!!

Francesca

[Dr-Pete]

Just one note here - I generally wouldn't use "View All" and rel=prev/next. It's a bit of a mixed signal. If you can create a friendly, fast-loading "View All" page, then rel=canonical the paginated URLs back to the "View All" page.

Agreed, though, that your Nofollow, Noindex is basically overriding the rel=prev/next. I've honestly heard mixed signals from people (including prominent SEOs who handle very large media sites) about how effective rel=prev/next is. I think Meta-robots is a stronger signal, so if you're really worried about duplicates, it's probably doing fine. If you want page 3 of 8 (for example) to rank for some reason, then rel=prev/next opens up that possibility, but it may also be a bit weaker cue in terms of duplication. It's a bit of a trade-off. If your currently approach is keeping pages out of the index, I'd probably leave it alone.

[jorgen_juel]

I also agree with you, however if your view all page use more than acceptable time to load, I would still suggest having both a view all page and rel next/prev (but not the canonical aswell). By doing so you simply send your visitors hot your first page in the series, however maintaining the ability for users to view all the content.

[Dr-Pete]

Ah... you're saying have a "View All" page but then not canonical to it? I guess my only concern about that is that then you've got another crawl path and possible duplicates. In that case, you might want to Noindex the "View All" and only have it available to users. It depends a lot on the scope of pages we're talking, as always.

[Red_educativa]

Thank you very much!

Francesca