Experiences with pagination rel=next and prev

[inlinear]

I have read about people saying that using the rel next and prev tags did not take any positive effect on their sites...

In my case I do not have a typical pagination 1,2,3 but a site about tours in the amazon where each tour-description is divided into a page with

1. an overview,
2. itinerary,
3. Dates & Prices

so instead of Site 1,2,3 Buttons I have the Btns: Tour Overview, Itinerary, Prices

So as all the of pages belong together I thought the rel=next & prev tags will be useful.
Also I want to avoid duplicate content when the page title of the three is pretty similar. Right now the Title is like this:
Amazon Tour XXX YYYY
Amazon Tour XXX - itinerary
Amazon Tour XXX - prices

The description text is more different...

Is this the best practice in my case?

Thanks for all your opinions!

best regards,
Holger

[Everett]

Hello Holger,

I apologize for the wait on this. We rely on the community to help answer questions, but sometimes nobody is able to help out in a timely manner so we answer them ourselves as well.

I do not think rel next/prev is the best solution for the situation described. I think the best practice would be to have all of that content on one page. You could change the view of the content (such as when someone clicks the "itinerary" tab) by adding a hash symbol (#) to the URL (e.g. amazon-tour/#itinerary amazon-tour/#prices) to avoid duplicate content issues and make the landing page more robust and useful. You might combine this with the use of a rel canonical tag for that page.

Please let me know if you still need assistance with this question. Again, sorry about the wait!

[inlinear]

Hi Everett,

thanks for answering. I also thought just using one page but each subject gets pretty long so using pagination with rel=next / prev as I also want to "indicate the relationship between component URLs" seems to be the best practice in this case.

I'm also using the canonical tag... so the otherway round, what could be a negative effect in my case? I put now one tour online and I can't see any negative effect. The pages have been indexed and google shows them up for my keywords.

I was hoping that somebody has done experiences and can talk about. At this moment I have no negative effects about this practice and a would recommend it.

[Everett]

Thank you for sharing your direct experience with this strategy.

Do all of these URLs share the same rel canonical tag, or do they each have their own self-referencing rel canonical? I am assuming they each have their own if they are all showing up for searches.

It would really help if you could share the domain so we could have a look. However, as long as the content on each page is not "thin" and is mostly unique to that page I think this strategy would be fine.

[inlinear]

Hi Everett,
yes you are right, the URLs have their own self-referencing rel canonical.
The URLs are:

Rio Negro Expedition

Overview-Page:
http://www.amazonasabenteuer.de/amazonas-expeditionen/rio-negro-amazonas-regenwald-expedition-uebersicht.php

Itinerary-Page:
http://www.amazonasabenteuer.de/amazonas-expeditionen/rio-negro-amazonas-regenwald-expedition-reiseablauf.php

Dates & Prices Page:
http://www.amazonasabenteuer.de/amazonas-expeditionen/rio-negro-amazonas-regenwald-expedition-reisedaten-preise.php

[Everett]

Having looked at the site I can see that the content is more than unique and useful enough. Great job on that!

By using "rel next / prev" in this way you are giving Google the signal that you want the first page (i.e. rio-negro-amazonas-regenwald-expedition-uebersicht.php ) to rank higher than the other two pages for most searches, but that the other pages are unique and should stay indexed. If this is what you intend then I think it is a great plan. However, if all of the pages are equally important, and if each has its own search terms to target, it may be better to let the subsequent pages stand on their own.

It sounds like this is working for you at the moment. Thank you for sharing your findings with us!

[inlinear]

Hi Everett,

thanks a lot you your input!

Holger