Pagination in Forums and Avoiding Duplicate Title Tags

[ThridHour]

This post is deleted!

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Add the rel=prev/next tags to your threads - that should take care of it.

[ThridHour]

I failed to mention in the original question that those tags are being used.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Hmm, then you should be good. I wouldn't set up 301 redirects as it would mess up people viewing page 2,3,4,etc of the thread.

another thing you can do is create a "View All" version of the thread with all of the replies on one page and set a canonical to that. That would be the page that appears in serps.

[ThridHour]

The view all version is something I've thought about doing.

The 301 redirects would be from the current URL structure to Google's example URL structure, not having page 3 redirect to page 1 etc.

Thanks

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Ah. I would only 301 redirect if you are able to change the mod_rewrite rules and the forum script/template files to match the new URL structure.

The above plus having the rel=prev/next tags should give Google enough signals to understand your site structure.

[JaneCopland]

Hi there,

The rel='prev' you have on the second page points to http://lds.net/forums/topic/35625-april-fools/page-1, which in turn 301 redirects to http://lds.net/forums/topic/35625-april-fools/. I would change this to point to the resolving URL.

For the sake of consistency, you may want to use " instead of ' around prev and next as well, simply as this is standard.

Another good, comprehensive guide to pagination is here: http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html in case you're keen on looking at your range of options.

[ThridHour]

This post is deleted!

[JaneCopland]

Sorry, what I meant is that you're using an ' symbol instead of " to surround the word prev. I doubt that makes a difference, but it would be correct to use ".

[ThridHour]

gotcha, thanks!