Rel=next and rel=prev meta tags

[RocoClothing]

Hi,
We have recently implemented the rel=next and rel=prev meta tags on the 
category pages of our website.

Currently for example if on page 2 we have the following:

href="http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/" />
href="http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=1" />
href="http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=3" />

For each page we are using the same canonical tag which is the url for 
the 1st page in the category.
Is this the correct way to impletment it or should the canonical tag for 
page 2 be as follows:

href="http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=2" />

I have also seen some companies ommiting the canonical tag on pages 
after page 1 and just using the prev and nexts.

Could anyone advise as to what the ideal implementation would be for this?

Regards
Patrick

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Watch this video from Google webmasters:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njn8uXTWiGg

They explain pretty good what's what. And here is the article: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en

So, basically, pagination and canonical links are different things and can be used at the same time.

[DirkC]

You can combine them, but not in the way you are actually doing.
If I take your example: page: www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=2

=> with this set-up you are basically telling Google 2 different things:

The canonical indicates that http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=2 is in fact a duplicate of http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/ so Google should index http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/ instead.

With the rel next/previous you tell Google that http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/ - http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=2 & http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=3 should be considered as one page rather than 3 pages.

As these messages are in conflict this set-up is not going to work. If you want to use both - the canonical can only be used to strip additional info from the url like sort order, number of items on page, etc. Check the link Dimitri gave for an example from Google.

An example from your site: http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?dir=desc&limit=24&order=price&p=2 would have this configuration:

(please not that the first url is http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/ & not http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=1 )

Hope this clarifies

Dirk