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came to agree on this..  focus on differentiation sans the hannibal lector aspects of keywords.

Hi Sally, This isn't ideal for SEO, and the immediate answer is: It's not OK, and you have to reduce this to one. Each time you use a 301 redirect, you lose some "link juice" - the less you redirect Googlebot, the more value your pages will retain. Can I ask why you're having to redirect twice? Cheers, Dave

Pagination is just links. Google can follow the links. How you set up and offer your pages is important, especially for areas with a lot of pages. If you have 40 pages of content then I would recommend a structure that offers pages something like "1,2,3,...20...40". If you don't offer a middle selection then that content will probably never be seen.

Yes, I was about to mention the honeymoon period as well. I had exactly the same issue. I can reassure you that yes, a few quality links would do wonders for your site. That's all there really is to it.