Rel=“next” and rel=“prev” on category pages and galleries

[MirceazetelSerafim]

Hi there,

I am running an WordPress blog and i was looking a couple of days on the source code of the categories. From a SEO point of view would make sense to include into the header of the categories the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags ?

Same question would be for the image galleries . Should i add the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags on the image galleries ? So for example if i upload 10 images to a gallery, the user will check the post and see the gallery. It will click on an image and will redirected on the attachment page of that displays that image > from where he can click next to see the next image or prev for the previous image. Therefore should i add the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” tags here too ?

Many thanks

 

[MirceazetelSerafim]

hi Brady,

No - there are different pages like this

http://www......../bmw/gallery/img1
http://www......../bmw/gallery/img2
http://www......../bmw/gallery/img3
...

[BradyDCallahan]

Yes, the canonical included with the rel next and prev is fine.

I'm just not sure the gallery of images is an appropriate use of real next/prev. Are all these images on one page? If so, I'm not sure those html elements are necessary.

[MirceazetelSerafim]

Thank you for the reply.

Regarding the category: Yes it has multiple blog posts and I already implemented in the correct way according to what you are saying.

Regarding the gallery: there are multiple pages of images (pagination) within the gallery. What is chaning in general is only the image but the text will remain almost the same everywhere.

This is the way i implemented the rel next / prev and canonical:

rel prev for http://............ page_image1.html
rel next for http://............ page_image3.html rel canonical for http://............ page_image2.html (the actual page).

Is that correct ? Or should i remove the rel canonical and let only the rel prev and next ?

This question camed in my mind after reading a post on searchengine land that says:

"You can use these attributes for article pagination, product lists, and any other types of pagination your site might have. The first page of the series has only a rel=”next” attribute and the last page of the series has only a rel=”prev” attribute, and all other pages have both.  You can still use the rel=”canonical” attribute on all pages in conjunction." [link to the article]

[BradyDCallahan]

While I'm just going off of your description, you shouldn't need rel="next" and rel="prev" pointing from one category page to another. However, if you're talking about one category that has multiple pages of blog posts, for instance, then yes, I'd definitely recommend adding those tags to help search engines understand the relationship between that pagination. Just make sure they're implemented in the .

Here's Google's webmaster central blog post on the matter: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html. I'd read, memorize, and then bookmark.

Again, I'm not totally sure what you mean by the description of the image gallery. However, if there are multiple pages of images (pagination) within the gallery, then yes, add the rel="next" and "prev" tags there, as well. If there are lots of images, your best bet might be creating a "View All" page you could combine that as the canonical URL along with your rel="next" and "prev." That may be excessive given your website though.

I don't think you need the link element tags pointing from one image to another, that's not really how the rel="next"/"prev" elements were meant to work. But that should get you jump started with your understanding! Let me know if you have any other questions.