Experiences with pagination rel=next and prev
-
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
- an overview,
- itinerary,
- 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 - pricesThe description text is more different...
Is this the best practice in my case?
Thanks for all your opinions!
best regards,
Holger -
Hi Everett,
thanks a lot you your input!
Holger
-
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!
-
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.phpItinerary-Page:
http://www.amazonasabenteuer.de/amazonas-expeditionen/rio-negro-amazonas-regenwald-expedition-reiseablauf.phpDates & Prices Page:
http://www.amazonasabenteuer.de/amazonas-expeditionen/rio-negro-amazonas-regenwald-expedition-reisedaten-preise.php -
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.
-
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.
-
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!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination
Hello, I had a question about noindex and Rel=Canonical on category page pagination. On my site, the category page the meta="robots" has "Index,Follow" tags and the rel="canonical" is the main category page, but when a user sorts the page the meta="robots" changes to "NoIndex, Follow." My question is should the sorted page be name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" /> since the rel="canonical" is pointing to the main page?? Or does it matter that it is NoIndex?? Any thoughts on this topic would be awesome. Thanks. Main Category Page
On-Page Optimization | | chuck-layton
https://www.site.com/category/
name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />
rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/"/> Name Sorted Page
https://www.site.com/category/?dir=asc&order=name
name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/">0 -
What is the correct code to write the rel=canonical in the HTML HEAD of the page?
is it like: html> <head> <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/" /> head> <body> ...<ref>sdfdfref> or like:
On-Page Optimization | | dubraverd0 -
Rel-nofollow for price comparison site?
I run a price comparison site, so we have TONS of outbound links. Â Should my outbound links be marked with 'rel=nofollow'?
On-Page Optimization | | lancerpanz0 -
Pagination with parameter and rel prev rel next
Hi there: I have a doubt about how using the pagination and rel prev | rel next, I will try to sum up this example of pagination: the page number 1 is SEO friendly in order to index it, It also gets metarobots: index, follow. The other ones (pagination), instead, have noindex, follow. In fact, these URLs are not SEO friendly because of they have the parameter "?"  to set up pagination, so for this reason, in the past, It has been decided not to index them. Would you suggest also to use rel="prev" rel="next" in this situation? Or would it be better to set up the others ones (pagination) in "SEO friendly" and then, to set up the rel prev | rel next? Thanks a lot in advance for helping 🙂 Greetings Francesca
On-Page Optimization | | Red_educativa0 -
Is Rel=Canonical the answer???
Hey Mozzers, Can you help me with something please. I have some important content going live next week for a client. We work on there blog optimisation and this piece of content is going live on both the blog and parent site. The parent site has huge DA in comparions to the blog. I want to get the traffic directed to the blog and get the blog ranking - bare in mind the content is exactly the same so it is dupe. If I want to get the blog ranking above the parent site and to direct the traffic here is a cross domain Rel=Canonical the answer? Has anyone else had this issue? Thanks Bush
On-Page Optimization | | Bush_JSM0 -
I built a website on magentogo - IrisScottPrints.com. The seomoz crawl report states 301 rel canonical crawl notices. What if anything should I change?
Wondering if I should remove "IRIS SCOTT PRINTS |" from all the title tags and/or change the url structure of the pages, to not include the breadcrumbs... Â I don't really understand the whole rel canonical structure thing. Also lots of errors on page title too long - does that really matter? Lots of faith in everyone here. Thanks in advance. Marcia
On-Page Optimization | | RedTrout0 -
Help with Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Whenever i enable Canonical URL through the 3DCart Control panel I get this Critical Factor error when running the on page report card: Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Canonical URL</dt> <dd>"http://rcnitroshop.com/Nitro-Monster-Truck"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd> </dl> Now if I disable Canonical URL then run the on page report card again the critical error goes away but I get this Optional Factor error instead: Canonical URL Tag Usage Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt> <dd>0</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.</dd> </dl> So basically I disabled it because obviously a Critical error is much worse then an optional error. Is there a way I can get rid of both errors?
On-Page Optimization | | bilsonx0 -
Is rel=canonical used only for duplicate content
Can the rel-canonical be used to tell the search engines which page is "preferred" when there are similar pages? For instance, I have an internal page that Google is showing on the first page of the SERPs that I would prefer the home page be ranked for. Both the home and internal page have been optimized for the same keyword. What is interesting is that the internal page has very few backlinks compared to the home page but Google seems to favor it since the keyword is in the URL. I am afraid a 301 will drop us from the first page of the SERPs.
On-Page Optimization | | surveygizmo0