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
-
The correct way to rel=canonical
When adding the rel=canonical tag to a landing page inside a folder, should the tag read: or With or without the index.php? TY KJr
On-Page Optimization | | KevnJr1 -
One more question about rel=canonical
I'm still trying to wrap my head around rel=canonical and its importance. Thanks to the community, I've been able to understand most of it. Still, I have a couple of very specific questions: I share certain blog posts on the Huffington Post. Here's an example: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/cedric-lizotte/munich-travel-guide_b_13438956.html - Of course I post these on my blog as well. Here: http://www.continentscondiments.com/things-munich-classics/ - Obviously the HuffPo has a huge DA, and I'll never match it. However the original post is mine, on my blog, and not on the HuffPo. They wont - obviously - add a rel=canonical just for me and for the sake of it, they have a million other things to do. QUESTION: Should I add a rel=canonical to my own site pointing to the post on the HuffPost? What would be the advantage? Should I just leave this alone? I share blog posts on Go4TravelBlog too. Example: http://www.go4travelblog.com/dallmayr-restaurant-munich/ - but, once again, the original post is on one of my blogs. In this case, it's on another blog of mine: http://www.thefinediningblog.com/dallmayr-restaurant-in-munich/ QUESTION: Well it's pretty much the same! Should I beg Go4TravelBlog to add a rel=canonical pointing to mine? If they refuse, what do I do? Would it be better to add a rel=canonical from my site to theirs, or do I fight it out and have a rel=canonical pointing to my own post? Why? Thanks a million for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | cedriklizotte0 -
Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.
We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are. Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Rel = no follow?
I am redoing a clients website. They previous company that built it have a page with links linking back to over 30 articles on webmd Question is this doing any good for SEO and if I recreate, should these have the rel=no follow attribute?
On-Page Optimization | | scott315
Here is is current page http://www.forestparkdental.com/links/ Thanks0 -
Rel="canonical" link should they be to or from an "SEO friendly" url
Thanks for taking the time to review this. So for our example, lets use the following SEO friendly link: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/pacific-christian-college-of-ministry-and-biblical-studies/BA-biblical-studies We'll call this link the SEO VERSION The title of the college is" Pacific Christian College of Minstry and Biblical Studies" The title of the program is "BA Biblical Studies" The QUERY version of the link to this page would be something like: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/index.php?collegeid=22&programid=34 Keep in mind that the meta title, description, and keyword tags for the page are all administerable The SEO VERSION is automatically created from the title of the college, and the title of the program. Each one of these titles can be overidden with a URL slug individually. For instance, the admin could make the link: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/pacific-christian-college-of-ministry/biblical-studies by changing the slug for the college to "pacific-christian-college-of-ministry" and the slug for the program to "biblical-studies". Let's call this version the SLUG VERSION So now we have multiple ways to get to the same content. The question on the table is what is best practice for the rel="canonical" link to keep from getting dinged for duplicate content. Let's say that our SEO VERSION is the canonical link for 1 year. Then the choice was made to optimize the links thru the slugs creating the SLUG VERSION. My assumption is that we would keep the SEO VERSION as the canonical link. But then let's say 6 months later that the title of the program is changed in the admin. Now the SEO VERSION has changed and so has the canonical link. Do we lose the link juice garnered over the last 18 months? It would seem to me, that if we use the QUERY version as the canonical link, then any optimizations or changes affect everything except the canonical link, thus keeping the previous link juice earned. But is having an ugly URL as the canonical link detrimental to SEO? Please advise.
On-Page Optimization | | robertdonnell0 -
Rel=Publisher
Hi Since rel=publisher code should be added to the head tags of a website surely this means that would then show up on every main page of a site but i'm looking at a few sites using the rich snippet testing tool and its only showing for home page - how come ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Google rel hell
So apologies in advance for this question, but: Can someone explain whether as a site we should be using the "rel author" tag or the "rel publisher" tag? 1. We don't really need to distinguish between the people who write our content. 2. We definitely do need to establish ownership of our content, as unfortunately it has been widely copied. We are spending quite a bit of time filing DMCA notices. 3. Do we need to apply either tag to every page? Or does "del publisher" just need to be applied to the homepage to cover the rest of the site? 4. What looks better in the search results? - a person's face or a company logo? If prefer a face, but understand we need to promote our brand. Thanks P
On-Page Optimization | | dexm100 -
Next on-page steps for an SEO newbie
Hi there! I'm new to Seomoz and am really pleased with the service so far. I've been doing some On-page optimizations and am gradually getting most of my pages to an A grade, but I wondered what the next steps would be? For example I have been looking at the search term "the shins fans". I have an A grade for my page (http://tastebuds.fm/artists/the+shins) but it lists on the 2nd page of SERPS for the term (in the UK at least). Can anyone recommend any tips for taking my page to the 1st page of SERPS? This site seems to do well: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/the-shins I am aware of the importance of link-building, but I'm specifically looking for tips on optimizing the page itself. Many Thanks, Alex
On-Page Optimization | | AlexParish0