Pagination change from noindex to rel=prev/next

[Tonearm]

Currently I noindex all paginated pages past page 1 and my rankings are excellent. Should I remove that noindex and use <rel="prev"> <rel="next"> instead?

[EditorialGuy]

Why not test the change on some pages (or in a specific directory) and see what happens? (Assuming that you don't have a "view all" page, which would make pagination superfluous.)

For what it's worth, I've seen an increase in Google referrals on quite a few multipage legacy articles that I began linking together with link rel="prev"/"next" a few months ago. That stands to reason, since the pagination makes it clear to Google that pages 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. make up an in-depth article about the topic on page 1. (IMHO, pagination is a win-win, because--according to Google--Google Search also will continue to refer users directly to an inside page of an article if that page is more relevant for a specific query.)

[my_name]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Tonearm]

Both compelling arguments. :) I suppose I could just try it on a small scale like EditorialGuy says. Thank you guys.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

As editorialguy stated its not a bad idea to include some additional information/text on the index page of paginated content. Before you test anything you'll also want to make sure that the title isn't identical for every page. Adding "page thirteen" to the title is a little more intuitive though not much.

Also, you'll need to be very sure that you have the order as you want it. If the newest content is placed on page one then all new content causes older content to get bumped down from page to page. If you reverse the order and show oldest first then the pages remain more static which might improve rank marginally.

Before you do anything I suppose you need to also be very sure you want these pages ranked at all since they will compete for the keywords of other pages. My opinion is that Google handles traditional sites well so if you avoid doing anything radical your site should rank just fine either way.

My personal preference depends on sort order. If I sort with newest content first then I use noindex for pages 2+ since the content will change over time. If the oldest content is first then the pages are more static and I'm more inclined to have them rank, people can bookmark the page and always find the right content.

[EditorialGuy]

Also, you'll need to be very sure that you have the order as you want it. If the newest content is placed on page one then all new content causes older content to get bumped down from page to page.

On our site, nearly all paginated content is organized by subtopic. If anything new is added to an article or other entity, it's nearly always in the form of an update, not a new page.

In other words, if we have a guide to pie-making (which we don't, since our site has nothing to do with pastry or baking), the structure is something like this:

Page 1: Pies (introduction)
Pag2 2: Fruit pies
Page 3: Cream pies
Page 4: Nut pies
Page 5: Meat and other savory pies
Page 6: Related resources

This approach works well for the author, for the reader, and for the search engine--especially when the pages are connected with link rel="prev" and link rel="next", since the pagination helps Google understand that the half-dozen pages are part of a single, in-depth entity and not keyword-driven mini-articles from a content farm.

[bwnbwn]

Why would you want to no index all the articles that built your website?
Paging is a normal process to display content in a dated manner.
The articles were indexed but now the article is added to a nofollow url and access from the website is no longer available in a follow. This makes no sense to me.
Allow indexing of the paging urls would be my opinion.