Can't decide if rel=Prev/Next are right for my paginated content

[domino66]

I've made a few posts in the forum recently (e.g. [webmasterworld.com...] ) about trying to undo some unfortunate SEO damage that I did to my site via misuse of the rel=canonical attribute.

I've been doing a lot of reading about the rel=Prev/Next attributes, which many sources claim is "Best Practice" for paginated content, but something specific gives me pause. This google blog post ([googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca ]) says that using Prev/Next indicators will give Google a "strong hint" that I want to:

1.Consolidate indexing properties, such as links, from the component pages/URLs to the series as a whole (i.e., links should not remain dispersed between page-1.html, page-2.html, etc., but be grouped with the sequence)
2.Send users to the most relevant page/URL—typically the first page of the series.

Here's the thing: I like #1, but I don't like #2. My site features Q&A's with experts in various fields (who sometimes answer hundreds of questions, which I've paginated to 7 per page), rather than, for example, an article or blog post broken into sequential pages but meant to be read starting on Page 1.

So for example, if someone searches google for 'stolen antiques', I wouldn't want Google to send him/her to page 1 of our Antiques Dealer Q&A because the content relevant to his search appears on page 2, which would be a crummy search experience.

So *YES* I'd like Google to know that URL/1, URL/2, URL/3 etc are all part of the same topical Q&A, but I don't want them to reflexively just dump all users onto the first paginated page. But I'm getting mixed messages as to whether Google, when it sees rel=Prev/Next in the code, will always redirect search users to Page 1 of a paginated series or not.

(**FWIW: We do have a single-page / View-All view for each Q&A, but as described in this other Google Blog post ( [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca...] ), many of them have high latency b/c of length so we DON'T want the View All page to appear in search results; we only want paginated / component pages to surface. Just thought I'd mention so that no one suggests a rel=canonical pointing to the View All page, which is a decent option for some paginated sites, but not ours)

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 6:55 pm (utc) on Jan 7, 2015]

[edited by: aakk9999 at 10:23 am (utc) on Jan 8, 2015]
[edit reason] replaced short links / fixed first link [/edit]

[borishar]

I think that google will redirect users to the proper page on your website, despite using next/prev. I use next/prev to simply tell google that the subject I am writing about has more content on the next page, to gain more SEO weight and avoid thin content label.

[EditorialGuy]

I added rel="prev"/"next" to most of our multi-page articles back in mid- to late 2013, and it hasn't hurt the rankings of second, third, etc. pages.

It hasn't hurt referrals and traffic, either: Our Google organic traffic is up more than 250 percent over the same period last year, with little change to the same number of pages on our site. I'm guessing this is due, at least in part, to Google's finding it easier to identify in-depth content on our site thanks to pagination markup.

[edited by: EditorialGuy at 8:59 pm (utc) on Jan 7, 2015]

[lucy24]

2. Send users to the most relevant page/URL—typically the first page of the series.

I think they'll only do this if the user has searched for text that occurs on every page in the series, such as an article title that's reused on every page. If they search for text that only occurs on page 3, they'll be sent to page 3 ... unless the site has also goofed and misapplied "canonical" tags.

[domino66]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Yes, I really just want to avoid Google automatically dumping any search user on Page 1 of a Q&A (when our Qs and As are each independent stand-alone nuggets, not necessarily meant to be read sequentially.)

I added rel="prev"/"next" to most of our multi-page articles back in mid- to late 2013, and it hasn't hurt the rankings of second, third, etc. pages.

By this, do you mean that the 2nd, 3rd, etc pages are often times the ENTRY pages for organic search visitors? If you're telling me that you have implemented prev/next markup, and your internal pages still get indexed and appear in SERPs, and are the entry/landing pages for organic search visitors, that's as much 'proof', I guess, that all users aren't just going to get funneled to page 1 of n.

[EditorialGuy]

By this, do you mean that the 2nd, 3rd, etc pages are often times the ENTRY pages for organic search visitors?

Exactly--the same as always, except that those pages are ranking even higher than they did before. Secondary ages that used to rank third, fourth, or fifth for [keyphrase] now often rank first. Rel="prev"/"next" may or may not be the reason, but it certainly hasn't hurt.