Link to new content with "next article" button?

[born2run]

Hi, I have many articles on my site (news). In each news article, there is a "next article" and "previous article" button that points to the prev/next article of that type in the database. So as articles keep on getting added, the prev/next buttons keep getting updated for each article.

Is this enough for SEO purposes wrt internal links? Or should I open a new page which will list out all the contents of that type sequentially with pagination?

Kindly assist. Thanks a lot as always!

[Robert Charlton]

I'm not sure exactly what you're describing here on the code level, and whether you're talking about articles that are topically related to each other, or to all articles.

If you're talking about references to subsequent news stories that might have developed on the same topic as an existing article, that's potentially a good idea. But "next" isn't very descriptive... I'd try to include the title and date of the subsequent and/or previous articles.

When dealing with separate unrelated articles, though, just the news as it happens, then "next" is not descriptive at all... and the blogging and news type setups I've seen that only deal with content sequentially end up dooming their content to obscurity. If that's what you're doing, IMO it's a terrible way to organize separate articles in just about every way.

As I've seen it, by itself a completely sequential interface is very user and search unfriendly, as it provides essentially no indication about what the content is or where it is. It assumes a continuity of topics that likely isn't there, and it completely buries old articles.

Can you provide more detail about what you're thinking here. Do you have "permalinks" to your articles, and how are you organizing them?

Also, how do rel=”next” and rel=”prev” fit into this? I ask because you're using terms that sound similar to these, but these link elements are primarily for pagination... not as a way of organizing groups of articles.

[born2run]

No I just meant for news of a particular type (say financial news). So to make each article discoverable by Google what should I do? Kindly recommend. thanks

[lucy24]

It kinda sounds as if you're asking the rock-basic question: Can google find each article? Yes, of course they can, assuming the URLs remain constant. Once a search engine-- any search engine-- has learned of a valid URL, they will keep crawling it forever. They will do so even if all your links break and the old articles are no longer linked to or from anything. (This leads to the horrible user experience of finding an article through a search engine, but being utterly unable to find it again once you've been on the site for a while. This has happened to me and it's infuriating.)

Now, if your articles don't have any kind of permanent URL, then you may have a problem. Especially if you've got content that people could go looking for at any time. It's different if it's more like "Let's see what notalways right dot com* has today, and then I'll never think about it again because tomorrow there will be something different."


* Or clientsfromhell or thedailywtf or webpagesthatsuck or, well, any of the myriad sites that people visit regularly but hardly ever reread. You know your own site best.

[born2run]

So Lucy how do you recommend linking articles ( url is permanent) keeping in mind google?

[lucy24]

Are you concerned only with Google being able to find things? Or are you looking at setting up an overall structure the way Robert Charlton described?

[martinibuster]

I would suggest setting up links in a manner that would make them easily discerned for interest (the title used as anchor). It will keep users on your site longer and increase advertising CPM. There is user satisfaction research that makes me believe it is to your benefit to do this.

Good luck,
;)

mb

[born2run]

Hi Lucy yeah I had Google in mind.

What do you mean by using title as anchor? Thanks again

[martinibuster]

Instead of next/previous for the links, you may benefit by asking yourself, "how can I do this so that users are more likely to click on a link and read another article?" The solution that presents itself will likely be the best one. I'll explain why.

Now think of what news and major informational sites do to keep users on a site. Readers who make it to the end of an article are valuable. Not every reader makes it to the end. That's an ideal location to place a block of links to topically relevant articles. It is more likely for a site visitor to click on a topically relevant link than to click on a next article link.

Middle of the page abandonment is something to think about as well. That's why you sometimes see a block of topically relevant articles along the right side of an informational site (widgets for most popular news/most emailed news). That helps increase the time people are engaged with your site.

What's user engagement have to do with search engines?
In a nutshell: Research is increasingly about identifying sites that will provide users with the information they are using. There are algorithms that simulate a user (related to machine training). There are algorithms that simulate a quality rater (like Panda). Algorithms are no longer focused on matching a query to a phrase on a page. There is more. User engagement is not the algorithm. It is one part of many parts. However if you take the time to find solutions by thinking in terms of how will this keep site visitors on the site then you will also be cracking part of the algorithm that examines those kinds of issues.