Pagination SEO - How to Get It Right By Ahrefs
Introduction:
After Google announced that they no longer use rel=prev/next markup for pagination, many websites changed their implementation, inadvertently harming their sites. This article explores why this change happened and what you should do about it.
Review:
The article explains the original purpose of rel=prev/next markup, which was to indicate pages in a series of pagination. Google initially used this markup to share signals with a group of paginated pages while still showing the most relevant page in their search results. However, Google announced in 2019 that they no longer use this markup, a change that didn’t really impact SEO. The article further discusses why Google made this change and how SEOs could have anticipated that rel=prev/next would no longer be effective.
The article also discusses the correct implementation of pagination, including when to keep rel=prev/next markup and how to avoid common pagination mistakes such as canonicalizing paginated pages to the first page, using noindex on paginated pages, nofollowing links, and blocking crawling. Practical checks are provided to help readers identify and fix these issues.
