Pagination

Google no longer uses rel=next/prev to understand pagination. John stated that there are no changes that SEOs need to make if pagination is working properly in search, as long as internal linking is in place.

Rel="next" should only be used within paginated sets, and shouldn’t be used to refer to another related piece of content. Instead, use regular internal linking for this.

Rel="next" and rel="prev" are useful for Google in understanding paginated sets, but there needs to be HTML links on the page to the next and previous pages.

A ‘view all’ page doesn’t have to have a specific number of products or be a certain size in order for it to be accepted as the canonical for other pages.

Canonicalizing pages in a paginated set back to the first page can be problematic because Google may see that these are different pages and ignore the rel canonical. Alternatively, if Google does follow the rel canonical to the main page, this could mean links and content on other pages might be missed.

Using similar titles across paginated pages helps Google identify sets of paginated pages.

If pagination is added to a page with rel next and rel previous it isn�۪t necessary to add a rel canonical to the page itself but it’s good practice.

Unique content and links on canonicalised paginated pages will be lost if Google accepts the canonical directive.

Fine to noindex paginated pages (e.g. after page 2) but need to make sure that Google can still get to the content linked on these pages via other routes in your internal linking structure (e.g. related products/content, category pages).

It is ok to noindex further down in a paginated series. This can be noindexing all pages after the first couple or first hundred, it is up to the webmaster. However, crawl budget will not be impacted as Googlebot still crawls these noindex pages.