Modern Best Practices
Pagination ensures deeper items (like older blog posts or catalog items past page 1) remain discoverable by crawlers. In the past, SEOs relied on rel="next" and rel="prev" tags. However, Google officially announced they no longer use these link relations for indexing. Modern pagination relies entirely on robust, crawlable HTML links.
Crawlable Pagination Links
Every pagination element (Page 1, 2, 3, Next, Previous) must be a standard <a href="..."> link pointing to a distinct URL (e.g., /blog?page=2 or /blog/page/2/). Button clicks handled purely by JavaScript (like infinite scroll without an HTML fallback) will trap Googlebot on page 1.
Self-Referencing Canonicals
A common error is pointing the canonical tag of Page 2 back to Page 1. This tells Google to consolidate Page 2 into Page 1, meaning the crawler may eventually drop Page 2 and all the unique links on it from the index. Pagination URLs must have a self-referencing canonical (e.g., Page 2 canonicalizes to Page 2).
Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties
Pagination URLs inherently share the same H1 and Title tag as the root page. This is normal and acceptable. To prevent soft 404s or duplicate title warnings, you can append " - Page 2" to the Title tag, but search engines are generally intelligent enough to recognize numbered pagination without penalty.