It appears that a certain URL identified as part of a paginated series via rel="next" and "prev" tags lacks any internal anchor links from other pages within the site. This URL is only connected through pagination link attributes.
Why is this important?
Pagination links are crucial for users and search engines to navigate a sequence of related content, which could include an article spread across multiple pages or a catalog of products within a category.
Rel="next" and "prev" tags are the preferred method to signal search engines about the relation between pages in a pagination series. However, these should typically be supplemented by clickable anchor links, which seems to be missing in this scenario.
A possible reason for this issue might be a misconfiguration within the site's management system, leading to unintended paginated pages. An example representation of a site's flawed pagination setup may look something like this:
[Site Pagination Map Image Placeholder]
What does the Optimization check?
This check is activated for any internal URL that lacks incoming internal anchor links yet is connected via rel="next" or "prev" link elements in the HTML or HTTP headers of another internal URL.
Examples that trigger this Optimization:
Take the following URL for instance: https://example.com/pages/page-1.
This Optimization will trigger if the URL does not possess any internal anchor links pointing to it, yet is indicated as a pagination URL on another page via any of the following methods:
Rel="next"/"prev" link in the HTML head section to the URL
<link rel="next" href="https://example.com/pages/page1" />
OR rel="next"/"prev" link in the HTTP response header to the URL
HTTP/... 200 OK...Link: <https://example.com/pages/page1>; rel="prev"
How do you resolve this issue?
To rectify this issue, one must first determine whether the anchor links should be present, or if the paginated URLs were not meant to be generated in the first place.
In case the pagination should be maintained, then appropriate anchor links should be introduced on their respective linking pages. Conversely, if the paginated URLs are redundant, the developer must eradicate the scripts or code responsible for creating these extraneous pagination links.