Open Graph: What is proper markup for multi-page articles?

Marketing
1

As a discussion point, I’m interested in hearing thoughts on the proper open graph markup for multi-page articles.

For example, in WordPress, a post may be “paged”. This means the post/article has been broken into separate pages.

For the og:title element (a required OG element):

  • Make it the same on every page?
  • Make it unique on each page after the first page by adding "(Page X) at the end of the title

For the og:url element (a required OG element):

  • Make it the same on every page in order to force links back to the main article page?
  • Make it unique to match the current page (ie, my-article/2/)

For the og:description element (an optional OG element):

  • Make it the same on every page?
  • Make it unique on each page after the first page by adding "(Page X) at the beginning/end of the description
  • Drop it from all but the first page

As an overarching question, the discussion here is more about how search engines expect these article pages to be marked up in order to properly index them as separate entities all worthy of mention near one another in the listing (Or as breadcrumb links or indented listings).

2

For the title, it’s a good idea to notate the page number. I know google webmaster tools complains when I have duplicate titles.

If your URL uses page numbers in its permalink structure, it’s fine for each page to have its own canonical URL. If you are using query strings, drop the query string and make the canonical URL the same for each page in the article.

If you have a custom excerpt, you can use the same description for all pages. If not, just pull it from the content of the post/page.

3

You could also use Open Graph to suggest that sub-pages fold into the first page by keeping the assigned url constant. This way systems like Facebook will share the start regardless of what page is actually used and negate any possible confusion for the user or attempt at duplication.

Of course the downside is in the inability to share specific parts of a story but I suspect more people reach the end and want to share the whole thing than the conclusion :slight_smile: