Next and Prev Post Navigation in Webflow

Next and Previous (Next/Prev) post navigation is a critical feature for blogs, news websites, and content-heavy platforms. It enhances user experience by encouraging visitors to explore more content, reduces bounce rates, and improves SEO by creating internal linking structures. In this guide, you’ll learn how to implement Next/Prev post navigation in Webflow using native tools and custom code snippets, while optimizing for SEO and ranking factors.

Why Next/Prev Navigation Matters

1. User Experience (UX) Benefits

Reduces Bounce Rate: Visitors stay longer when they can easily navigate to related content.
Improves Engagement: A clear path to “next” or “previous” posts keeps readers hooked.
Mobile-Friendly Navigation: Buttons simplify content discovery on smaller screens.

2. SEO Advantages

Internal Linking: Search engines like Google prioritize websites with strong internal linking for crawling and indexing.
Dwell Time: Longer session durations signal high-quality content to search engines.
Lower Exit Rates: Smooth navigation keeps users on your site, improving SEO metrics.

Implementing Next/Prev Post Navigation in Webflow

This process is smooth and hassle-free—just follow the step-by-step guide below, and you’ll easily set up Next and Prev Post Navigation in Webflow without any complications. 🚀

Step 1: Create Navigation Buttons

To begin, you’ll need to add two buttons—one for navigating to the next post and one for the previous post.

Open Webflow and navigate to the Blog Post Template Page where you want to place these buttons.
Drag two Button (or DIV) elements onto the page.
Rename them as follows:
- Next Post Button → Assign an ID of next_button
- Previous Post Button → Assign an ID of previous_button

Step 2: Connecting CMS Collection to Your Blog Posts

In this step, you’ll integrate your CMS Collection to dynamically pull blog posts and create navigation links for the Next and Previous post buttons.

Add a CMS Collection List

Scroll to the end of your blog post page in Webflow.
Drag a Collection List element onto the page.
In the Collection Settings, connect it to your Post Collection.

Add a Text Link Inside the Collection Item

Inside the Collection List, drag a Text Link element. (imp)
This text link will serve as the Current Blog Post.

Enable Dynamic Linking

Click on the Text Link element to select it.
Navigate to the Settings (⚙️) Panel.
Under Link Settings, choose Collection Page Link as shown in below img.
Select CMS Field as the dynamic link source.( name, category etc.)

Step 3: Add JavaScript Code Snipets

Open Page Settings of the CMS Post Template, scroll down to the Custom Code section, and paste the following script inside the <body> section.


<script>
var Webflow = Webflow || [];
Webflow.push(function () {
    var all_items = document.querySelectorAll(".w-dyn-item");
    var all_valid_anchors = [];
    var all_valid_hrefs = [];
    
    for (i = 0; i < all_items.length; i++) {
        var item = all_items[i];
        
        if(!item.querySelector('a').classList.contains('w-condition-invisible')) {
            all_valid_hrefs.push(item.querySelector('a').href);
            all_valid_anchors.push({
                original_index: i,
                anchor: item 
            });
        }
    }

    var own_index = getOwnIndex();

    var next_href = all_valid_hrefs[own_index + 1] || all_valid_hrefs[0];
    var previous_href = all_valid_hrefs[own_index - 1] || all_valid_hrefs[all_valid_hrefs.length - 1];

    function getOwnIndex() {
        for (i = 0; i < all_valid_anchors.length; i++) {
            var current_anchor = all_valid_anchors[i];

            if (current_anchor.anchor.querySelector('a').classList.contains("w--current")) {
                return i;
            }
        }
    }
  
    console.log('next: ', next_href);
    console.log('prev: ', previous_href);
    // apply hrefs to next / previous buttons
    $('#next_button').attr('href', next_href);
    $('#previous_button').attr('href', previous_href);
});
</script>

Step 4: Hide CMS Collection And Links

Now, in this final step, go to the page, hide the Collection List and the Text Link, then publish and test your pages to ensure everything works smoothly.

Other Resources: Finsweets CMS

If you’ve explored other resources like Finsweet’s CMS Previous & Next, you may have noticed that their approach is more advanced and focuses on navigating between CMS collection items rather than creating dedicated Next and Previous buttons for blog posts. While Finsweet provides powerful CMS solutions, their method can be complex for beginners as it requires additional setup and deeper understanding of Webflow CMS structure. Unfortunately, their documentation does not always cover the basic step-by-step implementation needed for a straightforward Next and Prev Post button navigation.

In contrast, this guide simplifies the process, ensuring you can easily set up Next and Previous buttons in Webflow without extra workarounds or complicated CMS filtering techniques. 🚀

If this guide helped you, check out our other Webflow tutorials!