prev/next is a bet
Prev/next navigation is a bet you make about your readers.
Most visitors to a personal blog arrive via search or RSS, read one post, and leave. That's the default traffic shape. Prev/next navigation doesn't serve those readers -- they already know where they're going, and "going deeper" isn't part of their plan. For the median visitor, those arrows are dead UI.
So why add it at all?
the bet
The bet is that some readers arrive differently. They come in through a link from someone they trust, or they read one post and something clicks, and now they want more. Not the archive -- just more, without the detour back to the index and the cognitive cost of picking a next post.
For those readers, prev/next is the whole UX. It removes friction from a thing they already decided to do.
I added it to this site a few days ago. Three posts, no sequence -- you'd read one and have no path forward except back to the list. The fix was small (Nunjucks, array indexing, two links). But the question it raised was bigger: is this the kind of site where readers go deep, or is it dead UI that makes me feel like I've thought about my readers when I haven't?
when the bet pays off
Prev/next works when the posts have a relationship to each other that a reader might want to follow. A series, an evolving opinion, a set of posts on the same narrow topic. If your archive is coherent enough that post 7 illuminates post 3, sequential navigation is load-bearing.
It also works when the author has a voice the reader wants more of -- not just information, but company. If someone reads you and thinks "I want to read everything this person has written," they'll click next. If they think "that was useful," they'll close the tab.
The honest test: do your posts reward reading in sequence, or just reading? Both are valid. But only one of them benefits from arrows.
when it's dead UI
Prev/next fails when posts are independent, topic-diverse, or separated by large time gaps. A blog covering infra tooling one week and personal finance two months later has no natural reading order. Giving someone "← Older" after a post about Postgres indexing doesn't help them -- the previous post might be about anything.
It also fails when the labeling is bad. I shipped the initial version of this nav without directional labels -- just arrows and post titles. A reader in the middle of the archive couldn't tell if ← meant "back toward the beginning" or "back toward recent." I fixed it ("← Older" / "Newer →") but the broken version taught me something: unlabeled prev/next isn't neutral. It's actively confusing, which is worse than not having it.
Dead UI isn't just useless -- it erodes trust. If the reader clicks a directional link and lands somewhere unexpected, they learn to distrust the site's navigation generally.
the RSS angle
Feed subscribers have a different reading pattern. They're already committed enough to subscribe, so the "will they go deeper?" question is somewhat answered. But they read in their feed reader, not on the site, which means prev/next is invisible to them anyway. Serving subscribers well means full post content in the feed -- not a summary that forces a click-through -- not better in-page navigation.
The site is for discovery. The feed is for readers. Different surfaces, different bets.
what I actually believe
This site is small enough that I can't know yet which kind it is. Three posts don't tell you whether readers will want to navigate sequentially. So I added prev/next and I'll watch.
What I do know: the bet has to be intentional. Add the navigation because you believe your posts reward sequential reading, not because it's a standard blog feature and you're building a blog. Features that exist for their own sake are the first thing that makes a site feel like a template rather than a place.
If the arrows sit there unused for a year, I'll know something about what this site actually is.