Two problems I can see off hand here
Firstly, you should move your query to outside your if
conditional statement.
Secondly, when using WP_Query
, the $max_pages
parameter should be used when using next_posts_link( $label , $max_pages );
So, your code should look something like this
<div class="wrapper inner_content_wrap">
<?php next_posts_link( '<span class="label iconfont"><img src="'.get_template_directory_uri().'/images/pager_arw.png" alt=""></span><span class="entry-info-wrap">Next Entries</span>', $loop->max_num_pages); ?>
<?php previous_posts_link( '<span class="label iconfont"><img src="'.get_template_directory_uri().'/images/pager_arw2.png" alt=""></span><span class="entry-info-wrap">previous Entries</span>'); ?>
<div class="blog_area">
<div class="container">
<?php
$paged = ( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) ? get_query_var( 'paged' ) : 1;
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'paged' => $paged
);
$loop = new WP_Query( $args );
if($loop->have_posts()) :
$i = '1';
while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); ?>
<-----REST OF YOUR CODE------->