There are several SEO practices you can use to get noticed by viewers and search engines alike – from choosing an SEO-friendly WordPress theme to SEO fundamentals like optimizing your content and link building.
When it comes to link building efforts, external linking is something you should pay particular attention to. Contrary to popular belief, Linking to relevant external websites can be extremely beneficial for your website’s SEO.. Backlinks not only make you appear more trustworthy because they help provide valuable material to your readers, but they can also contribute to those websites returning favors and linking back to your website. This is especially important as backlinks rank high. Google Ranking Factors.
However, the problem can arise when users click on an external link on your website. If you’re not sure they can open such a link in a new tab or window, your visitors will be redirected elsewhere and may never return to your own website. And that’s definitely something you want to prevent from happening. Likewise, there may be some users who prefer to open multiple internal links from your own site at once, which means it will be easier to view them all in different tabs for better UX.
This is why we decided Talk about the advantages of opening links in a new tab or window and all the different methods you can use to apply this method to your WordPress site.
Also, before we begin, it should be noted that when we say “new window” we are actually using the word synonymously with “new browser tab”. This may not be the correct usage, but it has certainly become common practice for one simple reason – people usually don’t want links to open in a new window. While there are some users who prefer to open links in a completely new browser window (as with creating a completely new browser session), this is not considered good UX practice. So, opening links in a new window in this context means opening them in a new location, i.e. separate from your web page. If you prefer to open your links in a completely separate browser window, you can always right-click on that link and select the option to open in a new window from within your browser.
Stay tuned as we explore:
External links represent hyperlinks that belong to any domain that does not belong to you. Therefore, if you add external links to your WordPress site, your visitors will be redirected to other websites when they click.
If these links open in the same tab as your web page, there is a chance that they will happen, as well as the risk that visitors have to repeatedly click the back button to return to your page (called “back button fatigue”). completely forgetting your site and never coming back. To avoid this, many marketing and SEO experts recommend: linking to new tabs instead. This is a good practice because it can prevent your users from leaving your website, thus reducing the bounce rate on your page and avoiding any negative effects on your page rankings.
Having external links that open in a new window or tab is not only good for the user experience and SEO of your website, but also for the SEO of your website. ensures that users do not lose the page they are on, that is, your website page. That way, users will likely come back to finish the article they read on your website, which has potential. bring you more pageviews and increase user engagement. It’s simple – the more users stay on your site, the more they’ll want to browse your other content and eventually subscribe to a newsletter, purchase your product or try your services.
If the external links you put on your website are good reference material that should be combined with the content on your website, opening those links in a new tab will be even more convenient for your visitors. After checking the references given in external links, they can go back to the original article in another tab and continue reading without spoiling their browsing experience too much.
same goes for you internal links, that is, hyperlinks pointing to your website pages. If you choose to set such links to open in a new tab, you can increase the user experience of your visitors exponentially. This arrangement allows them to explore your website content more conveniently, to switch from one page to another more easily, and to remember to return to your pages or posts that they were originally interested in.
Finally, you can prevent your website from “overworking” by having your links open in a new tab. If users return to the tab containing your page, naturally the page does not need to be reloaded. helps you save most of your website resources.
Now that we’ve talked about all the potential benefits of opening links in a new tab, we’re going to talk about all the different ways to do it in WordPress.
If you’re using Gutenberg, you’ll be pleased to hear that the Gutenberg editor has an easy-to-configure integrated option so you can open links in a new tab.
After entering the page or post edit screen, Select the text you want to use for your link and click the Link button:
This will make a new popup box appear. Paste or enter the link in this box and click on the button that will allow you to open the link in a new tab.
Press enter and your connection will be ready. You should go ahead and preview to make sure your connection is set up properly.
If you still prefer to use the Classic editor when creating pages and posts on your WordPress site, go to your page/post edit, select the text you want to link to and hit the add link button.
When the popup appears where you can add your link, Click the gear icon next to the junction box. This will trigger the window with some advanced options.
Here you should check the option “Open link in new tab” and update button.
After you save your page or post, you can go ahead and preview it to check if your link is working properly.
Alternatively, you can open it in a new tab using the link. text Tab in the classic editor.
Once there, select the text you want to link and connection button.
This will open a popup where you can add your link and check “Open link in a new tab”.
after hitting add link Click the button and the popup will disappear and you will see the HTML code of your link in the Text editor.
Don’t forget to save your changes when you’re done.
If you want to use an HTML code to add a link to your WordPress site, you can do so as outlined above. text Mod for classic editor, code editor For Gutenberg or directly in the theme template file (in Appearance >> Theme Editor).
You can do this by adding the following code (which instructs your browsers to open the link in a new tab):
<a href="https://qodeinteractive.com/magazine/open-link-in-new-tab-window/your URL goes here" target="_blank" rel="noopener">your link text</a>
You need to replace “your URL goes here” with your link URL and you can replace “your link text” with the anchor text.
Whether you are using a standard navigation menu or a mega menu in WordPress, there is an easy way to open your menu links in a new tab.
To start View >> Menus and select the menu you want to edit.
Later on Display Options (which you’ll find in the upper right corner of your screen), tick the checkbox called “Connection Target”.
Now you can select the specific menu items you want to open in a new tab by clicking on them and checking the “Open link in new tab” option. be sure to hit Save Menu Press the button.
There is a way to automatically open all your links in a new tab and this can be done using a plugin. This is a great solution if you have a multi-author blog or don’t bother to open new links in a new tab every time you add a new page or post.
To do this, you need to install a WordPress plugin called External Links in a New Window and then enable it.
Fortunately, this is where your installation ends. The plugin works on the principle of automatically opening all your links in a new window using JavaScript.. In other words, other than installing and activating it, you don’t need to configure anything else for it to work. However, we must keep in mind that once you deactivate and/or remove the plugin, your links will no longer open in a new window.
Finally, you should know that as the name of the plugin suggests, this plugin only allows you to open external links automatically.
Solution
Opening the link in a new tab or window is a good practice that can bring many benefits to your website, including: an overall lower bounce rate along with better SEO rankings and user experience. If you decide to do this manually or install a plugin to automate the process, getting links to open in a new tab is pretty easy and should become part of your linking routine. For the best possible results, we recommend that you follow the instructions we provided above.
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