Target: blank. Does it make an SEO difference?
-
I've notice many sites MOZ included no longer use the target: blank attribute. I think that's what it's called. Basically when a link on your site opens a new tab in the browser as opposed to replacing the browser window you are in. Given that MOZ think of everything, I would love to hear opinions on this.
-
From a UX perspective: This allows the visitor to refer to the linked page/info but be able to continue on with the article/page from your site.
From an SEO perspective, IMO This helps your bounce rate from jumping when people engage the links you have on your site.
Check out this previous Q&A posted by our buddy Max Minzer! Hope this helps with your question!!
http://moz.com/community/q/when-is-it-good-to-use-target-_blank
-
There really isn't any practical difference. Here's the raw HTML so you can see
[Your Link Here](some url) OR Your Link Here
vs
[Your Link Here](some url)
Google's bot will parse the URL and note it as a link.
-
Hi!
I don't think this is really SEO-related, but more about user experience. It has been more and more common to let the user decide what is supposed to be happening when clicking links, not making the decissions for her/him.
My 2 cents
Anders
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Optimized filename management for SEO
Hi, I'm currently undertaking a project to manage better my images and to rank for image searches. My site uses mod_pagespeed to optimises images, therefore image urls are changed to a pretty seo unfriendly url or even sometimes inlined within my page. On top of that I generally resize all my images by passing the desired file dimension within the image url in order to optimise the loading time of my site. Is there a way to provide a hint to google that I have a much better quality image with higher dimensions and better name? Can i specify within my image sitemap an image that actually does have different dimensions and a different within the page it serves? Are there better tricks to achieve that? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | mattam0 -
Very different serp rankings for different countries
Hi! A client of mine has a global presence and we are therefore tracking serp rankings for multiple Google domains; google.com, google.ie, google.co.uk for example. One page is ranking quite well in Google.ie (position 11 right now) while at the same time ranking extremely bad in both Google.com and Google.co.uk (position 100+). How can that be?? I did do some optimization (for example Title and Desc) before the rankings in .com and .co.uk went really bad (they were higher before (pos 30-40)). But it is the same page Google indexes...but the results are very different. How can this be? What can be done? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JHultqvist
Jesper1 -
Making URLs automatically clickable
Hi all, I have a PHP function which i use to make all links clickable. Problem is, if some one writes a link in a a-tag, the URL inside the href value is made clickable. Not good. Can someone perhaps help me with the issue? Function: function makeClickableLinks($text)
Technical SEO | | rasmusbang
{
$text = preg_replace('/<//', ' $text = preg_replace('(
)', '
', $text);
$text = preg_replace('!((https?://www.|https?://|www.)(([a-z0-9-]+.)+[a-z]{2,6})(/\S+|/)*)!ie', '"[".shortenurl("\1")."]("".(strtolower('$2'))"', $text);
$text = str_replace('( <a href',="" '<a="" $text);<br="">$text = str_replace(')" target', '" target', $text);
$text = str_replace('):" target', '" target', $text);
$text = str_replace(')..." target', '" target', $text);
$text = str_replace(').." target', '" target', $text);
$text = str_replace(')." target', '" target', $text);
return $text;
}</a> <a href',="" '<a="" $text);<br="">Pleeeeease heeelp 🙂 Can't fix it on my own - been at it for ages. -Rasmus</a>0 -
Google Penguin - Target Landing Page
Hello, One of our sites have been hit by the first penguin update back in April and ever since then we have been removing links and submitting reconsideration requests... It only seems to have affected our home page as some of our internal landing pages are still ranking OK in the SERPS #1 / #2. I'm just wondering if we created a landing page for this keyword and drove high quality / relevant links to this landing page could we get it to rank higher than our homepage even though our Homepage is on the 5th page.Hope the above make sense. Has anybody had any joy with this?
Technical SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Multiple (different) domains and canonicalisation
Hello, We've had experience with canonical tags for various domains before, such as tidying up product categories etc... However, can anyone point me to any guidelines about different domains using canonicalisation. For example: If I had the following sites, all with identical content - exampledomain.com completelydifferentdomain.net anothertotallydifferentdomain.com With canonical tags pointing to the first one (exampledomain.com), could this be harmful? Is it better to 301 redirect the other sites? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sarbs0 -
Querystring params, rel canonical and SEO
I know ideally you should have as clean as possible url structures for optimal SEO. Our current site contains clean urls with very minimal use of query string params. There is a strong push, for business purposes to include click tracking on our site which will append a query string param to a large percentage of our internal links. Currently: http://www.oursite.com/section/content/ Will change to: http://www.oursite.com/section/content/?tg=zzzzwww We currently use rel canonical on all pages to properly define the true url in order to remove any possible duplicate content issues. Given we are already using rel canonical, if we implement the query string click tracking, will this negatively impact our SEO? If so, by how much? Could we run into duplicate content issues? We get crawled by Google a lot (very big site) and very large percent of our traffic is from Google, but there is a strong business need for this information so trying to weigh pros/cons.
Technical SEO | | NicB10 -
Html5 in SEO
What is the convinience of using html5 for seo.As i read is not too good using many h1 in each metacontent (due to crawler alerts) , but it is good to use html5. We have follow or so this web guidelines www.tumanitas.com whtat do you think about taht?
Technical SEO | | ofuente0 -
Where to get expert SEO help?
I joined SEOmoz knowing very little about SEO (it turns out even less than I thought!) I signed up because my business website that had be ranking very well for years made a fast and furious fall to the purgatory of page 2, 3, whatever. We'll I've definitely learned a lot and made a several changes that have helped. Specifically link building (directory submissions) and eliminating duplicate content. But we're still far below where we used to be and I've done everything I can do without making a career change to SEO. I've hired a few offshore SEOs to help but they have all failed to live up to their promises. So, I would love to find a GOOD SEO that can 1. Fix the remaining on-page technical issues in our CMS website (Business Catalyst), and 2. help us develop an SEO strategy for the next year. (I prefer not to post the name of the website for competitive reasons) Our keywords are really not very competitive at all due to the uniqueness of the business. Where should I look for help? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Placeboo0