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
-
How to stop UTM affecting SEO
Dear Moz community, We are a directory website and have lots and lots of UTM. This is crucial as we want to measure visits through Google analytics. Moz as a tool is fantastic because through a site crawl it can spot all our duplicate pages. Needless to say, due to the amount of UTM's on different pages, we have lots of duplicate pages flagged up. I ideal solution is still having the analytics capabilities of the UTM, but not affecting our SEO where search engines will realise it is not a duplicate page - we're aware it is the same page we just want to track the source! Your help is greatly appreciated! Thanks,
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
Eric0 -
Getting the SEO right for blog on different server
Hi There This must be a common scenario but there's very little help on it. Right now I have: www.domain.com hosted on a Windows dedicated server. I have blog.domain.com hosted on a separate hosted Wordpress server and I use an A Record at the DNS level to make sure the sub domain works. Easy peasy! However we want to move our blog so its at www.domain.com/blog as we're definitely seeing an issue with the sub domain hosting of the blog in terms of SEO. My problem is that I cannot install WP onto the windows server, its' just not feasible as too much is going on with it, so i can;t simply redirect my blog.subdomain.com to www.domain.com/blog as it won't exist. How do I do this and maintain the SEO/link juice? Any help much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Raptor-crew0 -
Website redesign: impact on SEO rankings?
Hi We're redesigning a website for a client whose SEO rankings are fairly strong, and are driving a good volume of enquiries through their website. We would like to do our best to ensure the redesign has a minimal impact on the rankings but aren't sure if there's anything in particular we should be doing to avert a severe dip in results. The content will be similar on many pages, with the major updates being from 2013 products to the 2014 suite. Layouts and images will, of course be updated, and we're going to do our best to keep the inbound links going to the correct place - any advice here would be much appreciated, too. We'd be really grateful for any suggestions for how to avoid a ranking disaster, and any major pitfalls we should look out for. Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | Kal-SEO0 -
E-ccomerce SEO conundrum
I work on the marketing for an eccomerce website. And lately we have been having an issue with the "wrong" page ranking and the right page "being nearly unfindable." For example the product bit o honey - there is a brand page, category page and individual product pages. We want the category page to be the top level bit o honey "hub" page and have placed all of the products onto it. We've written a nice description about Bit O Honey on that page and spent time running social campaigns around that page to try and get social activity on page as well. There have even been a few back links from blogs or reviews onto that category page. It also has the highest page authority among all of the bit o honey pages. But for some odd reason it is always the absolute last result among the 3 options when i search? In fact the only time I can even find it is if I type in about 3 sentences worth of text from that page and it find exact match. I'm really pretty confused as to why the highest page authority page with the most content, activity and link profile, would have the worst ranking capability among the three nearly identical pages.
Technical SEO | | Jonathan_Murrell0 -
Domain redirection and seo implications
We have an existing site that is a subdomain but we recently acquired an exact match domain. Will building links to the exact match domain and having the domain point at our existing subdomain work or should we convert the entire site and redirect our existing subdomain to the new domain? What I'm trying to figure out is how to maximize the benefit here and how the existing mass of links pointing to our existing subdomain (shop.domain.com) can be used. New domain: keywordshop.com Existing URL: shop.domain.com
Technical SEO | | CHarkins0 -
Different domains
Firstly apologies for the very brief question as I am mainly looking for your thoughts as opposed to specific help about a specific problem. I am working on a site which has two sepreate domains and within one domain, two sub domains. The two different sites both havea high page rank, PR6 each, one is the corporate site and the other is the company blog. There are also two sub domains within the corporate site, again both domains have high pr and tons of content. My question is would it be better to consolidate all the assets under one domain or is it better to keep the sites sepreate, from an seo perspective that is.
Technical SEO | | LiquidTech0 -
In Google Merchant is there any difference between google_product_type and product_type
It used to by that we needed to just submit a product type, and now Google wants a google product type that fits within the Google Taxonomy. We always submitted the old product_type in accordance with the Google Taxonomy anyway so now we have 2 columns one for google_product_type and one for just product_type and they are the exact same thing. This seems wrong but does anyone know if there should be a difference?
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
Getting to grips with the technical side of SEO
Hi all, I have been working in online marketing for a while, predominantly working on the affiliate marketing and business development side. Over the last year I have decided to focus my energies on getting to understand SEO and have picked up some actionable tips and strategies to put together an SEO strategy for the business I work for whilst at the same time broadening my skillset in online marketing. I would like to think I now have a good understanding on key areas of the SEO framework such as keyword research, on page optimisation and link building and look to put my learinings into practise as well as continue to play around through my personal blog An area that I see as more and more important so to get a full understanding is the technical side, getting a decent understanding on the learnings of HTML and CSS and putting this into practise. Can anyone recommend a detailed tutorial, powerpoint that provides insights and learnings on how to best understand this side of SEO? Thanks Simon
Technical SEO | | simonsw0