On a website, is the most effective user experience for the social media icons to open new tabs?
-
There is debate around what is most effective for user experience. When a user clicks on the social media icons on our site, should a new tab be opened for the social media page or should the website redirect to the social media page?
-
I'd recommend opening in a new tab. Part of that is personal preference, but I can't see any case in which it's a good idea to move someone off your site in that situation.
-
Hi,
Generally speaking, any link that takes users off of your site should open in a new tab. If you send them away in the same tab, they're probably not coming back to your site. Especially with social media, they're likely to get distracted with something else and forget about what they were doing in the first place.
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
-
Is social networking really worth all the effort?
Call me old fashioned, but I can’t understand the buzz about social networking, I really don't get it, who in their right mind spends their valuable time conversing with a bunch of narcissists, chattering about what’s on TV, funny pictures and bragging about what they’ve done or achieved, it all seems so phoney to me. My site is reasonably popular, I get a rough 50/50 split of my visitors from referrals and organic and an infinitesimally small amount of traffic from social – Oh yes I hear you say,” that’s because you haven’t fully embraced social networking.” But here’s the thing, my social traffic doesn’t come from me at all, it comes from followers of my own social network (forums and user of my software liking and sharing my products and content), who have kindly shared on my behalf. Now when I visit Analytics to study the data from social traffic I find that it gives a huge bounce, 100% from Facebook, 93% from Twitter and 79% from LinkedIn, when my average is just 39%. The same applies to time spend on each page, less than a minute for all of the social sites, when my average in close to 7 minutes. So ok, social networking for traffic is a complete no go, let’s look at it from the perspective of out reaching. How can I break into that? I hate TV, I don’t find pictures of cats funny and I’m modest and humble, how can I possibly even begin to converse with these people? After using Twonk I got followed back by a good amount of users, but had to delete most because of the complete crap they were sharing, do I really want to know that someone ate lasgne for dinner, read about the top ten english railway stations, or what colour lego brick is someones favourite! Honestly I’m not trying to be funny with this post, and no offence to anyone here, but I just don’t get social networking, I’d love to but it seems a complete waste of my time and effort.
Social Media | | LeeC0 -
Yotpo for eCommerce social reviews
Anyone have experiences using Yotpo to support reviews for an eCommerce site? Best,
Social Media | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Best way to research the social potential of content (NOT just search potential).
I'm wondering if anyone in the community has found a good method for researching the social potential for content. I'll break down what I'm asking exactly so it makes more sense. In order for a page to get ranked highly on Google for a keyword it needs authority (usually). With social media having an ever increasing impact on the authority of content, creating content that has social value (shared, liked, talked about, etc) can really help increase the authority of that page in Google's eyes. In saying this if content is created that people search AND talk a lot about, it's authority will rise quickly, thus getting traffic through that keyword is easier and faster (not to mention your link building happens for you organically). I've formulated a pretty good keyword research process to find the search potential of creating content around that keyword; however I am looking at how to research the potential social value of content. I'm thinking the best way would be to crawl the social platforms and find trends in what people are talking about for the last x amount of time. Must be some patterns to look for in things like hashtags. At the end of the day I'd like to have content created based on both search keyword and social research. I'm looking for advice from people who have found a good way to do this social research on what they look for / what tools they use.
Social Media | | reidsteven750 -
Improving page rank for a social media profile?
What are some ways to build links to social media page that links back to your website? Example: Building links to my Pinterest page that links back to my website. Who do we pump up the Pinterest page?
Social Media | | KrisPhoto0 -
How do you know when your on a Auth website?
Hi, How do you know when your on a Auth website? Gaining backlinks from Auth 'relevant' websites is at the top of any SEO's list but how do you know when you have found one? Generally I look at DA/PA and social following, the bigger the social lists and the more activity socially on the website the more I think they are a Auth website. So if I had something like DA/PA 60+ and lets say 5000+ twitter and facebook followers with sharing activity on the site, I would then try and gain a link. Cheers
Social Media | | activitysuper0 -
"Mister Wong" DoFollow Social Bookmarking Backlinks
Has anyone had any experience with the DoFollow social bookmarking tool "Mister Wong". Is it worth the fee for DoFollow links? Is this site subject to Google Panda penalties or others for essentially selling dofollow links? Is social bookmarking as a whole worth the time and effort? Does anyone have any alternative sites or strategies for acquiring a high volume of dofollow backlinks?
Social Media | | BethA0 -
Automating the brainless tasks of Social Media Management
I'm talking about Scheduling Tweets Scheduling FB Updates I'm sure I'll be pointed to some good resources for the above but what I really need is a tool that allows me to sort out queries/complains/requests that I would need to pass on to my client. Something that lets me tag a comment and gathers it with complete data like user name, time, comment etc. Does something like this exist?! Similarly, something that allows you to filter words that should be treated as spam. Also, suggestions on what other "brainless" tasks of SMM should be/can be automated would be appreciated. Regards, Edit: No responses as yet! Whats up Mozzers?
Social Media | | AsadMemon0 -
If I move my blog from subdomain to root, will my blog lose all of its authority? Social signals?
Moving my blog from blog.site.co.uk to site.co.uk/blog and just wondered if all the social data for each post will be lost including the blog authority which has been built up over time? Is 301 redirects enough to keep any of it?
Social Media | | SDOwner0
