Should an internal link open in a new tab or in the same window?
-
Should an internal link open in a new tab or in the same window?
Seems like this is an issue that has never had a definitive answer one way or the other. But I couldn't find any recent articles from reliable sources taking a stance and answering this question.
Does anyone know if user engagement metrics (time on site, bounce rate, pages per visit) are impacted if a user clicks a link that opens in a new tab? Thanks!
-
Internal links should be on the same page, for the most part. The exception, like Emily, said, would be if the link is unrelated and you want them to come back to the original content (e.g. opt-in landing page linked from a blog post). External links in a new tab! For example, this is a link (opens in a new window) And External Link ( Visit Website )
-
Hello,
There is no definitive answer, it really comes down to how you want people browsing your website. For instance, I would suggest a user stay within the same tab if they click from one blog article to the next. There's no reason they need to have a new tab opened. Now if they are on a product page and you have a suggested items section, once they click the suggested item should open in a new tab. This will let the user remember what they were originally browsing along with seeing additional products.
Also, I believe many users get suspicious once a new window opens when they click something. If they are expecting to stay within the same window or even tab. It can look spammy or like an ad/pop up, which could result in closing all.
Browse any major website, how often are you forced to open a new tab or window? Hardly ever, the only time it happens is when you are leaving the main URL.
I hope this helps.
Chris Hickman
-
I agree with Bernadette, internal links should open in the same window. [This is despite the fact I personally like to open things in new tabs, or even better, new windows.]
It is the default and what people expect and they also have the option to open in a new tab/window if they prefer.
There are many navigation/UX conventions across the Internet and they help us know what to do when we go to a new place. Yes, there are sometimes reasons to go against convention, but they should be thought out.
If your internal links always open in new tabs and your website has interesting content that someone is browsing through, things can get messy pretty quickly...
[Have you ever clicked on a link and had the new tab come up behind your open window? That is the worst--easy to miss it altogether.]
-
Based on our experience, we generally think that as long at you're on the same website, links should open up in the same window. They should not open in a new window. If you are going to open a link in a new window, then you'd want to notify the user that you're going to do that by telling them before they click the link.
For example: this is a link (opens in a new window)
This is a general user experience issue. While I don't necessarily have any specific stats to show, it just makes sense.
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
-
Text that appears when hovering over navigation tabs
Hi, I have a Wordpress website and want to delete or edit the text that appears when I hover over my navigation tabs. In my case, the text is always the same as the page title, but I don't know where to edit it separately. When I change the title of a page that is in the navigation, the text that appears changes too. So the general setting is that this text is the same as the page title. Does somebody have an idea where to edit this? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Mat_C0 -
Inbound Linking from your own sites
Good evening, On each of the sites I have made, I have a link with the anchor text 'Build and Design by Christoper Davies' to my own website. This link is in the footer of every page each of all the sites. Should I have a 'no follow' rel added to these links, or does linking from all the sites (on all pages) help my ranking? I am concerned that having so many inbound links from the same sites, with the same anchor text may be doing me more damage than good.
On-Page Optimization | | chrisdavieswebdesign0 -
Do follow links
Is it good(according to SEO) to give dofollow rel to external links of highly trusted websites from our content?
On-Page Optimization | | Obbserv0 -
What is everyone doing to reduce the number of links on a page?
Some clients of mine have sites that are throwing the "too many links on one page" error and we're not just talking a little more than the status quo 100 links, it's much more. I believe it could be due to the fly-out navigation. My Solution: shorten the Tier 2 categories in the left nav down to 5 and add a "View All" link after the 5th and remove top nav fly-outs. I'm not sure if these are best practices or the best for usability though?
On-Page Optimization | | LisaS130 -
The "100 links/page recommendation" - Do Duplicate Links Count?
We have way too many links on our homepage. The PageRank Link Juice Calculator (www.ecreativeim.com/pagerank-link-juice-calculator.php) counts them to 300. But all of them are not unique, that is some links point to the same URL. So my question: does the "100 links/page recommendation" refer to all anchors on the page or only to unique link target URLs? I know "100" is just a standard recommendation.
On-Page Optimization | | TalkInThePark0 -
A new relic has been discovered!
Greetings Mozfriends! http://www.google.com/commercesearch/product.html I was wondering peoples thoughts were on Google Commerce Search, and if it is an effective tool. Justin Smith
On-Page Optimization | | FrontlineMobility0 -
Canonical links
My website is relatively new, January. We climbed steadily to 6th for our search term then overnight rocketed to 1st. This only lasted a week and have been stuck at 9th ever since. When I use the SEO Moz tools our site should theoretically be top...I only joined today btw. Anyway in Google webmaster tools I noticed it said I had duplicate title tags, when I checked to see what the pages were- it was my home page! Google also seems to have cached two versions of our homepage, the root domain and the Default.aspx page. Now I have fixed this canonical linking issue today (using canonical link tag and 301s) so time will tell but has anyone got any first hand experience of this issue? Was it a big factor? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | SplashBacksNI0 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0