Links are an important factor in SEO and their behavior on site can greatly influence your reader’s experience.

With Google now looking closely at “reader experience” when determining search ranking, it’s more important than ever for you to handle links in a consistent and non-frustrating way.

For optimal SEO, we recommend that all external links (links to websites other than yours), open in new tabs, while internal links (links to other pages on your website) open in the same tab.

The main advantage is that opening external links in new tabs does not remove the user from your page…and thus stats like Bounce Rate and Time on Site do not take a hit.

Keeping the reader on your site increases the chance they come back and explore more of your content – even if its returning to the tab at a later time.

At the same time, by changing all internal links to open in the same tab, you reduce the overall number of tabs a reader will have open. Having too many tabs can be overwhelming, lead to frustration, and result in “tab fatigue.”