Is it bad for seo to have a large number of external links opening in modal windows?
-
I've got a job board that pulls in feeds from various job sites and recruiters. Rather than losing visitors exiting my site, I thought I was being clever by opening all external links in modal windows, so the user can 'click to close' and effectively stay on my site.
I'm now starting to think this may potentially have been a bad move for SEO. Is there any evidence to suggest this?
Simon
-
Hi Simon,
Like Andy says, is there a possibility that you can have these windows open in a new tab with a nofollow attribute if necessary? Whether to keep people on site or send them away has been a problem / debate in marketing for a long time (well before we had to worry about penalisation / outbound link issues to go with it). There's a fine line between keeping people on a site they no longer want to be on and accidentally allowing them to forget about where they were before.
You might want to test different ways of sending visitors away to see which results in the best conversion metrics (whatever you choose those metrics to be). As a user, I almost invariably open links in new tabs myself, but different people have different ways of handling this themselves and I'd test what works best for your user base in terms of visitor retention / other goals.
-
Hi Simon,
I have seen a very similar issue with another site I have been working on, and by no-following the links to the external sites, this cured the problem. These just opened in a new browser window, rather than being modal.
It is the same as just no-following links so you aren't seen as either an affiliate or selling links and passing page rank.
-Andy
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
-
Yoast Local SEO
Hello has anyone had any any issues with the Yoast local plugin not accepting the license when the WP install is in subfolder. Or any license issues with the plugin?
Technical SEO | | edwardfrebow0 -
Dofollow and Nofollow links
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
Technical SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
While SEOMoz currently can tell us the number of linking c-blocks, can SEOMoz tell us what the specific c-blocks are?
I know it is important to have a diverse set of c-blocks, but I don't know how it is possible to have a diverse set if I can't find out what the c-blocks are in the first place. Also, is there a standard for domain linking c-blocks? For instance, I'm not sure if a certain amount is considered "average" or "above-average."
Technical SEO | | Todd_Kendrick0 -
Prevent Google Web Preview bot from seeing pop-up,m bad for SEO?
Hey guys, On our website, we have a lightbox pop-up showing an external page with an e-mail newsletter signup form. It it shown to some 5% of our visitors and works with a cookie to prevent the popup from showing at each visit. Recently, I saw the popup displayed in the Google SERP instant preview, for every page. The preview looks messed up. We could prevent the popup to be shown to the google web preview bot by blocking this user agent. Question is: Will it hurt our SEO? Because we show the web preview bot (not the crawl bot) something different than what a visitor may see BQrS7 BQrS7.jpg
Technical SEO | | Webprint0 -
How to defend against link cloaking
Hi, I own a website where recently a lot of backlinks have been going to my old domain that 301's to my new domain. During the past 2 months I have noticed a massive amount of links pointing to my old domain. When I go to look at the links and go to the page all I see is a search bar which to me this seems like link cloaking. I am not sure what I should do. Obviously I am not doing the link building and someone is targeting anchor specific keywords from multiple domains that all look the same. My question is should I report it myself in google webmaster tools before I get hit with a filter or penalty, or would this force them to penalize me. And if I do get caught up in a penalty I would not know how to fix this since I doubt the webmaster is linking to me out of the kindness of his heart. Any advice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | dreamfire0 -
Too Many On Page LInk
The analysis of my site is showing that I have a problem with too many on-page links. Most of this is due to our menu, and wanting users to be able to quickly get to the shopping category they are looking for. We end up with over 200 links in order to get the menu we want. How are other people dealing with a robust menu, but avoiding getting dinged for too many links? One of our pages in question is: http://www.milosport.com/category/2176-snowboards.aspx
Technical SEO | | dantheriver0 -
Why would you remove a canonical link?
Currently, my client's blog makes a duplicate page every time someone comments on a post. The previous SEO consultant told the developer to not put a canonical link directing it to the main blog post. Did taking out the canonical link result in these duplicate pages? My question is why would she recommend this action? Is it best to now add in the canonical link in or should we implement a 301 redirect or insert a index: no follow? Would adding a canonical link keep duplicate pages from happening in the future?
Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM0