Well this sound almost impossible doesn’t it? But I am not talking about tying them down to your blog so that they never leave, as I am actually referring to what happens when they click on a link to another blog or site.
Now being bloggers we just love to share information with our readers and many a time this involves including a link to some relevant information. Unfortunately, when they click that link they will leave your blog and may never return. The answer is to make sure you use a link that opens a new window so that they never actually leave your blog.
A normal link looks likes this:
<a href=”http://www.theelusivepotofgold.com/MyBlog/”>Well Blog Me</a>
If you don’t want them to leave your page all you need is to add a bit more code. It will now look like this:
<a href=”http://www.theelusivepotofgold.com/MyBlog/” target=”_blank”>Well Blog Me</a>
As you can see by this link, Well Blog Me, the result looks the same, but try it and see where it takes you.
I’ve been using this “new” code lately. thanks for the tip!
That’s what good bloggers do; help each other.
I used that technique, feeling that it was cool, showing how web-savvy I was to my readers; but what I didn’t realize was that most of my readers aren’t very web-savvy and feel that opening new windows is confusing. Most of my readers feel that pressing the “Back” button adds more control to their web experience while having too many open windows on their desktop sometimes scares them.
That certainly can be true for some. The fact is no matter what you do you can’t keep everybody happy. It would be great though if you could give them a choice wouldn’t it?