Linking Away From Your Site

By Adam  |  1 Dec 2015 14:00:00

Though you want your eCommerce website to be very appealing and for your customers to stay on it for as long as possible, it will occasionally be appropriate for you to link away to another website. Maybe you're writing a blog post and talking about another business and it would make sense to give a link to their site, maybe you are using a link as a source for your content or maybe you'll be writing about an affiliate and need to link to their website. What do you do to keep people on your site, when you explicitly need to link them away?

Well, it's very easy to do this well, really, but there is a simple thing about this that many people overlook. When you do link to other websites, make sure that these links will open up a new window or a new tab in the visitor's browsers, because that way they'll still be on your site. If they go off to the other website and keep your one open in a different tab or window, that will still be good for you because it will increase your dwell rate (which is good for SEO) and also because they may well spot the older tab and window later on anyway, and resume their shopping. What seems strange is that there are a lot of people who don't link away in different tabs/windows, instead they have the link load in the current tab/window and lead the prospects away from their site. When there's such an easy fix to this problem, it doesn't make sense not to do it!

So I hope that gives you a good idea of how to properly link away from your eCommerce website. I'm sure some of you might think to yourselves "Well, I just won't ever link away" but that isn't such a good idea. Linking away shows that you are aware of lots of different people and businesses who work in the area and are conscious of their own need for traffic. Plus, while nobody really seems to be able to make up their minds for sure, it seems like linking out is good for SEO too. So keep this advice in mind and you should be able to make your eCommerce website even better!