Ever felt limited by the default settings of a WordPress plugin? You install something that promises to solve a specific problem, like opening external links in a new tab for SEO, but it doesn’t quite fit your needs. You wish you could tweak it just a little bit, maybe add a specific class to certain links, or change the way the rel attribute is handled based on the link’s destination. That’s where customization comes in, and that’s exactly what this article is all about. We’ll explore how you can tailor the “External Links in New Window / New Tab” plugin to perfectly match your website’s requirements, and, even better, how you can leverage the power of AI to simplify the entire process.

What is External Links in New Window / New Tab?

External Links in New Window / New Tab is a handy WordPress plugin designed to automatically open all external links on your website in a new browser tab or window. This seemingly small feature can have a positive impact on your site’s SEO, user experience, and overall stickiness. Instead of users navigating away from your site when they click on an external link, your website remains open in its original tab, encouraging them to return after they’ve finished browsing the linked content. This system also ensures your site meets XHTML Strict compliance.

The plugin boasts a strong reputation within the WordPress community, reflected in its 4.5/5 star rating based on 76 reviews. With over 30,000 active installations, it’s a popular choice for website owners seeking a simple and effective solution for managing external links. It does its job with minimal fuss, right out of the box. For more information about the plugin, visit the official plugin page on WordPress.org.

Why Customize?

While the default functionality of the plugin is perfectly adequate for many websites, there are situations where customization becomes not just desirable, but essential. Think of it like buying a suit off the rack – it might fit okay, but tailoring it ensures a perfect fit and reflects your individual style. Similarly, customizing this tool allows you to fine-tune its behavior to align precisely with your unique needs and goals.

The beauty of customization lies in its ability to address specific requirements that a generic plugin simply can’t cater to. For example, you might want to exclude certain domains from being opened in a new tab, perhaps internal subdomains or trusted partner sites. Or, you might want to add specific CSS classes to external links based on the context in which they appear, allowing for different styling depending on whether the link is in a blog post, a sidebar widget, or a navigation menu. Maybe you want to add specific schema markup to help search engines better understand the linked content.

Consider a news website that regularly links to other news sources. They might want to customize the plugin to add a “nofollow” rel attribute to sponsored links, while ensuring editorial links maintain a “noopener noreferrer” attribute. A travel blog could add a tracking parameter to all outbound links to affiliate partners, so they can accurately track conversions. These are just a couple of examples, and with some clever customization you can seriously boost the effectiveness of your WordPress website.

Common Customization Scenarios

Customizing Schema Markup for Specific Content Types

Schema markup helps search engines understand the context of your content, leading to improved search rankings and richer search results. Sometimes, you need to add specific schema properties to external links based on the type of content they point to. For example, if you’re linking to a product page on an e-commerce site, you might want to add schema properties like offers and aggregateRating.

Through customization, you can automatically add these schema properties to external links pointing to specific domains or matching certain URL patterns. This ensures that search engines have a clear understanding of the linked content, potentially boosting its visibility and driving more relevant traffic to your website. Imagine a recipe blog linking to kitchenware products. By adding appropriate schema to those outgoing links, they are helping to improve the SEO of those products. It’s a win-win.

Let’s say a food blogger consistently links to specific brands of cookware. By customizing the plugin, they could automatically add schema markup indicating the “brand” and “product” properties to those links. AI can help identify those target URLs and content types for automated customization.

Automating Meta Tag Generation

Meta tags are HTML snippets that provide information about a webpage to search engines and other web services. While meta descriptions and title tags are generally managed on a per-page basis, you might want to automate the generation of certain meta tags for external links. For example, you might want to add a specific meta tag indicating that the linked page is a “related resource” or a “reference material.”

Customization enables you to automatically generate these meta tags based on the characteristics of the external link. This can save you time and effort while ensuring that your website provides comprehensive information to search engines. This automation can provide additional context to search crawlers.

Think of a website aggregating research papers. They could customize the plugin to automatically add a “citation” meta tag to external links pointing to scholarly articles. AI can scan and understand the linked content, then help formulate the meta tag dynamically.

Integrating with Analytics Platforms

Understanding how users interact with external links is crucial for gauging the effectiveness of your content and marketing efforts. While basic analytics platforms track outbound clicks, customization allows for deeper integration and more granular data collection. You might want to track specific link categories, measure conversion rates for affiliate links, or identify which external resources are most popular among your audience.

By customizing the plugin, you can seamlessly integrate with your analytics platform of choice and track a wide range of metrics related to external links. This data can provide valuable insights into user behavior, content performance, and overall website ROI. You could even use a heatmapping tool to track which outgoing links attract the most attention.

A digital marketing agency could customize the plugin to automatically add UTM parameters to all outbound links in their client’s blog posts, allowing them to track the source and medium of traffic generated by those links. AI could assist with dynamic UTM parameter generation, based on campaign type and content.

Creating Custom SEO Rules

Default SEO settings are often insufficient for specialized websites. Customization allows you to establish granular control over how search engines treat external links. This is useful when you need very targeted application of nofollow/dofollow rules, or for applying special link attributes for particular SEO objectives.

Customizing this tool allows you to address this challenge by creating fine-tuned SEO rules that consider factors like the linked domain, anchor text, and content context. The result is more control and a potential boost to your site’s search performance.

For example, an online directory might want to implement a rule that adds the “sponsored” attribute only to links from paying advertisers, while leaving other links as “dofollow”. AI can help classify links based on their origin and dynamically adjust the link attributes.

Building Custom XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps are essential for helping search engines discover and index your website’s content. While most websites automatically generate sitemaps for internal pages, you might want to create a custom sitemap specifically for external links. This can be particularly useful if your website relies heavily on curated content or resource directories.

By customizing the plugin, you can automatically generate a custom XML sitemap containing all the external links on your website. This allows you to signal the importance of these resources to search engines and potentially improve their visibility. It helps you give search crawlers a guided tour of your external resources.

Imagine a website that curates educational resources. They could customize the plugin to generate a dedicated XML sitemap for all the external links pointing to those resources, making it easier for search engines to discover and index them. AI can categorize links based on their content and priority, assisting in sitemap generation.