Do not let visitors leave your blog!

The simple but effective method of keeping your readers on your site is - creation hyperlinks open in a new window when they are clicked.

Why Define Hyperlinks to Open a New Window?

"Why would one want to have their links open in a new window?", you might ask. The primary, and probably the only reason a blogger would do that - is to trying to keep the user on their site as long as possible. You provide the reference link in the text of your posts not just because you want you reader to go away. In some cases, reader might come back after reviewing the site where you sent him, in some case, he will stay there, move further, or just close the online session. If you have the hyperlink opening a new window in every case, it will be easier for your visitor to come back to your site, when he is done with exploration of the link, you created. And he will be able to painlessly resume investigation of your own site after coming back.

When you provide internal links, directing to your own content, this issue is not very important, since your visitors does not leave actually your site, but just continues its exploration. Opening every time a new window, when customer clicks a new link, is not recommended, since your reader might get a feeling that you are spamming him. He will get annoyed and leave.

But if you are referring to another blog or web site, have a new window opened to display the web page, while keeping your own page in the background.

Create a Hyperlink That Opens a New Window

The basic structure of a hyperlink looks like this:

<a href="http://internet-traders.blogspot.com">Online Stock Trading for Beginners</a>

If you use this code, the clicking on the link will lead the clicker to the new location. To manually change the hyperlink properties, forcing to open a new window on every click, requires code modification. Just add one more property to the ’a’ tag to make it do what we want.

All we need to add is:

target="_blank"

Just like the href property/value pair (href="some value"), you need simply to include the target="_blank" to the ’a’ tag of your hyperlink. Here is what the finished hyperlink will look like:

<a href="http://internet-traders.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Online Stock Trading for Beginners</a>

Some desktop software HTML authoring utilities are able to provide this functionality as an option for you when you create a hyperlink. For example, Post2Blog, I use can do that easily. But if you use online Blog editor, like Blogger, you do not have ready to go option for the hyperlinks properties modification. You need to review the HTML source, find the ’a’ tag you want to modify and then add the target="_blank" value pair to the hyperlink definition.

Windows Live Writer from Microsoft for Blog Desktop Publishing

By many bloggers, Windows Live Writer (WLW) is regarded as the best free blogging software on the market. It is a Microsoft product and is strongly supported and maintained by the software giant.

WLW has lots of features that put it aside among desktop freeware blogging applications. Among the main application features are:

• Supports multiple blog platforms, including Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, Wordpress, Blogger and many others.
• Ability to compel your blog with easy. You can insert photos and videos, maps, tags and lots of other cool content, all in no time.
• Powerful editing features include tables, spell checker, and quick hyperlinks.
• You can preview your publication before you post. Since the software enables true WYSIWYG blog authoring, it will show you exactly what your blog entry will look like before you post it, using your blog’s templates and formatting.
• You can compose your entries while being offline, and later publish them, when you get back online.
• Windows Live Writer is currently available in 6 different languages.

Developer’s Home Page: http://get.live.com/writer/overview

Direct Link for downloading: http://www.ziddu.com/download/1860119/WWL0057.exe.html