How to Professionally Add an External Link Icon to Your WordPress Site

Generally, most websites use symbols like a small box with an arrow, but the truth is you have complete freedom to customize it. Visitors of your website will appreciate it if they know in advance that a click on a specific link will take them to another site.

Some website owners prefer making it more visible by adding external link icons, just like the ones you came across on Wikipedia.

How to Add an External Link Icon?

However, utilizing standardized forms of letting your visitors know they will go to another website might be helpful because the visitors are already familiar with it. Without further ado, let’s see how you can add external links icon with our WP Links.

The icons show that a click will take you to a different website. Although the internet security is higher than earlier, countless malicious sites scare visitors. Adding an icon clarifies that clicking the link will take you outside the website you’re on.

Advanced users might add a warning box that informs the viewers that they are about to hop onto the other site. External links can alter user experience, especially if they reinstate your current tab. It can be frustrating to the point where visitors choose to stay away from your website.

Since most minor sites might contain many links, their management can be stressful if you use complex and hard-to-grasp plugins. The WP Links is the favorite plugin for those who wish to improve their link game on the website.

WP Links – The Best Way to Add External Link Icon

WP Links landing page overview

Now let’s see how WordPress handles all of that. Once you have grabbed your WP Links, you will find it among your installed plugins. Activate it and click on Open Link Settings, and that’s where the magic starts.

The menu will offer you a variety of link-related settings that will handle all the links on your website. However, the topic of our interest today is External Links; therefore, we will focus on the first tab titled just like that.

External Links Tab

Easy and flexible management of external links is one of the powers this plugin possesses. You can easily create as many link rules with WP Links that let you easily control the links and their attributes according to your needs. It takes minutes to install and even less to configure your links.

External Links layout

The first tab welcomes you with a solid variety of settings that you might want to apply to your external links.

External Links applying settings

No doubt that the options include everything you need for complete control over the links and their properties. Whether you want your links in the same tab or window or a new one, WP Links will give you a hand.

The plugin will help you avoid making beginner mistakes by telling you what is not recommended, like opening the topmost frame or all in the same new window or tab.

Choose Your Icon Type and Position

Go to the menu. WP Links will offer you more than just an image. You can choose whether the best fit is a Dashicon, Image, or something else such as Font Awesome. Since the image speaks a thousand words, scroll down to find even more impressive options to make it look nice and neat.

WP Links choosing icon type

WP Links choosing icon type settings

Here you can choose between 20 available icon images that visually fit your post the best. Also, you can pick the position of your link icon.

WP Links choosing icon position

Apply Desired Link Rules

Additionally, it will let you apply the rule of skipping icons if the link contains a <img> tag inside.

WP Links will let you have a custom rule regarding your link attributes. If you want your external links to be a follow or nofollow, hit the drop menu:

External Links nofollow

Furthermore, the options regarding link attributes are not lacking either. Easily add to rel attributes like ”noopener” and/or ”noreferrer” by checking the box.

External Links add rel attribute

There is more to that. You can set the title, which will be used for the original value, and text for the link text. All you have to do is fill the blank in the {title} field.

External Links set title

 

Once you configure your settings, do not forget to hit the Save button. It is a big blue button at the bottom of your settings.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, your first successful and fully configured external links managed by our premium plugin will improve your website’s user experience. Details like link management will make or break your web traffic, and people will either stay away from or run to your site happily.

The intelligent approach to the external links game asserts that icons are used to ensure there is no confusion and that the readers of your content know that a specific link will take them to a different server or domain.

Experts suggest you should not force links to open in a new tab. Instead, you should let the visitors and readers know quickly if a specific click will lead them elsewhere. This short guide on adding external links with WP Links will help you get the desired results.

For any additional information or help, there is a support tab, and the developers of this plugin will gladly respond to your inquiries sooner than you might have expected.

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