If you manage a WordPress website that relies on external resources — whether you’re running a blog, affiliate site, online magazine, or business platform — ensuring a smooth, secure, and SEO-optimized link experience is crucial. That’s where Smart External Links Manager comes in.
This powerful plugin is designed to enhance your site’s user experience and protect your SEO performance, while adhering to modern web development standards like XHTML 1.0 Strict compliance.
What Is Smart External Links Manager?
Smart External Links Manager is a feature-rich WordPress plugin that automatically opens all external links in a new browser tab or window. It’s built with both users and search engines in mind, offering advanced link behavior management while maintaining clean, valid markup.
Its intelligent use of JavaScript for window opening actions ensures compatibility with strict web standards, without modifying your site’s HTML structure. Even if JavaScript is disabled, links will gracefully open in the current tab without breaking your site’s functionality.
What Is Smart External Links Manager?
Install and activate Smart External Links Manager plugin then navigate to your admin area dashboard Settings -> Links Manager page and choose your options.
Key Features Of Smart External Links Manager
Automatic New Tab For External Links: Boost site engagement by keeping users on your website while they explore external resources.
Optional Link Icon Display: Visually mark external links with a Dashicon link symbol (🔗) to clearly indicate which links open in a new tab.
XHTML Strict Compliant: By using JavaScript for link handling, your site’s markup remains clean, valid, and search-engine-friendly.
Built-In Security: Automatically adds rel="noopener" to external links for enhanced security, protecting against potential tab-napping attacks.
SEO Enhancements: Fine-tune your link attributes with options to add:
rel="noreferrer"for privacy controlrel="nofollow"for untrusted or user-generated linksrel="sponsored"for affiliate or paid links
Granular Control With Custom Lists:
- Force List: Define specific URLs or patterns (like PDFs or certain pages) that should always open in a new tab.
- Ignore List: Prevent select external links from opening in a new tab — highest priority for precise management.
User-Friendly Settings Panel: Easily manage all plugin options through an intuitive, well-organized dashboard, including dynamic lists for real-time updates.
Lightweight & Performance-Optimized: Smart External Links Manager dynamically processes new links, including those added via AJAX, without slowing down your site.
Internationalization Ready: Fully translatable for seamless integration with multilingual websites.
Why Smart External Links Manager?
- Enhance User Experience: Keep visitors engaged on your site while offering them access to external resources in a user-friendly manner.
- Protect Your SEO & Compliance: Uses appropriate
relattributes and JavaScript methods to maintain clean, compliant, and SEO-optimized markup. - Unmatched Flexibility: Customize link behavior to match your website’s unique needs with extensive configuration options.
- Reliable Developer Support: Crafted by NewCodeByte, a name known for quality WordPress plugins and regular updates.
The developers of Smart External Links Manager are actively working on exciting new features, including:
- Exclusion of specific links via CSS selectors
- Advanced internal link management options
- Custom SVG icon upload support
- And more innovations on the way!
If you’re serious about improving user experience, enhancing SEO, and maintaining strict markup compliance on your WordPress site, Smart External Links Manager is the plugin to install. Its flexibility, security features, and future-proof roadmap make it an essential tool for modern websites.