Add external link to menu

asked Dec 9, 2012 by ilihost (220 points)
Hello,

I need to add a menu item with a link to an external site...
¿How can I do it?

2 Answers

answered Dec 11, 2012 by Eugene Nezhuta (2,920 points)
Hello ilihost,

I'm not sure I understood what menu you're talking about.. Could you please be more specific?
commented Dec 11, 2012 by ilihost (220 points)
My site menu. Every time I add a page and select it as a category menu, the menu link is added to the menu bar. My question is how can I add a link to an external site to the menu bar?
commented Dec 12, 2012 by seotoaster (14,700 points)
Just create a regular page, add it to the menu, then go to the SEO ta/301 redirect and create a 301 redirect from the page you just created to to wherever you need to.
commented Dec 13, 2012 by ilihost (220 points)
OK, but 301 redirects result in PageRank loss, so it will be much better if we could link from the menu directly to external sites .Also, we could add "nofolllow"  if we wanted to.
commented Dec 16, 2012 by seotoaster (14,700 points)
edited Jun 24, 2013 by seotoaster
Yes, it does loose a bit of ranking power, albeit this is very minimal (just as much as with a regular link btw as Matt Cutts specifies here: http://youtu.be/Filv4pP-1nw). You can of course add a link manually right within the template itself if this is paramount to what you're trying to achieve.
I would stay away from "nofollow" (and what's the point of 301 loss if you're going to no follow anyway?), instead look into what seotoaster offers in terms of page rank sculpting http://www.seotoaster.com/link-siloing.html , there is a short video explaining it. That's the proper way to do it, and seotoaster does it for you like no other system.
Finally, we will add to the feature request list direct off-site menu insertion as it is useful indeed. Thanks for the feedback, It is most welcome :-).
answered Jun 24, 2013 by lmarshall1995 (430 points)
1. Create a new template

2. Edit the template content to the following:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;url=http://yourdomain.co.uk/">
        <script type="text/javascript">
            window.location.href = "http://yourdomain.co.uk/"
        </script>
        <title>Page Redirection</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        If you are not redirected automatically, follow the <a href='http://yourdomain.co.uk/'>link to example</a>
    </body>
</html>

3. Create a new page.

4. Set the page's template to the one you just created

5. Voila! You have done it.

Hope this helps. :-)
commented Jan 13, 2016 by rsthomas (320 points)
Tried to create a template with the sample code above, but get a "parsererror" message.  Maybe it is not compatible with ver 2.4.1...
...