I've never seen an <a href=.> link like this until recently

[dickbaker]

I've been writing articles for one of the better article submission sites. I've also been getting Google alerts whenever a new link to my site is detected.

A couple of sites I've found that have reprinted my articles have a link back to my site. But instead of using <a href="http://www.mysite.com" target="_blank">, the link is <a target="_blank" href="http://www.mysite.com">.

I haven't paid close attention to such things until now. Is this now a valid way to link, or is it some sort of link scam?

Incidentally, I also found on one of these sites a number of links to what are probably affiliate sites owned by the same person/people who reprinted my articles. The links to the affiliate sites use the old <a href="http://www.myaffiliatesite.com" target="_blank"> type of link. It's only the link back to my site that has the target in between the "a" and the "href."

Any replies much appreciated.

[leadegroot]

The order of the attributes on the anchor element make no difference whatsoever.
No scam, just a programming peculiarity, IMHO :)

[dickbaker]

Thanks, Leadegroot.

I'm glad to hear that it's not a scam. But why the regular syntax for the links the site owner(s) really want to push?

What made me suspicious of this is that the site owner(s) violated the article submission site's terms of service by adding hyperlinks to keywords in my article that point to affiliate sites. Also, the site owner(s) did not follow the terms of service by adding a link back to the article submission site.

[leadegroot]

Who knows? :)
I tend to do the href first, because I tend to think 'anchor -ok, where does it go? :type: and what special settings does it need? :type:'
But I know there have been times when I have revised an anchor element and then noticed that I have put some of the attributes in an unusual location, because I wasn't paying real attention when I placed the cursor before typing, or I just 'slipped'.

I wouldn't lay any particular significance on it :)

[Lexur]

HTML edition software does things like this everytime.
It's not strange to see a lot of properties in an "img" tag before the "source=" of the image itself and it changes from editor to editor without effect in the validity of the code.