Do you have pages with valuable and engaging content but nowhere to be found in search results? These could be hidden pages on your website with no internal links pointing to them. 

You’re not alone if you are facing something like this. Many websites face this issue. These overlooked pages are known as orphan pages. Integrating valuable orphan pages back into your site structure can boost their visibility and improve SEO. At the same time, blocking low-value orphaned pages helps streamline your site and enhance overall optimization.

Let’s continue reading and learn how these pages can impact your SEO.

What Are Orphan Pages?

Orphan pages are web pages that aren’t linked to from any other page on a website. They can’t be accessed without knowing the direct URL. This makes it much harder to find these pages, but not impossible. 

Orphan pages often result from common oversights and changes within a website:

• Poor internal linking: Sometimes, new pages are created—like a product page or an article—but they are not linked from existing pages or the main catalog. Without these internal links, these new additions become orphan pages.
• Site migrations: During a website redesign or migration to a new domain, pages may not be properly redirected or linked to the new structure. This oversight can lead to orphaned pages if the migration process doesn’t include comprehensive mapping and redirection strategies.
• Deleted links: Orphan pages can also occur when internal links are deleted, either intentionally or by mistake. If a page that serves as a major link source is removed without a strategy to reassign those links, the connected pages can quickly turn into orphans.

Why Orphan Pages Are Bad for SEO?

Orphan pages might seem harmless, but they can significantly impact your website’s SEO performance and overall user experience. Here are some reasons why having orphaned pages could be detrimental to your site:

1. Difficult to Get Indexed

Orphan pages are challenging for search engines to discover because they lack internal links that bots use to navigate and index content. Without visibility in the website’s navigational structure, these pages often remain unnoticed by search engine crawlers, reducing their chances of appearing in search results.

2. Can Eat Up a Lot of Crawl Budget

When orphaned pages do get crawled, they consume a portion of your site’s crawl budget—the limited number of pages search engines will crawl at a time. This can divert resources from more important pages, delaying updates to your site in search engine indexes.

3. Don’t Perform Well

Orphan pages typically have lower visibility and receive less organic traffic. Because they are not reinforced through internal linking, which also supports page authority. This lack of connection and support means they’re less likely to rank well in search engine results.

4. Can Hurt User Experience

Orphan pages can lead to a poor user experience if visitors stumble upon outdated or irrelevant pages. Also, without clear navigational paths, users might find themselves on pages that aren’t helpful or that don’t match their intent. This leads to frustration and higher bounce rates.

How to Find Orphan Pages?

1. Crawl Audit Tools

Utilize SEO tools like Screaming Frog, Semrush, or Ahrefs to perform a crawl audit of your website. These tools simulate how search engines crawl your site and help identify pages that do not receive any internal links. A thorough audit will highlight these orphaned pages, allowing you to see which parts of your site need restructuring.

Using SEMrush to identify orphaned pages involves a streamlined process:

1. Set Up Your Project: Log in to SEMrush, create a project for your website, and access the Site Audit tool.

2. Start a Site Audit: Configure and initiate a site audit, ensuring the crawler covers your entire site.

3. Run the Audit: Let SEMrush crawl your site, which may take some time depending on your website’s size.

4. Review Audit Results: After the crawl, check the ‘Issues’ tab for any listed orphan pages under ‘Notices’ or ‘Warnings.’

5. Analyze the Orphan Pages: Examine the detailed list of orphaned pages provided by SEMrush to verify their status. Here, you can see the number of orphaned pages on your website.

By using these methods, you can identify and address orphaned pages, thus improving your site’s SEO structure and user experience.

2. Sitemap Comparison

Regularly compare your website’s XML sitemap to the actual pages listed during a site crawl. Pages that appear in the sitemap but not in the crawl data may be orphaned. This method ensures that all pages you intend to be indexed are reachable and well-integrated into your site’s structure. 

Using an XML Sitemaps Generator helps automate this process, ensuring that your sitemap remains updated with all linked pages. Keeping your sitemap updated with all linked pages helps maintain optimal site health and search engine visibility.

3. Log File Analysis

Analyzing server log files can provide insights into which pages search engines have crawled. By examining the logs, you can identify pages that get user traffic but are overlooked by search engine crawlers, suggesting they might be orphaned pages. Log file analysis helps in understanding the behavior of search engine bots on your site and can pinpoint structural issues causing certain pages to become isolated.

4. Google Analytics

Leverage Google Analytics to track pages that receive direct traffic without any internal referrals. This could indicate that the pages are orphaned, as they are not being reached through the typical navigational paths of your site. Analyzing traffic sources and user behavior on these pages can also help determine their value and whether they need to be more integrated or removed.

5. Internal Search

Monitor the queries used in your site’s internal search engine. If certain pages are frequently searched for internally, it might indicate that they are hard to find through regular navigation and could be orphaned. Enhancing internal links to these pages can improve their visibility and SEO. Additionally, optimizing your search function can help in better understanding user intent and site usability.

6. Backlink Analyzers

Use tools like Majestic or Moz to analyze backlinks. These tools can help you discover if external links point to pages on your site that lack internal links, making them orphaned pages within your navigational structure. Understanding the external linking pattern can also help in strategizing SEO efforts to boost the authority and integration of these orphaned pages.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to analyzing backlinks using Moz Link Explorer:

1. Go to Moz Link Explorer and log in to your account. If you don’t have an account, sign up for a free trial or a paid plan.

2. In the search bar, enter your domain or the specific page URL you want to check.

3. Navigate to the Inbound Links tab to view all backlinks pointing to your site.

4. Look for pages with links from high Page Authority (PA) but no or minimal internal links.

Review which external websites are linking to your orphan pages. This can help you determine if the pages hold valuable content worth reintegrating into your site’s structure.

7. Manual Inspection

For smaller websites or specific sections, manual inspection might be the most effective approach. Review your website’s navigation and check each link to ensure every page is interconnected properly and not isolated from the main site structure. Manual checks can be time-consuming but are invaluable for catching errors that automated tools might miss, ensuring a cohesive site structure.

How to Fix Orphan Pages?

Effectively managing orphan pages involves more than just linking them back to your site. Here’s how to thoughtfully address and fix orphaned pages depending on their content and purpose:

1. Internal Link

Integrate valuable orphan pages into your website’s internal linking structure. This makes them accessible to visitors and search engines. For example, if you rediscover a valuable article post-site redesign, link it from related pages. Use tools like Ahrefs’ Site Audit to find pages with high organic traffic for relevant linking opportunities.

2. Noindex

Apply a ‘noindex’ directive to orphan pages meant for specific campaigns or temporary promotions. This keeps them out of search engine results but still reachable via direct links. Insert <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” /> in the page’s <head> section. Check that these pages are not blocked in your robots.txt so search engines can read the noindex command.

3. Merge/Consolidate

Merge duplicate or similar orphan pages. Move useful content from an orphan page to a more relevant, linked page. Then, set up a 301 redirect from the orphan to the updated page. This process helps consolidate content and link equity, improving your site’s SEO.

4. Delete

Remove orphan pages that offer no value. This includes outdated test pages or unused templates. Deleting these helps streamline your site and focus search engine crawling on valuable content. Always check for and fix any broken links resulting from deletions.

Conclusion

Addressing orphan pages effectively requires understanding their impact on your site’s SEO and user experience. It’s crucial to differentiate between pages that are intentionally isolated and those accidentally overlooked. 

By assessing the reasons behind their orphan status, you can decide whether to reintegrate, update, or remove them. This proactive approach helps optimize your site for better performance, ensuring every page serves a meaningful purpose in enhancing your online presence.

Frequently Asked Questions