Orphan Pages | How to Find & Fix Them

Despite being an often-overlooked aspect of SEO and site health in general, orphan pages can significantly impact a website’s visibility and search engine performance.

In this article, we’ll discuss orphan pages in detail, talking about what they are, why they’re bad for SEO, and what causes these page types to appear. 

We’ll also discuss how to find them, fix them, and prevent them from appearing on your site in the future.

Table of Contents

• What are Orphan Pages?
• Why are Orphan Pages Bad for SEO?
• What Causes Orphan Pages?
• How to Find Orphan Pages
• How to Fix Orphan Pages
• How to Prevent Orphan Pages

What are Orphan Pages?

Orphan pages are web pages that exist on a website but are not linked to any other pages on that same site. A distinct lack of internal links makes the page incredibly difficult (and sometimes even impossible) for users and search engines to find.

Since orphan pages are not connected to the website’s main navigation or linked to any other place on the site, they often go unnoticed and unindexed, which can lead to potential SEO issues later on.

Here’s what orphan pages look like within typical website architecture:

Why are Orphan Pages Bad for SEO?

Orphan pages are bad for SEO for a few reasons. In this section, we’ll discuss each of those reasons in detail.

Generally Not Indexed by Search Engines

In almost all cases, Orphan pages are not indexed by search engines because they do not have any internal links pointing to that page. This makes it incredibly difficult for search engine crawlers to discover those pages.

There are times, however, when these orphan pages will still be indexed. However, this will only happen if:

• You have manually asked Google to index it via Google Search Console.
• The page has been included in your sitemap.
• The page has external backlinks pointing to it.

If one of the above conditions has not been met, it is incredibly hard for crawlers to crawl and index the page/s. So, you will have a hard time getting the content indexed, which is not great if this is an important piece of content you have published.

Create a Poor User Experience

Orphan pages contribute to a poor user experience simply because they are isolated from the rest of your website’s content. Users visiting websites rely on navigation menus, internal links, and related content to explore and find information. 

Without links to orphan pages, users may miss valuable content, which can lead to frustration and a negative perception of the website’s usability.

Let’s say, for example, that a user has seen a piece of content that you have shared on Twitter (X):

If the user reads this blog post and likes it but does not bookmark it, there is no easy way for them to find this content on your site if it is an orphan page. They will need to scroll back through your social media just to find the article. This is not ideal.

Generally Poor Rankings in SERPs (If Indexed)

Even if some of your website’s orphan pages are indexed by search engines, they often perform poorly in the SERPs. This poor performance is due to the lack of internal links, which still carry a lot of weight in SEO in 2024.

Internal links help distribute page authority across your website, signaling to search engines that certain pages are important. So, if a page has no internal links, whichever search engine bot is crawling your website at the time will not see it as important as other pages that you are competing with in the SERPs.

Crawl Budget Issues (for Large Websites)

When you run a large website, managing the crawl budget becomes crucial.

** Crawl budget refers to the number of pages a search engine bot will crawl and index within a given time period.

Orphan pages can waste valuable crawl budgets, as search engines may spend time attempting to access and index these isolated pages instead of more critical and connected content. This inefficiency can prevent important pages from being crawled and indexed promptly, potentially harming your website’s overall SEO performance.

What Causes Orphan Pages?

Orphan pages often arise due to issues like outdated or removed links, changes in site structure, or errors in the internal linking strategy that the website is developing.

Additionally, they can result from content that has been published without being properly implemented into the site’s navigation.

Orphan pages can also be caused by site migrations that have been mismanaged (causing internal links to be removed) or products that are out of stock, which can be a huge problem for SEO professionals who are working on ecommerce websites.

How to Find Orphan Pages

In this section, we will walk you through a thorough step-by-step process for finding any orphan pages currently on your website.

Obtain a Full List of Website URLs

The first step is to obtain a file containing all your website URLs. 

Now, you would think that you could put your website URL into Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or another crawling tool of your choice, but this isn’t strictly the case. By definition, orphan pages are pages that are not linked to your website, so using a crawling tool won’t work here.

You can start by grabbing your website’s sitemap file. This is, perhaps, the best way to do this, as your CMS will often update your sitemap automatically when new content is published. But just ensure that the sitemap is up-to-date before you download it.

Using WordPress, you can use a lightweight plugin called ListURLs to export your site’s URLs and create a CSV file to download.

You can also use WordPress’ built-in ‘Export URL’ feature:

Run a Crawl of your Website URLs

Your next step is to use a website crawler to crawl your extracted list of URLs. The first step is to tell your crawler that you only want to crawl your selected URLs and ask it to ignore the remaining URLs on the website. Within Screaming Frog, head into the ‘Configuration’ tab and select ‘Include’, labeled under the ‘Content’ tab.

This will tell Screaming Frog that you only want to crawl these URLs. So now, if I head to Screaming Frog and ask it to crawl the SEOTesting site, it will only crawl the blog URLs:

Find Pages with No Inbound Links

To find any orphan pages on your website, you need to analyze your crawl file and find URLs with no inbound links. Screaming Frog has a handy tab at the bottom that shows the inlinks pointing to a particular page:

Run through your URLs and note any URLs with no inlinks listed.

Note Impacted URLs

As we just mentioned, the next step is to note URLs that show no inlinks to the page. You can save these in a text file, or however you work, and come back to them later when you start to work on fixing these orphan pages.

How to Fix Orphan Pages

In this next section, we will take you through the process of fixing your website’s existing orphan pages. The fix you choose will depend on two things:

• Whether you want to keep the page on your site.
• Whether you believe the page is not useful and can be removed.

So, we will focus on both of these.

Keeping the Page

If you want to keep the page on your site, for example, if you believe it still offers users a lot of value, you need to ensure you add internal links to that page. You should add internal links with relevant anchor text from relevant URLs on your site.

For example, if you have written a tax law guide, you should add internal links from other pages about tax on your site. Find anchor text of “tax law” and other common terms to link to this orphan page. Once you have done this, you can ask Google (via Google Search Console) to re-crawl the page (and the page from which you have added internal links) to speed it up further.

You can also use InternalLinking, an SEOTesting tool, to speed the process up for you:

As you can see above, I want to create links to my guide on GA4. So, I have asked InternalLinking to search the rest of the site for mentions of the following keywords:

• GA4 Guide
• What is GA4
• GA4 Complete Guide
• GA4

InternalLinking will now search the content on the site for these keywords and highlight these as opportunities for internal links:

Deleting/Removing the Page

If you want to delete the page, you have a couple of options here.

Your first option is to redirect the page to a URL that is not an orphan. It should be a relevant page on your site so that when someone finds the URL from somewhere (for example, a LinkedIn post you have shared), they are still greeted with relevant information.

Or, you can delete the page entirely and let it show as a 404. Eventually, Google will take the hint and stop trying to crawl this URL. The one tip here is to make sure your 404 page is well-optimized and can take users to relevant sections of the website so you don’t lose any users from your site.

How to Prevent Orphan Pages

To prevent your site from having orphan pages in the future, you need to build a proper internal linking strategy that ensures every new page is connected to other pages on your site.

Before publishing new content, plan how it will fit into your site’s structure and determine where best to link. Use tools like InternalLinking, CMS plugins, and others to automatically suggest links to new pages, ensuring they are not left isolated.

Regular content audits and reviews are also crucial in preventing orphan pages. Schedule periodic checks of your website to find any pages that may have become orphan pages due to changes in your site’s structure or content updates. Use analytics tools to monitor user flow and ensure all pages get traffic, indicating they are accessible and relevant. By consistently reviewing and updating your site’s internal links and content structure, you can maintain a website that is easy for users and search engines to navigate.

Wrapping Up

Orphan pages are a critical yet often neglected aspect of website management and SEO. Without internal links, these pages can significantly hinder a website’s visibility and performance in search engine rankings. They create a poor user experience, waste valuable crawl budgets, and typically fail to rank well in SERPs. To address this issue, it’s essential to identify and fix existing orphan pages by adding internal links or removing them if they no longer serve a purpose. Moreover, preventing orphan pages requires a strategic internal linking approach and regular content audits. By proactively managing these elements, you can ensure a well-structured, user-friendly website that performs optimally in search engines.

If you want to maximize your use of Google Search Console data and create a better SEO testing strategy for your business, give SEOTesting a try. We are offering a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. So sign up today and start testing for free.