When it comes to making your website stronger and more visible on search engines, every page matters. One common issue that many websites’ owners face is orphan pages. These are pages that exist on your website but are not linked to by any other page. In simple words, they are lost pages, and both your visitors and search engines find it hard to discover them. This can badly affect your site's Orphan pages SEO efforts.
In this article, we will explain what orphan pages are, why they hurt your website, how you can find them, and simple ways to fix them. We’ll keep it simple so that even beginners can understand easily.
Orphan pages are pages that are live on your website but have no links pointing to them from any other page. Imagine a room in a house with no doors and no one can enter it because there’s no way to get there. Similarly, without links, users and search engines like Google can’t find those pages easily.
In terms of Orphan pages SEO, this is a big problem. If search engines cannot find a page, they won’t index it. And if your page is not indexed, it won’t show up in search results.
If you are serious about SEO, especially Orphan pages SEO, you must make sure that no important page on your site is left orphaned.
Now that you know the damage orphan pages can do, let’s see how you can find them. Here are a few simple methods:
Tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and SEMrush can crawl your website and find pages that have no incoming links. Most tools have an option to list all orphan pages.
You just need to:
If you don’t know how to use such tools, hiring a web development service can make this job much easier.
Google Analytics keeps track of the page’s users visit. You can look for pages that have very low or zero traffic. Sometimes these pages are orphaned.
Steps:
Your sitemap lists all the pages you want search engines to know about. Compare your sitemap with the pages your crawler found. If there are pages in your sitemap that are missing from the crawl data, they could be orphan pages.
If your website is small, you can manually check your pages. Create a list of all pages and see which ones are not linked anywhere else.
Finding orphan pages is only half the job. Now, you need to fix them. Here’s how:
The best solution is to add links to the orphan page from relevant parts of your website. For example, if you have a blog post that relates to the orphan page, link it naturally within the text.
If the page is important, add it to your website’s main navigation, footer, or sidebar. This way, visitors can easily find it, and search engines will see it too.
Make sure all your important pages, including previously orphaned ones, are included in your sitemap. Then resubmit the sitemap to Google Search Console.
Sometimes, an orphan page might not be needed anymore. In such cases, you can redirect it to a related page or simply delete it to keep your site clean.
Fixing orphan pages might sound easy, but it can become complicated if you have a big website. This is where a web development service can be very useful. They can:
So, if you are serious about improving your Orphan pages SEO, consider working with experts who can do the heavy lifting for you.
Orphan pages are like lost treasures hidden on your website. They could offer value, but if no one can find them, they serve no purpose. By finding and fixing orphan pages, you boost your website’s SEO, improve user experience, and make better use of all your content.
Always remember, whether you are running a personal blog or a business site, regular checks for orphan pages are a must. And if you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out to a trusted web development service to guide you.
We are happy to discuss any questions you may have and understand your requirements to suggest specific solutions that are customized to your needs.
