Orphan Pages: The Hidden SEO Problem and How to Fix It

Table of Contents

What Are the Key Benefits of Fixing Orphan Pages?

Best Practices For Finding and Fixing Orphan Pages

Orphan pages are a hidden yet significant problem that can undermine your website’s SEO performance. These are pages with no internal links pointing to them, making them inaccessible to users and difficult for search engines to discover and index.

Left unchecked, orphan pages can waste your crawl budget, hurt your rankings, and disrupt your site’s structure. However, with the right strategies, you can identify and fix orphan pages to improve your website’s visibility, user experience, and SEO performance.

The average page in the top 10 is around 2 years old. The sooner you fix your orphan pages, the faster you can get them ranked.

In this guide, we’ll explore what orphan pages are, why they matter, and actionable steps to reconnect them effectively.

What Are Orphan Pages?

Orphan pages are web pages that lack internal links from other pages on the same website. This makes them difficult for users and search engine crawlers to discover, but not impossible. Orphan pages often occur due to poor site structure, content updates, or migration errors.

These pages can negatively impact SEO by wasting your crawl budget and creating a fragmented user experience. To fix orphan pages, website owners should identify them through tools like Google Search Console or Hike SEO, and add internal links from relevant pages. This improves navigation, boosts rankings, and ensures the content is fully utilized.

Common characteristics of orphan pages:

Page is live: Orphan pages are not test pages on the backend, but live pages that users can access by typing in the URL directly. The problem is that these pages cannot be accessed through your website’s internal linking structure.
Orphan page regardless of what your tool says: Your tools might not flag a page as an “orphan”, but that is incorrect information. It can happen because some tools use incorrect methods to categorize pages.
No inbound links: The true definition of an orphan page is the lack of inbound links from other pages on your website.

What Are the Key Benefits of Fixing Orphan Pages?

Leaving orphan pages lingering on your website is not good SEO practice. We’ll share the reasons why you should fix the problem to enjoy better website SEO performance. The best part is it doesn’t require much work or technical expertise.

Efficient Crawl Budget Use

Search engines allocate a specific crawl budget to each website. Orphan pages waste this budget since crawlers cannot easily reach them. Therefore, by linking orphan pages, you optimize crawl efficiency.

This ensures that search engines focus on indexing valuable pages rather than spending resources on disconnected or overlooked content.

Improved SEO Performance

Fixing orphan pages enhances search engine visibility by allowing crawlers to discover and index these pages effectively. Properly linked pages contribute to a cohesive site structure, which improves rankings and ensures all content is utilized.

Additionally, search engines reward well-connected websites with better rankings. It means that fixing orphan pages is essential for maximizing organic traffic and overall SEO performance.

Enhanced User Experience

Linking orphan pages creates smoother navigation, thereby helping users find relevant content more easily. This reduces frustration, increases the average session duration, and can lead to higher conversion rates.

Overall, a well-organized site structure ensures users can access valuable information without obstacles.

Better Internal Linking Structure

Linking orphan pages strengthens your site’s internal linking strategy by distributing link equity across all pages. This enhances the authority of your site, with benefits cascading to your most important pages. Overall, a robust internal link structure is key to a cohesive and high-performing website.

Stronger Brand Image

A website with no orphan pages reflects professionalism and attention to detail. It shows visitors and search engines that your site is well-maintained. Furthermore, a streamlined structure reinforces trust, loyalty, and a positive perception of your brand.

Higher Conversion Potential

Orphan pages may contain crucial information or conversion-focused elements like call-to-actions, product details, or sign-up forms. Fixing them ensures users can easily access this content, thereby increasing conversion opportunities.

Hike SEO can help you monitor analytics to determine the effect of removing orphan pages.

Common Reasons Why Orphan Pages Exist

You might be wondering, if orphan pages are so bad, then why might you encounter them? Good question! Knowing why this happens in the first place allows you to reduce the chances of it happening to your website. Here are the common reasons:

Site migration issues: During site migrations or redesigns, links to certain pages can be overlooked, which leaves them disconnected. Also, poor planning or incomplete audits often cause these pages to lose their place in the site structure.
Content updates or deletions: When content is updated or removed, internal links pointing to related pages may be unintentionally broken or omitted. This leaves those pages isolated, which makes them inaccessible to users and search engines.
Poor internal linking strategy: A lack of intentional internal linking creates gaps in site navigation. Also, pages are sometimes published without linking them to relevant sections, thereby resulting in orphan pages that are difficult to discover.
Deleted menu or navigation links: Removing links from menus or navigation bars without updating internal linking elsewhere can cause pages to lose their connectivity. Therefore, you’ll need to replace navigation elements to avoid orphan pages.
Dynamic content generation: Websites using dynamic content sometimes fail to generate proper internal links for specific pages. This causes them to be excluded from navigation paths or crawlable structures.
Errors in sitemap updates: Failing to update XML sitemaps after adding or modifying content can result in orphan pages that search engines cannot discover or index properly.

How to Quickly Find Orphan Pages

You can use the Google Search Console to find orphan pages. Check the "Pages" report under the "Indexing" tab to identify pages that are indexed but not receiving traffic. These may be orphan pages.

You can perform the same action using Hike SEO, and use the tools to improve the backlink structure of your website. We’ll also help you find the right keywords for your content to gain more organic traffic from search engine results pages.

Best Practices For Finding and Fixing Orphan Pages

Dealing with orphan pages can seem annoying since it’s usually an unintended consequence of website design. Therefore, we’ll help you fix the problem quickly so you can move onto other aspects of optimizing your website SEO strategy.

Compare Analytics and Sitemap Data

Analyze Google Analytics for pages with little to no traffic and compare them with your XML sitemap. Pages that appear in the sitemap but lack traffic or links indicate potential orphan pages. By cross-checking these sources, you can accurately identify overlooked content and ensure they are linked effectively.

As a rule of thumb, keeping your sitemap updated and reflecting your current site structure is crucial to prevent future orphan pages from developing.

Implementing Strategic Internal linking

Fix orphan pages by adding relevant internal links from high-traffic or related pages. Also, ensure these links fit naturally within your content and provide value to users. Consider linking orphan pages from menus, navigation bars, or cornerstone content to improve visibility.

A deliberate internal linking strategy is a proactive approach to strengthen site structure, improve navigation, and enhance SEO by distributing link equity across all pages.

Leverage SEO Tools

Use tools like Hike SEO to identify orphan pages. These tools help locate unlinked or poorly linked pages by analyzing your site’s internal linking structure, crawl data, and index reports.

Cross-referencing this data with your XML sitemap ensures no pages are overlooked. Regular use of these tools streamlines orphan page discovery and supports ongoing site maintenance.

Monitor Server Logs

Review server logs to identify pages crawled by search engines but missing internal links. That’s because server logs provide valuable insights into how search engines navigate your site. Hence, you’ll have help uncovering orphan pages that might not appear in analytics or crawling tools.

Focus on User Navigation

Enhance the user experience by ensuring orphan pages are accessible via menus, category pages, or contextual links. Furthermore, evaluate your website’s navigation paths to confirm all pages are logically structured and easily reachable.

You’ll discover that intuitive navigation reduces the likelihood of pages being overlooked by both users and search engines.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Is Fixing Orphan Pages Important?

Fixing orphan pages is crucial for improving SEO and user experiences. It’s because properly linked pages allow search engines to crawl and index them, thereby increasing their visibility.

Additionally, resolving orphan pages prevents wasted crawl budgets, reduces duplication risks, and strengthens your overall internal linking strategy. This ultimately enhances your website’s authority and performance.

Can Orphan Pages Be Removed Instead of Fixed?

Yes, low-value orphan pages can be removed or redirected if they don’t contribute to your site’s goals. For outdated, duplicate, or irrelevant content, deleting or using a "noindex" tag is a decent solution. This means they don’t affect crawl budgets or SEO.

However, for valuable content, fixing them with proper internal linking and integration into your site structure is the better approach.

What Tools Are Best for Finding Orphan Pages?

Top tools for finding orphan pages include Google Search Console and Hike SEO. These tools help analyze crawl data, identify unlinked pages, and highlight gaps in internal linking. The latter also provides an all-in-one SEO solution to help with various aspects of your strategy.

Can Orphan Pages Be Beneficial?

Orphan pages are rarely beneficial because their lack of internal links limits visibility for both users and search engines. However, they might serve a purpose in specific cases. For example, limited-time landing pages or private content accessed via direct links.

How Often Should I Audit for Orphan Pages?

Regular audits for orphan pages are essential to maintaining a healthy website. Ideally, perform an orphan page audit quarterly or after significant site changes, such as redesigns or migrations.

You’ll find that frequent audits help identify issues before they impact SEO or user experiences.

Hike SEO

Use the tips in this article to systematically identify and fix your orphan pages. This is what might be holding back your SEO efforts, especially for the orphan pages that are getting no link juice from internal backlinks.

We understand that it can be overwhelming to find orphan pages if you have a large website. Therefore, invest in Hike SEO to save time and simplify the process. Also, our software will help you analyze your competition, discover content topics, and improve your pagespeed.

So what are you waiting for? Try Hike SEO today to make orphan pages a thing of the past.