What are orphan pages?

Orphan pages are URLs that aren't linked from any other page on the same website. These pages can still exist on the site, but they're not easily reachable from the main navigation or other pages.

How can I find orphan pages on my website?

There are several ways to find orphan URLs on your website. You can crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl and export a list of every page on the site. Then compare that list against the list of pages linked across your website. Any pages that exist but aren't linked from another page are your orphan pages.

Can Google Search Console help me find orphan pages?

Yes. Google Search Console can help you find unlinked content on your website. You can use the internal links report to see a list of pages that don't have links from any other content on your site.

What are some reasons orphan pages may exist on a website?

Orphan pages can exist on a website for several reasons. They could be old pages that used to be linked but no longer are. They could also be low-value pages that weren't considered important enough to include in the main site navigation, and links pointing to them have been removed.

How can finding orphan pages help my website's performance?

Finding orphan pages can boost your website's rankings by surfacing pages that don't get traffic or visibility in search results. Once you've identified them, you can either optimize them to rank better or remove them from your website entirely.

Which kinds of pages can't be orphan pages?

Landing pages and pages that aren't meant to be linked from other parts of the website, such as thank-you or confirmation pages, are not considered orphan pages.

How can I link a page from another page on my website?

To link a page from another URL on your site, you can use anchor text to create a hyperlink to that page. You can also add the page to your site's menu or include a link to it in your site's footer.

How can I avoid creating orphan pages from the start?

To avoid creating orphan pages, make sure every new page you publish is linked from another resource on your website. You should also review your site's pages periodically to confirm they all link from somewhere within the site.

How can exporting combined orphan URLs help locate orphan pages?

Exporting combined orphan URLs can help you spot lonely pages by merging the list of all pages on your site with the list of linked pages. This way you can see every page that has no internal links pointing to it, making it easier to identify orphan pages.

How to find orphan pages: A real handbook for SEO pros

Have you ever heard the term "orphan page" in the context of SEO?

Orphan pages are pages on your website that lack connections to other pages through internal links.

They can have a negative impact on your search engine optimization efforts if you don't address them. Read on to find out what they are, how to identify them and, most importantly, how to fix them to improve your website's SEO.

Keys to finding and fixing orphan pages

Orphan pages are pages on your website that lack internal links pointing to them, which creates SEO issues.
Use tools like Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush or search engine crawlers to systematically find orphan pages.
Fix orphan content by redirecting, adding links, removing or consolidating pages.
Prevent future unlinked pages by planning internal linking, access limits and search engine rules.

By identifying and fixing orphan pages, you'll improve crawlability, indexing and the user experience on your website, all of which benefits organic search.

What is an orphan page?

An orphan page is a page on a website that has no internal links pointing to it from other pages on the same property or domain.

In essence, they exist in isolation, disconnected from the rest of your website's pages through hyperlinks.

Some key characteristics of orphan pages:

They have no inbound links from other URLs on your site.
They usually have low visibility and search traffic.
Search engines may struggle to crawl them.
Users can't easily navigate to them.

Orphan pages are problematic because search engines rely heavily on links to crawl, index and rank web pages.

Isolated pages without links risk not being indexed or ranked in search engines.

Why are orphan pages bad for SEO?

Pages without internal links can negatively affect your website's SEO by causing:

Crawling problems: Search engine bots may have a hard time finding these URLs because they aren't linked internally. This can prevent the pages from being crawled as often as they should be.
Thin content: Many orphan pages tend to have minimal content and may lack the context provided by linked pages. This increases the risk of "thin content" penalties.
Poor user experience: If users can't navigate to pages easily, you can end up with fragmented, unfinished user journeys.
Wasted resources: Maintaining many unlinked, low-ROI pages consumes time and search engine resources that could be better allocated.

As you can see, orphan pages provide very little SEO value, and if there are many of them they can negatively affect your website.

The best move is to identify them and either fix or remove them.

Methods to find orphan pages on your website

Here are some effective ways to surface orphan URLs on your site:

Check Google Search Console

Google Search Console shows indexed pages and crawl error reports.

This can be a signal of an orphan URL. Pay attention to URLs that show errors or have a very low impressions/clicks ratio.

To find isolated pages with Google Search Console, follow these steps:

Log into your Google Search Console account.
Click on your website's property.
Go to the "Coverage" report in the left-hand menu.
Scroll to the "Error" section and click on "Excluded".
Look for pages listed as "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" or "Excluded by 'noindex' tag with 'noindex' in the meta robots tag".

These pages may be unlinked pages that are excluded from search engine results.

Use SEO crawlers to analyze your site's links

Tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush and Moz let you crawl and analyze a website's internal linking to detect pages without links.

To use an SEO spider to find orphan pages, follow these steps:

Install an SEO spider tool on your computer.
Enter your website's URL into the tool.
Run a crawl of your website.
Check the orphan pages section in the crawl report.

These pages may be orphan pages that aren't linked from any other page on your site.

Review your XML sitemap

Compare your XML sitemap with your internal link structure. Any page that isn't linked but is in the XML sitemap should be a priority for review and fixing.

Manual review

For small sites, going page by page and looking for broken navigation or dead ends can work. Check links in footers and sidebars for missing links.

Check old content

Analyze old blog posts, press releases, categories, etc. with many paginations that may have been removed over time but could still have orphan pages.

Through a combination of automated tools and manual checks, you can comprehensively surface pages without internal links so they can later be cleaned up and fixed.

Export the entire report to a CSV file or Google Sheets and filter the results, selecting every blank cell in the "Crawl Depth" column and every indexable URL in the "Indexability" column.

This way you'll get every indexable URL that wasn't naturally discovered through internal links during a crawl.

Bear in mind that this is just the quick path to identifying the most relevant unlinked content and the most urgent ones to address.

But if you want to be sure you're catching every unlinked page on your domain, don't hesitate to check this in-depth tutorial.

Other tools to identify orphan pages

Some useful tools, in addition to Screaming Frog, to identify orphan pages are Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush and Moz.

Google Search Console

GSC is a powerful tool that can help identify orphan pages on your site. Among other things, it lets you see which pages are being indexed by Google and provides valuable information about your site's performance in organic search results.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a popular tool used by a good portion of SEO professionals. It is an intuitive, easy-to-use platform that offers many features, such as backlink analysis, competitor research and keyword tracking.

Ahrefs can help you locate orphan pages by running a site audit and generating a report of every URL without internal links pointing to it.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a powerful tool that can help you identify orphan URLs on any website.

Moz

Moz is a great tool that can help you find and fix orphan pages on a website. With its Site Crawl feature, Moz crawls your site to identify technical issues and offers recommendations to address them.

Common causes of orphan pages

To avoid future issues, it is important to understand why orphan pages get created. Some common causes are:

Removal of main linked content, such as category pages and blogs.
Site mergers, migrations or restructuring.
CMS platform changes and broken redirects.
Pages blocked by robots.txt but indexed.
Test or development pages that get indexed.
Auto-generated content, such as pagination pages.
Old campaign landing pages and one-off promotions.

Knowing the typical origins of these pages can help you anticipate them and follow up properly.

How to fix orphan pages to improve SEO

Once you've identified the unreferenced pages, here are some recommended ways to fix them:

Add internal links

Linking orphan pages from related content is one of the best options to reintegrate them and fix the issue.

Redirect with a 301 status code

If the content isn't very useful but the page has external links, traffic or both, it is recommended to set up a 301 redirect to a relevant page that consolidates page rank and content viability.

Remove low-value pages

Delete temporary, test or low-quality pages without internal links that have minimal relevance to your project or little value for your business by removing them and returning a 410 response code from your server.

Consolidate similar content

If you have several similar orphan pages, merge the content into one stronger page and link it internally from other pages on the domain.

Make them easier to navigate to

Add the orphan URLs to navigation menus, HTML sitemaps, tags and other internal navigation elements on your site whenever possible.

Update your sitemap

Remove unlinked content from your XML sitemap if it isn't relevant so it matches the updated structure of the site.

By taking the time to properly integrate or remove orphan pages, you'll improve your site's information architecture while also climbing in your rankings.

Best practices for ongoing prevention of orphan pages

Here are some tips to prevent orphan pages going forward:

Set a policy for properly removing or redirecting old content pages.
Develop a consistent internal linking structure plan for new content.
Make sure pages removed from your sitemap are also removed from indexing.
Avoid massive site architecture changes that break all previous links.
Use descriptive naming conventions for temporary orphan pages.
Limit access to test and development environments to avoid indexing.
Configure crawl and indexing rules in the robots.txt file.

Orphan pages versus dead-end pages

Orphan pages and dead-end pages are two different types of web pages that often cause navigation issues on websites.

Both live in isolation, with no internal links pointing to them; in addition, dead-end pages are those that don't provide any other link or navigation option for users to explore other parts of the website.

Typically, these pages don't have internal links pointing to them or any outbound links, which can make it hard for users to keep navigating around the site.

A clear example of dead-end pages are landing and sales pages, designed specifically to keep users from leaving them, avoiding any exit point.

Both orphan pages and dead-end pages can frustrate users, which can lead them to abandon the website entirely. It is important that designers and developers of your website ensure proper interlinking and navigation options to avoid these issues and provide a smooth browsing experience for users.

Conclusions and common mistakes to avoid

Orphan pages can hurt your website's SEO by preventing search engines and users from finding important pages on your site.

This is especially important on online stores, where this type of page is particularly damaging to overall site performance. In addition to negatively affecting your search results and user experience, orphan pages can also impact sales and revenue generation.

For instance, if a product page is unlinked, it is very likely it won't appear in search results or in your site's internal searches.

Something that makes it very hard for customers to find, browse and buy the product.

Therefore, by identifying and fixing orphan pages you can improve the structure and navigation of your website, ensuring every product is reachable through internal links.

This makes it easier for search engines to better understand the structure of your content and ensures users can find the information they need.

Remember: fixing orphan pages is an ongoing process, so make sure to prevent them regularly and, when you spot them, fix them as soon as possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

Orphan pages are URLs that aren't linked from any other page on the same website. These pages can still exist on the site, but they're not easily reachable from the main navigation or other pages.
This type of page has a negative impact on search results because search engines have a hard time finding them. If search engines can't find a page, neither can users. That means the page won't get traffic or rankings, which can negatively affect the overall SEO of the website.
There are several ways to find orphan URLs on your website. You can crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl and export a list of every page on the site. Then compare that list against the list of pages linked across your website. Any pages that exist but aren't linked from another page are your orphan pages.
Yes. Google Search Console can help you find unlinked content on your website. You can use the internal links report to see a list of pages that don't have links from any other content on your site.
Orphan pages can exist on a website for several reasons. They could be old pages that used to be linked but no longer are. They could also be low-value pages that weren't considered important enough to include in the main site navigation, and links pointing to them have been removed.
Finding orphan pages can boost your website's rankings by surfacing pages that don't get traffic or visibility in search results. Once you've identified them, you can either optimize them to rank better or remove them from your website entirely.
Landing pages and pages that aren't meant to be linked from other parts of the website, such as thank-you or confirmation pages, are not considered orphan pages.
To link a page from another URL on your site, you can use anchor text to create a hyperlink to that page. You can also add the page to your site's menu or include a link to it in your site's footer.
To avoid creating orphan pages, make sure every new page you publish is linked from another resource on your website. You should also review your site's pages periodically to confirm they all link from somewhere within the site.
Exporting combined orphan URLs can help you spot lonely pages by merging the list of all pages on your site with the list of linked pages. This way you can see every page that has no internal links pointing to it, making it easier to identify orphan pages.