What are orphan pages, and what does the term mean?
Orphan pages, in the context of SEO, are pages on a website that have no internal links pointing to them from anywhere else on the site. As a result, they cannot be reached by users and, as a rule, not by search engines either — hence the term "orphan pages".
Orphan pages are not ideal from a search engine optimisation perspective, because if search engines cannot find these pages, you miss out on potential value and traffic from them.
How do I identify orphan pages on my website?
To address this issue, you first need to identify the orphan pages on your website. But how exactly do you go about doing that?
The easiest way to find orphan pages on your website is to run a website crawl using a third-party tool such as Screaming Frog.
However, since these pages have no internal links, you cannot simply run a standard crawl to find orphan pages — crawl tools will not be able to reach them either.
Instead, you can export a list of indexed pages for your website from, for example, Google Search Console, and compare these against the pages found by crawling tools such as Screaming Frog.
Alternatively, depending on the size of your website, you can go through your pages manually and ensure that none of them are missing internal links.
There are therefore several ways to identify orphan pages on your website. However, they are all relatively technical and require a certain level of technical knowledge to carry out.
Do you have issues with orphan pages on your website that are not generating traffic or value?
We can help you identify and fix orphan pages so they become accessible to both users and search engines. Fill in the form below, or call us on 30 12 42 72 for a no-obligation conversation about how we can help you optimise your website's structure.
