This article provides a guide on What is Orphan Page in SEO, helping digital marketers and site owners recognize these SEO issues and implement effective internal linking strategies.
In the world of SEO, even a well-designed website can suffer from hidden issues that hurt its performance. One such often-overlooked issue is the existence of orphan pages. These pages are like lost islands on your website, they exist, but no one can reach them.
In this article, you’ll learn what is orphan page in SEO, why they matter, how to find them, and most importantly, how to fix them. Whether you’re a beginner or a digital marketer, this guide will help you improve your website’s internal linking and search engine visibility.
We’re diving deep into the topic What is Orphan Page in SEO, giving you all the essential information and actionable steps to enhance your website’s SEO health.
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Table of Contents
What is Orphan Page in SEO?
An orphan page in SEO is any page on your website that has no internal links pointing to it from other pages within the same domain.
In simple terms, it’s a page that is not connected to your site’s structure — no menus, blog posts, or internal navigation link to it. This makes it difficult for search engines and users to discover these pages.
For example, imagine you write a blog post and publish it, but you forget to link it from your homepage, blog listing, or any other page. That blog post becomes an orphan page — it lives on your website but is almost invisible to both Google and your visitors.
Why Orphan Pages are Bad for SEO
Orphan pages can negatively affect your website in several ways:
- Poor Crawlability and Indexing: Search engines rely on internal links to find and crawl pages. If a page has no incoming links, it might not get crawled or indexed at all.
- Wasted Crawl Budget: Google allocates a crawl budget to each site. If orphan pages are discovered indirectly, they still consume crawl budget without contributing to SEO.
- No Link Juice: Pages that are not linked to don’t receive link equity, or “link juice,” which is crucial for ranking well in search results.
- Bad User Experience: If users can’t reach certain pages through natural navigation, it disrupts their journey and reduces site usability.
- Analytics Tracking Problems: Orphan pages often don’t appear in typical analytics paths, making them harder to measure or optimize.
How to Identify Orphan Pages in a Website?
Finding orphan pages isn’t always straightforward, but these tools and methods can help:
1. Use a Web Crawler like Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog can compare two sets of data:
- The URLs from your internal crawl
- The URLs from your sitemap or Google Analytics
Steps:
- Crawl your site.
- Upload an XML sitemap or connect GA/GSC.
- Check for pages in the sitemap but not in the crawl, these are potential orphan pages.
2. Google Search Console
You may find indexed pages in the “Coverage” report that are not linked internally — another clue for orphan content.
- Go to Index > Pages report
- Look for URLs that are indexed but not linked
- These may be orphaned, especially if not part of any menu or internal links
3. Using Ahrefs Site Audit Tool
Ahrefs shows you pages with zero internal links.
How to check:
- Run a site audit
- Go to “Internal Pages” report
- Filter by “0 internal links”
4. Manual Review
- Use site:yourdomain.com in Google
- Visit pages and check: Is this page linked from any other page?
- If not, it’s likely orphaned
How to Fix Orphan Pages in WordPress
Once you find orphan pages, here’s how to fix them properly:
Step 1: List All Orphan Pages
Export the list of URLs that have no internal links.
Step 2: Decide What to Do with Each Page
- Keep it? Then link to it from relevant pages.
- Merge it? Combine with a similar topic and use a 301 redirect.
- Delete it? If irrelevant or outdated, remove and 404/410 it.
Step 3: Add Internal Links
Link orphan pages naturally from:
- Related blog posts
- Main service pages
- Navigation menus
- Footer sections
- Content hubs
Step 4: Update Sitemap
If the page is important, make sure it’s listed in your XML sitemap.
Step 5: Request Indexing
Use Google Search Console to re-crawl updated URLs.
5+ Tips to Prevent Orphan Pages
A solid internal linking strategy is key to SEO success. Here are 5+ expert tips to prevent orphan pages from appearing on your site.
- Link new content from at least 2-3 existing pages
- Keep a content hub or category page that lists all blog posts
- Use related posts plugins in WordPress
- Audit your site regularly (quarterly or bi-annually)
- Keep your sitemap updated every time you publish or delete content
- Create internal linking checklists for your team
5+ Tools to Detect & Fix Orphan Pages
Whether you’re running a small blog or a large website, these 5+ tools can simplify the task of finding and fixing orphan pages.
| Tool | Key Feature | Free/Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Screaming Frog | Crawl & compare to sitemap/GA/GSC | Free up to 500 URLs |
| Ahrefs | Site audit & backlink analysis | Paid |
| SEMrush | Internal link audit | Paid |
| JetOctopus | Cloud-based crawl & orphan detection | Paid |
| Google Search Console | Coverage & Indexing Issues | Free |
| Sitebulb | Visual site crawling & orphan page detection | Paid |
| OnCrawl | Enterprise-level SEO crawler with orphan page analysis | Paid |
FAQs:)
A. An orphan page is a page on your website that has no internal links pointing to it, making it hard for search engines and users to find.
A. Yes, they can hurt your site’s SEO by making content hard to crawl, index, and distribute link equity to.
A. Use tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console to spot them by comparing crawl vs sitemap/analytics.
A. Only if they are outdated or irrelevant. Otherwise, fix them by interlinking and adding them to your sitemap.
A. Rarely. Without internal links, search engines may not even find or index them.
Conclusion:)
Orphan pages are a silent SEO killer. Even if your content is great, if it’s not connected to the rest of your website, it’s likely invisible to both users and search engines.
Now that you understand what is orphan page in SEO, take time to audit your site and fix these hidden issues. A clean and well-linked website structure leads to better crawling, indexing, and ranking.
Read also:)
- What is Link Juice in SEO: A Step-by-Step Guide!
- What is Toxic Backlinks: A Step-by-Step Guide!
- What is Semantic Search: A Practical Guide for Marketers!
How did you deal with them? Feel free to share your experiences, questions, or tips in the comments section below — We’d love to hear from you!