Is your website secretly holding you back? Hidden pages that search engines can’t find, known as orphan pages, could be dragging down your rankings without you even realizing it. These unlinked pages waste valuable content and disrupt your site’s structure, but here’s the good news: fixing them is easier than you think. With a few strategic tweaks, you can uncover these lost pages, integrate them into your site, and turn them into SEO gold.
Orphan pages are pages without any internal links pointing to them. They’re like books locked in a library basement, with no way for readers to find them. While these pages exist on your site, search engines struggle to uncover them because they aren't included in the XML sitemap, which is essential for indexing. This means they remain hidden and out of reach for both users and search engines.
If left unchecked, orphan pages can have a negative impact on your pages’ rankings. It’s one of the common SEO mistakes that is often overlooked. Here’s why:
One of the primary sources search engines use to find and crawl pages is through internal links, Since orphan pages have no links pointing to them, Google bots struggle to find them which can lead to these pages being overlooked or not indexed at all. This can even hurt your rankings, especially if these pages contain valuable content or have the potential to drive traffic.
XML sitemaps help define the structure of your website and give search engines an idea about the organization of your content. Since orphan pages aren’t part of the sitemap and have no links pointing to them from other pages, they won’t be discovered by search engine bots. As a result, these pages will not be indexed, meaning they won’t appear in search results and won’t contribute to your site’s SEO performance.
Internal links distribute link equity, or "link juice," across your site, boosting page authority and helping your content rank higher. Orphan pages miss out on this vital authority flow, making them less valuable in search results.
Without internal links, search engines see these pages as less significant, which can weaken your site's overall authority especially if the orphan page contains important content like cornerstone articles or key service pages.
Since visitors land on your site and leave without navigating to your unlinked page, you won’t give them a reason to stay longer on your website, which could increase bounce rate and reduce engagement. Additionally, visitors can only access these pages if they enter the exact URL, which is an unlikely scenario unless they already know about it. This limits the visibility and potential for interaction with your content.
If orphan pages contain valuable content or special offers, their isolation means you're missing out on potential conversions. These pages aren’t easily accessible to visitors, which can result in lost opportunities to drive sales, gather leads, or boost key metrics.
Orphan pages weaken your site's link-building efforts. If a page isn’t connected to your site’s structure, any backlinks pointing to it won’t pass value to other pages which will limits the impact of your SEO strategy.
Orphan pages often happen after a site migration or redesign, where internal links can break if pages are moved or URLs change without being properly updated. Similarly, outdated or broken links can leave pages disconnected, making them hard to find and preventing both users and search engines from accessing them.
Another common cause is accidental exclusion from the XML sitemap. When pages are missed during updates or redesigns, they don’t show up in the sitemap, which means search engine crawlers can’t find them. Without internal links pointing to them, these pages remain hidden and effectively orphaned.
Finding Orphan pages is actually easier than it looks, you can use different tools and simple methods to identify them, let’s break it down:
Enter your website and select the Links tab
Go to the Unique Inlinks section and select the dropdown option. You'll then see a list of pages that have zero internal links pointing to them
Check Your XML Sitemap
You can find orphan pages by reviewing your XML sitemap and making sure all important pages are included.
If a page has no internal links except one pointing to a broken page, it will become orphan. With no other links connecting it to the rest of the site, both users and search engines will struggle to locate it.
You can find broken links using a tool like Ahrefs broken link checker.
You can also use Google Search Console, just head to Pages under Indexing and select the Not found (404) tab
You can crawl your website and unable the sitemap and Screaming Frog will analyze your website for any orphan pages. Let’s break it down:
First you need to select the spider crawl option under “configuration”
Unable both “Crawl Linked XML Sitemap” and 3 “Crawl These Sitemaps” options, then paste your website sitemap. If you don’t know how to find it, just search for: yourwebsite.com/robots.txt
For more detail on how to find and crawl your sitemap. Check out this video
Now you can view any orphan pages within the sitemap overview tab
Crawl depth can help you spot orphan pages. During a site audit, pages that are naturally crawled will have a crawl depth value, while orphan pages won’t. Since these pages aren’t linked anywhere, they won’t appear in the crawl which makes them easy to identify.
This is easy to check, just look at the pages with little to no traffic in your Google Analytics account. This could indicate that the page isn’t driving traffic because it is orphaned and therefore, isn’t easily accessed by users or search engines.
Now that you've identified your orphan pages, you can fix them in several ways, depending on how important these pages are to your website. Here are some options:
Orphan pages exist because they lack internal links, making them nearly invisible to both users and search engines. To fix this:
make sure that each orphan page is connected to relevant content through internal links. Look for opportunities to naturally link to these pages from high-traffic articles, category pages, or related blog posts.
You can also create more internal linking opportunities by identifying and building topic clusters, which are groups of related content that link to a central pillar page.
An orphan page can sometimes be outdated or no longer serves its purpose, in this case, setting up a redirect is the best practical solution.
A 301 redirect ensures that both users and search engines are automatically sent to a relevant, updated page. This is important because it helps avoid frustrating 404 errors while preserving the page’s existing link equity, which is vital for maintaining your SEO performance.
Sometimes, these pages are orphaned for a reason, they might not be adding much value to your visitors. If that’s the case, it’s probably better to delete them and clean up your site. But, if you think the content still has some value, consider merging them with other more valuable content. This way, you can combine the information and boost the relevance of the page.
If a page isn’t adding enough value and you don’t want to delete it, you can also consider noindexing it. This tells search engines not to index the page, keeping it out of search results while still allowing it to exist on your site for users to access with a direct link.
Sometimes, orphan pages can be high value content like case studies or review pages. Your best option here to add them to your navigation menu to improve their visibility and make it easier for visitors to access them.
It’s easy to maintain a page on your website, but to ensure it doesn’t become an orphan page you need a bit of planning and regular attention. To avoid this problem, here are a few key strategies you can regularly implement:
Yes, orphan pages can hurt your SEO because they are harder for search engines to find and index. Without internal links, search engines may miss these pages, reducing their chances of ranking.
Generally orphan pages don't rank on Google because they are harder to crawl and index. But even if they do rank sometimes, they won't perform well without internal links which provide authority, relevance, and quality signals that help improve rankings.
If the orphan page isn’t valuable or relevant to your content, it’s a good idea to set it to "noindex" to prevent search engines from indexing it and wasting crawl resources.
Yes, orphan pages can hurt your site’s authority because they don’t pass link equity to other pages. Internal linking helps spread authority across your site, so orphan pages are missing out on that benefit.
Orphaned pages are a common issue that can quietly affect your website’s performance. By identifying and bringing these pages back into the fold through internal linking, navigation updates, and site audits, you can make sure your website is running smoothly!
Higglo is a digital marketing agency offering SEO, PPC, web design services and more. We’ve helped different client industries and brands like Hulu and Blizzard expand their reach and grow their presence worldwide. Ready to transform your digital presence? Contact us today and let’s create something unforgettable together.
Yes, orphan pages can hurt your SEO because they are harder for search engines to find and index. Without internal links, search engines may miss these pages, reducing their chances of ranking.
Generally orphan pages don't rank on Google because they are harder to crawl and index. But even if they do rank sometimes, they won't perform well without internal links which provide authority, relevance, and quality signals that help improve rankings.
If the orphan page isn’t valuable or relevant to your content, it’s a good idea to set it to "noindex" to prevent search engines from indexing it and wasting crawl resources.
Yes, orphan pages can hurt your site’s authority because they don’t pass link equity to other pages. Internal linking helps spread authority across your site, so orphan pages are missing out on that benefit.
Not always. If the orphan page contains valuable content, you should integrate it into your website with internal links. If the page is outdated, redundant, or unnecessary, consider deleting it or setting up a 301 redirect.
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