What is an Orphan Page?
An orphan page is a web page that has no incoming internal links on a website. This means the page cannot be accessed from any other page on the website but can be visited via an external backlink or direct URL.
Examples of Orphan Pages
Some pages are deliberately orphaned. For example:
- Internal Documentation or Guides: Sometimes, pages are meant to be accessed only through specific tools or dashboards. For instance, a guide hosted on a blog but only accessible from within a specific app.
- Advertising Landing Pages: These pages are often orphaned on purpose and may not be linked internally.
However, accidental orphan pages require attention. They often arise due to:
- Site migrations
- Navigation changes
- Site redesigns
- Out-of-stock products
- Testing pages
Why are Orphan Pages Bad for Your Website?
1. Hurt Discoverability and Indexability
Google uses three main sources to discover new pages:
- Internal links
- External links (backlinks)
- Sitemaps
A page without internal links may never be discovered by search engines and thus never appear in search results. Pages intended to be indexed should have at least one (preferably several) internal links, even if they are included in a sitemap.
2. Ranking Problems
Without internal links, orphan pages do not receive any PageRank from the website. PageRank remains a significant ranking factor for Google. Even if an orphan page gains quality backlinks from other websites, its link profile can still benefit from internal links.
How to Find Orphan Pages
Finding orphan pages can be challenging, but tools like Ranktracker’s Site Audit can simplify the process. Here’s how:
- Create a New Project: Set up a new project in Site Audit for your domain.
- Navigate to URL Sources: Include all possible sources for URL discovery.
- Autodetected Sitemaps: Let Site Audit detect and crawl sitemaps.
- List Your Sitemaps: Include sitemaps if their locations are not standard.
- Import URLs: Import URLs from sources such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or a Top Pages report.
- Ranktracker Backlinks Database: Add URLs from the backlinks database.
- Crawl the URLs: Site Audit will crawl all provided URLs and report any orphan pages.
How to Fix Orphan Pages
The simplest way to address orphan pages is to add internal links to them from other relevant pages on your website. However, some orphan pages might be intentional, and in such cases, you do not need to make any changes.
Conclusion
Orphan pages can negatively impact your website's SEO by hindering discoverability and limiting the flow of PageRank. Regularly auditing your site for orphan pages and ensuring that important pages are linked internally can enhance your site’s SEO performance.
