You are being onboarded on a project littered with many SEO-related pitfalls by inexperienced professionals. The website is not performing well, and any SEO effort is proving to be in vain.
Being an SEO expert, you will start the project by conducting an in-and-out SEO audit. Upon auditing, you find several orphan pages on the website. You definitely have heard about them before but haven’t dealt with one personally, so you don’t fully understand them or know their fixation process.
Don’t worry, this article will let you know:
- What are orphan pages?
- How are they born?
- Why do they even matter?
- How do you find them?
- How do you fix them?
- What is the best prevention mechanism?
What are Orphan Pages?
Orphan pages are indexable web pages that lack internal links from your site. Consider them tiny islands that are near the big mainland but don’t have any physical link with it and usually stay a little bit under the sea.
Due to the lack of any internal connection, it’s usually difficult to find them, but not impossible. A few of the ways via which they can be discovered include:
- Some other websites gave them an external link via which Google or users are discovering them.
- They are being referred to on some social sites.
- They could be sent to users via newsletter, thus enjoying some traffic.
- They could simply be ranking against some queries on search engines.
So, it’s not the case that they magically disappeared and are now attacking your website, but they are hidden (okay, a little bit), and making it difficult for search engines to crawl (and we already know that if search engines have a specified budget to crawl websites, thus making it difficult for them to crawl will increase their budget and time).
How Are Orphan Pages Created?
A few of the practices that lead to the creation of orphan pages include:
1. Website Revamping or Migration:
Just like renovating a home or shifting to a new place, a lot is going on and to be done. There is a 100 percent chance that you would slip or miss some stuff. The same happens when revamping a website or migrating it altogether. Some pages are left out because you have too much to care for; these are your orphan pages.
Likewise, navigational changes, site testing, or the inability to update out-of-stock product pages are some other major causes.
2. Poor Content Management Practices:
If the SEO expert is quite new or follows poor website content management practices, doesn’t link the pages internally with each other, or the website doesn’t have a sitemap altogether, orphan pages are born.
3. Accidental creation:
Adding new pages, specifically in isolation, such as through user-generated content or blog posting, will create orphan pages.
Do Orphan Pages Even Matter?
Orphan pages have unintended consequences on your website’s SEO and performance.
1. Crawlability issues:
Search engines rely on crawling and indexing your pages to rank them. If your page is difficult to find, search engines would need a larger crawl budget and more time, making it unfeasible. This negatively impacts your SEO.
As Google says, “Google Search is a fully automated search engine that uses software known as web crawlers that explore the web regularly to find pages to add to our index. In fact, the vast majority of pages listed in our results aren’t manually submitted for inclusion but are found and added automatically when our web crawlers explore the web.[…] Other pages are discovered when Google follows a link from a known page to a new page: for example, a hub page, such as a category page, links to a new blog post.”
So, if you haven’t given a link to your new page anywhere or listed it in the sitemap, Google won’t find it, which means it will not rank.
2. Low Ranking and Traffic:
Let’s say Google somehow crawled and indexed your page, but it would still receive a poor ranking. The reason here is PageRank, which is Google’s algorithm that looks out for using inbound links as a ranking factor.
As your page would lag in link equity, which necessarily shows your page quality and authority, thus it will not be ranked well.
3. Impact on User Experience
As it is difficult to find the orphan pages, they generally contain outdated content. Likewise, these pages may be news or events that are of no one’s use anymore. Similarly, if they still have relevant content, they are generally hard to find, and we know that there is humongous competition out there until or unless the user is really a fan of yours, they are skipping your orphan page and moving somewhere else.
Common Characteristics of Orphan Pages
You can find orphan pages with the help of these characteristics.
1. No Inbound Link
One of the major characteristics of an orphan page is that it has no internal or inbound links. This lack of linking makes them hard to find and thus not discoverable by search engines. To rank a page, you need to have a solid internal linking of pages; without them, your page’s ranking will be affected.
2. Are Live Pages
Orphan pages are fully live on your website; however, this doesn’t guarantee visibility and engagement. As users might never be able to find them, these pages would have limited exposure and no potential traffic.
3. Indexed but Orphaned
Even though an orphan page is indexed but has no internal links pointing toward it, it is extremely difficult for users to find it, which leads to potential confusion about its visibility and relevance.
How do I find Orphan Pages?
There are a few methods via which you can find your orphan pages.
1. SEO Tools
Various SEO tools, such as Ahref, Semrush, and Screaming Frog, have features that allow them to crawl your website. These tools can easily tell you what pages are lagging in internal linking. These tools also have specific features, like link analysis, which can identify orphaned pages.
2. Google Search Console
In your Search Console, go to the Coverage section and look for pages receiving little to no traffic. Use this tool for URL inspection purposes, as it allows you to see individual pages and the internal links pointing toward them.
If you have a sitemap, reviewing it will be of great help. Thoroughly check it out for the added pages and compare it with your internal linking structure to find the loopholes.
3. Manual Audits
Though this is a time-consuming and difficult process, you can always opt for a manual audit. You can browse your site navigation and look for pages that are difficult to find.
Download a list of your site pages from CMS and cross-check it with your internal links. Congratulations, you found your culprit if a page is missing in your internal linking.
Deep dive into your Google Analytics and focus on the pages receiving minimal traffic.
How Do I Fix Orphan Pages?
Till now, you would have found those orphan pages, few things you can do to fix these include:
- Review the content of orphan pages and create internal links with other related pages on your site.
- Update your site navigation by adding important pages into the header or footer, if possible, or under sub-menus.
- Consider redirecting irrelevant pages to more relevant ones.
- Regularly conduct site audits, ensuring all pages have updated content with relevant links.
Best Prevention Mechanism for Orphan Pages
To avoid all of this mess, you need to opt for a mechanism that will prevent such friction in the first place.
Firstly, you must ensure that you have good content management practices. Guide your writers to link your pages to already published content. Secondly, ensure all pages follow a clear hierarchy and linkage pattern. Thirdly, if you are migrating your website, make sure that you redirect old pages to the new website with a 301 redirect.
Moreover, make great use of good SEO tools out there and conduct regular audits and analyses with their help to know the loopholes.
FAQs
Do orphan pages negatively affect SEO?
Orphan pages negatively impact SEO efforts, as search engines find it hard to find and crawl them. Since they are not being crawled, they are generally not being ranked. Thus proving themselves to be a little detrimental.
How do we solve the orphan pages issue?
The issue of orphan pages can be resolved by adding an internal link to them; search engines can then crawl them.
Can orphan pages rank?
Orphan pages don’t rank very well. As they are lagging, the internal link is either impossible for them to rank for, or if they rank, they will not rank for competitive keywords.
Are landing pages examples of an orphan page?
Landing pages can be a deliberate example of orphan pages. Accidental orphan pages require your attention. You need to find and fix them as soon as possible.
How can I check if a page is an orphan?
There are many ways to find orphan pages. You can inspect your site structure and navigate manually to see them. You can also go through your sitemap and run a website crawler to check which pages have no internal links.
