Not every page on your website gets the attention it deserves. Sometimes, valuable pages end up isolated from the rest of your site structure, making them difficult for both users and search engines to find.
These forgotten pages are called orphaned pages, and they can hurt your SEO performance without you even realizing it.
Before you freak out, orphaned pages happen all the time. You probably won’t see a huge tank in traffic if you don’t fix it.
BUT you could see a decent increase in traffic if you do.
So let’s get into what they are, why they matter, and how you can fix them.
What Are Orphaned Pages?
Orphaned pages are pages on your website that don’t have any internal links pointing to them from other pages on your website.
They’re basically impossible to find on your website because there isn’t a clear path to them. You’d have to type in the exact URL or use the sitemap to find the page.
And neither search engines nor users know they need to do that. Neither of them knows the page exists.
Example of an Orphaned Page
There are a lot of scenarios where orphaned pages happen:
- A blog post published years ago, but removed from category pages.
- Sales page no longer linked from navigation.
- Landing page created for a temporary campaign.
- Product pages disconnected during a website redesign.
I probably have some orphaned pages on my website that I’m not aware of! In fact, this blog is a reminder to myself to go check… More on how to do that in a minute!
Orphaned Pages vs. Dead Pages
An orphaned page is NOT a 404 page. It still exists. You can still access it. It’s just disconnected from the rest of your website.
A dead page is a URL that doesn’t exist on the website at all. It was probably deleted at some point, but the URL was linked somewhere else, so it can still be accessed, but the content isn’t there.
Because orphaned pages still technically “work’, they’re harder to notice.
Why Internal Linking Matters for SEO
Internal linking helps search engines discover new content.
Let’s say Google knows about my Best Blog Post Length for SEO blog. In that blog, I also link to these blogs:
Google follows the trail and discovers those other linked blogs. And inside those blogs, I link to even more content.
You always hear about creating a seamless website journey and making content easy to find. Linking to relevant pages helps both search engines and readers find new content.
How Orphaned Pages Impact SEO
Orphaned pages are harder for search engines to find, crawl, and rank. It’s usually why they show up in Google Search Console as not indexed. Search engines have no idea they exist somewhere on your website, so they also don’t show up in search results.
It might be the best blog in the world, but if no one knows about it, it’s not doing anything for your business. It’s just sitting there, all sad and by itself.
How to Find Orphaned Pages on Your Website
There are a few good ways to find orphaned pages. If you have Yoast Premium, it will tell you which blog posts are orphaned. You can also just sort your blog posts by the number of internal links pointing to them to find the ones with zero.
You can use an SEO tool to find orphaned pages. The one I’m familiar with is Screaming Frog. It will give you alllll the SEO issues on your website, including orphaned pages.
Here are some other SEO crawling tools that are similar:
How to Fix Orphaned Pages
Once you find orphaned pages, what do you do with them?
Add New Links
Well, the easiest thing to do is add links to the content on other pages of your website. Here are some ideas:
- Related blog posts
- Service pages
- Resource pages
It helps to review old content and identify where you can link to new content. When writing a new blog, you usually naturally link to older blogs, but how often do you go back to old blogs and update them with the new content?
Make a note to do this every month or so to avoid accidentally orphaning your new content!
Redirect Unnecessary Pages
If you find orphaned pages that are outdated or no longer useful, add a URL 301 redirect to a different page. Your home page is a good option, but if you have another relevant blog post or resource, you could redirect there.
Delete Low-Quality Pages (Carefully!)
If the content straight up is not relevant and you don’t want it anymore, you can delete those pages. I would double-check in Google Search Console to make sure they aren’t getting any traffic first. If they are, and you delete the page, you might see a slight drop in traffic.
4 Best Practices to Prevent Orphaned Pages
Orphaned pages happen naturally. The minute you publish a new page, it’s an orphaned page until you link it somewhere else on your website. The trick is just remembering to do that!
1. Maintain an Internal Linking Strategy
Add as many relevant internal links as possible in your blogs. Link to:
- Blogs
- Freebies
- Services
- Resources
- Contact page
- Email list
Whatever. Just make sure it’s relevant to what you’re talking about.
Wanna know a secret? Internal linking sometimes influences what I talk about in my blogs. I think of a way to weave in a topic I want to link to. Did you notice how I did that in the “How to Find Orphaned Pages on Your Website” section?
2. Conduct Regular SEO Audits
A quarterly or biannual website audit can help you catch orphaned pages. Again, use Screaming Frog or another SEO tool to help you find them. You can also check crawl reports and indexing issues in Google Search Console.
Here’s how to audit your blogs.
3. Build Content Around Topic Clusters
You wanna know why blog categories exist? To keep you from writing about random things that have nothing to do with your business, and end up as an orphaned page.
Everything you write should fall under at least one of your blog categories. Once you start to build a backlog of blogs under that category, internal linking should become really easy.
4. Review Website Changes Carefully
If you redesign your website or migrate from one hosting platform to another, test everything to make sure you didn’t accidentally skip a link or link to the wrong place.
3 Signs Your Website May Have Orphaned Pages
I’m just gonna say that you probably have at least one orphaned page on your website. But if you have a lot, you might start seeing these signs:
1. Organic Traffic Is Declining
You feel like you’re publishing more, but you aren’t getting any new traffic or traffic is declining. It’s because Google hasn’t crawled, indexed, or ranked your new stuff.
You’re basically relying on all your old content to do all the work, and that traffic fluctuates over time, especially if you never update the content.
These new pages aren’t helping you grow because they aren’t being featured in search results.
2. Pages Are Indexed But Get No Traffic
Maybe search engines found the orphaned page in your sitemap, but it doesn’t recognize its significance because it isn’t tied to anything else on your website. In Google Search Console, it will still show indexed but not get any organic traffic.
3. Your Website Has Hundreds of Old Blog Posts
You’re probably going to have a few orphaned blog pages if you have hundreds of blog posts. Again, updating old content can help you add new internal links and give an orphaned page a buddy.
Are Orphaned Pages Always Bad?
No, and here’s why. Sometimes you want private landing pages, thank-you pages. or limited-access client resources. That’s totally fine to have on your website.
BUT you need to mark them as noindex in your website settings. That means you don’t want them indexed for search engines. You don’t want random people to find this page.
You don’t need a thank-you page in search results. You only want that for people who download a freebie, ya know?
The SEO Benefits of Fixing Orphaned Pages
So, what are you gonna get out of doing all this work to find and fix orphaned pages?
Search engines will discover, index, and rank your content faster. It will see the connection between the new page and the old one and be able to rank it in search results quickly because it already has some context.
And because of that, you’re going to see improved rankings and traffic. Internal linking boosts your authority because it gives search engines a clear path around your website.
And not just search engines, but readers, too. They’ll spend more time exploring all the connected content because you’re making it easy for them to find and consume it.
Turn Orphaned Pages Into SEO Opportunities
Orphaned pages are one of the most overlooked technical SEO issues, but they can have a surprisingly large impact on your website performance. Even the best content can struggle to rank if search engines and users can’t easily find it.
By regularly auditing your site, improving your internal linking strategy, and maintaining a clear website structure, you can ensure every valuable page supports your SEO goals instead of getting lost in the background.
Fixing orphaned pages not only improves rankings and crawlability, but also helps you get more value from the content you’ve already invested in creating.
Internally linking content is one of my favorite things to do, and I can do it in the blogs I update for you! Check out my blog update package and let’s give orphaned content a family.
FAQs About Orphaned Pages
Not always. Some should be updated and re-linked if they still provide value to your audience and you want people to see them. Others may need a URL redirect to a new page or be deleted if they’re no longer relevant.
They can, but they often struggle because they lack internal link authority and discoverability. It’s hard for search engines to find the page, and even if they do, they can’t rank it.
AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER
Some links in this blog post may be affiliate links. I only recommend products and services I trust and believe would be beneficial to you.
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