What Is an Orphan Page? How to Find & Fix Them for Better SEO
Orphan pages are like hidden rooms in your website—live but inaccessible. These pages have no internal links pointing to them, so users can’t navigate to them naturally, and search engines may not crawl or index them. Even when they have valuable content, their isolation tanks your site’s SEO potential. Search engines, like Google, use internal links to discover and rank content. If a page isn’t part of your link ecosystem, it’s practically invisible, draining crawl budget and hurting topical authority. Regular content audits can help identify and reintegrate orphan pages to maintain a healthy website structure.
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Use Cases
Fixing orphan pages helps search engines discover and index all of your pages, improving your odds of ranking for valuable keywords.
Linking back orphan pages creates a better experience for users by helping them discover relevant, high-value content across your site.
You’ve invested in content creation—don’t let it go to waste. Reintegrating orphan pages recaptures traffic and conversions.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why do orphan pages hurt SEO?
They don’t receive link equity or crawl attention, which means they rarely rank and waste your crawl budget. Google relies on internal links to understand and prioritize content.
How do I find orphan pages on my site?
Use tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or SEMrush. Compare your sitemap URLs to those found by a site crawl. Pages in the sitemap but not linked internally are orphans.
Are all orphan pages bad?
Not always—some thank-you pages or gated resources are intentionally hidden. But public-facing content should always be linked somewhere for SEO and UX.
How often should I check for orphan pages?
Identify relevant pages within your site to link to it contextually. Also consider adding it to category pages, menus, or featured sections where it fits.
How do I fix an orphan page?
Yes. When useful content isn’t linked internally, your site loses topical depth and fails to signal relevance to search engines. This can dilute your overall authority.
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