Orphan Page: What It Is And Why It Is Important?

The Internet interconnects what is online in the worldwide network. If people visit a website, they must have a link that leads to that page. For instance, when you search for something on the search engine, you will find a landing page related to your search keywords. To put it simply, links are what enable us to achieve our digital goal. However, some pages are not linked anywhere on the website and they are called orphan pages. What are the reasons and effects of an Orphan page? What are the features of the orphan page? This article talks about orphan pages, their aspects are, and ways of finding and fixing orphan pages.

What is Orphan Page?

What if there is any link to a page you want to reach? Are there even pages that don’t have links? The pages without links are named orphan pages. Accordingly, Orphan pages refer to the pages that are not linked to pages or websites of your site. Most of the time, Orphan pages are often not indexed by search engines, so they cannot be tracked by other pages in search engine crawlers. That is to say, only the linked pages can find your page in crawlers. It is like a web that connects the pages. If there is no web linking to other pages, it means that it will be difficult to reach another page. Orphan pages are only accessible to those who know the direct URL.

Types of Orphan Pages

The pages that you don’t need to be concerned about are expected orphan pages. The other pages we have to be concerned about are the unexpected orphan pages. That is why you should know what kind of orphan page needs to be fixed and what the best solution is for this. Find out if the orphan pages are expected or not.

Why are Orphan Pages Bad?

Orphan pages are affected by low SEO ranking. Consequently, that will impact your SEO with a decrease in your page traffic and revenue. Since orphan pages do not get much organic traffic, they will not rank well in SERPs. Besides, if the orphan pages have low-value content they are likely to steal important pages’ crawl budgets.

• Users are having difficulty reaching the natural structure of your website.
• If you have high-value content, then it won’t reach other people.
• Without internal links, search engines can not evaluate the semantic or structure of your page.
• Orphan pages convey the missed getting new customers and bounce rates.
• Links allow users to navigate the websites and find pages most relevant to them. Therefore, users will stay on your website and interact more with it, but not for an orphaned page.

Ways to Reach Orphan Pages

Orphan pages in a website have no link to lead them. However, there are several ways to get to an orphan page, you need to have a direct link or type the link.

How Do Orphan Pages Affect?

Adding high-quality pages to a website ensures their potential of becoming used.

Pages with high potential for organic website traffic are pages that need more people to reach. Subsequently, the difficulty of accessing orphan pages can prevent people from reaching high-quality content. For example, even people who search your website on the search engines, may not be able to find your page. It also means that a page on an unlinked website has no connection to the world.

Features Of An Orphan Page

Here are some components of an orphan page:

• No inbound links

The orphan page has not got an inbound link.

• Live page

Orphan pages are inaccessible to people who value that page.

• Some pages may be orphaned even if indexed

Some pages can inaccurately be categorized as orphan pages. It could be the wrong methods of some tools that ignore some indicators that the page has a link.

How To Find The Orphan Page?

You can try the following to address the orphan page.

• List your website pages

To define an orphan page, you need to start listing all your pages. Once your orphan pages are not easy to find, an audit solution can not identify the orphan page. You need to list all of your websites’ URLs for the crawler to find them. To list your URL:

There are a few ways to get the URL list:

Sitemap Files

A sitemap URL is the root of your domain that allows search engines to understand your website content. Your sitemap is automatically updated when you add a new page or post to your Content Management System (CMS). Before using this, check your sitemap includes a list of your pages.

Download URL list

If a sitemap does not work for you, then create a list on the content management system (CSM).

• Try a website crawl to find inbound internal links

Set the auditing rule for finding pages that have no inbound internal links to identify orphan pages.

• Analyze the results

View the result of the audit. Analyze orphan pages and accordingly figure out how to fix them.

• Fix the orphan page

Consider how we can fix the orphan page with your website goals.

If you want users to find the page on the browser, link to it from other internal pages. If it serves a business need that doesn’t require an internal link to the page, then leave it as is. Additionally, archive it if you don’t need it anymore.

• Test your pages occasionally

Check your site from time to time because every time you add new content, pages can become orphaned.

Conclusion About What The Orphan Pages Are

To sum up, in this article, you can find orphan pages and their features, effects, and ways to detect orphan pages. Orphan pages is an issue that can directly impact your SEO. To prevent that, you need to spot the orphan page to fix them as soon as possible.