As SEOs, sometimes we fail to see or never give high priority to fixing orphan pages. But trust me, they can silently reduce the performance of your entire SEO strategy.
I’ve worked on this problem many times while optimizing websites, and every time, finding and fixing orphan pages has shown noticeable improvements in organic search rankings and user experience.
In this blog, I’ll explain what orphan pages are, why they happen, and, most importantly, why you should care about them.
By the end of this guide, you’ll know how to find orphan pages on a website and how to fix and prevent them from reappearing, ensuring your website stays optimized for both search engines and visitors.
What are orphan pages?
Orphan pages on your website are technically part of your website, but they’re not linked to any other page within your site’s navigation or internal linking structure. This means that your customers cannot access the pages unless they know the direct URL.
The search engine finds pages from sitemaps, backlinks, and internal links. On the other hand, users find pages through internal links and the website’s site navigation (header and footer).
If important pages aren’t linked within the website itself, they become difficult to find for both crawlers and users, and those pages create orphan page SEO issues. In such cases, your website ranking will take a huge tool, as the search engine crawlers cannot find them.
What causes orphan pages?
When auditing websites, I’ve noticed several common causes of orphan pages. Sometimes, we create landing pages for paid marketing campaigns and forget about them after the campaigns are over.
When we do site migration, which goes wrong in a specific way, the developer often leaves pages behind. In some cases, the reason for orphan pages can be CMS, especially when automatic URLs are generated, and you forget to check them.
I also noticed that removing navigation elements or internal links during site redesigns often creates orphan page issues. In e-commerce sites, products become out of stock and aren’t handled properly by the SEO team.
Sometimes, the cause of orphan pages can be publishing pages without considering the site structure. Also, poor SEO audits by the team led to valuable content being created but never linked properly.
How to Find Orphan Pages on a Website?
You can find orphan pages using various SEO tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and Screaming Frog, among others.
Today, I’ll explain a step-by-step guide on using Screaming Frog, which is the best tool I’ve used for identifying orphan pages on a website.
Let’s get started on finding the orphan pages on your site!
1. Open screaming frog and configure the crawl
First, open the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool, and make sure that you’ve got the licensed version of the tool. You must go to the Configuration menu and select Spider and Crawl.
Once you click on the crawl, a popup window will open. In this section, check the “Crawl Linked XML Sitemaps” box and “Crawl These Sitemaps”.
Next, enter the URL of your XML sitemap (for example, https://www.webdew.com/sitemap_index.xml) and click on the “OK” button to make sure Screaming Frog includes these pages in its crawl.
This setting ensures that Screaming Frog will crawl the list of URLs included in your XML sitemaps but not directly linked within your site’s internal structure.
2. Crawl the site and analyze the results
After configuring the sitemaps, enter the website URL you wish to analyze into the “Enter URL to spider” field and click “Start” to initiate the crawl process.
Once the crawling starts, it will check your site and collect information from your homepage, and XML sitemaps.
Once the crawl is finished, go to the “Sitemap” tab available on the top menu within Screaming Frog. To specifically find orphan URLs, apply the “Orphan URLs” filter.
This will show the pages that do not have internal links pointing to them, which means they are not easily accessible from within your site.
3. Export the orphan pages report
To generate a report of the orphan pages you’ve found, select Reports > Orphan Pages from the tool’s main menu. This report will compile a list of all the orphan pages discovered during the crawl.
Save the log file on your computer in .xlsx format to analyze the orphan page URLs listed in the “Source” column, which were identified from the given sitemap. You can use this report to fix the orphan pages you found on your website.
This will prove super beneficial for your business, especially when you don’t know how to find the orphan pages. However, make sure you don’t make mistakes.
4. Additional tips
When you analyze the “Internal” tab, use the “HTML” filter to see only web pages. Check any pages with a blank “Crawl Depth”.
These pages are generally orphans because they haven’t been found through internal links on your site.
How to fix orphan pages
As an experienced SEO expert, I’ve seen how dealing with orphan pages can help to improve rankings. Moreover, it can lead to better user experience and overall site health.
Let’s understand the right approach to dealing with orphan pages based on the different causes that can create them.
1. Due to poor internal linking
Certain pages weren’t linked to other parts of your site during site updates or content creation. Sometimes, we don’t find the relevant page to intern link or forget to link new pages with old ones.
Review the content across your site once you know which pages are orphaned using Screaming Frog. Look for relevant opportunities to link to these pages from other high-traffic pages.
As per my experience dealing with this issue, if you find pages that are not valuable to users, the ideal solution is to remove them completely and redirect them to relevant pages. But make sure to check whether the page got a backlink from any other website.
2. Due to site migration
Site migrations are one of the reasons for orphan pages, especially when URLs change and old links aren’t redirected properly. In my experience, even though you carefully completed the migration process, this issue still exists.
If you find orphan pages that weren’t redirected or included in the new site’s structure, create 301 redirects or add those pages to the internal linking strategy.
3. Caused by CMS issues
Sometimes, your content management system (CMS) can unintentionally create orphan pages. This can happen when the CMS automatically creates URLs because of the plugin installed or the CMS itself.
I’ve seen this happen often with e-commerce sites or complex CMS setups where plugins create pages for categories, tags, or product variations without properly linking them.
Once you’ve identified them, check whether these pages add value to your site. If they do, link these pages from relevant sections of your site, such as related product pages or blog posts.
If the pages are unnecessary, delete those pages and set up 301 redirects. Deactivate the plugin responsible or adjust the CMS settings to prevent it from auto-generating URLs.
4. Orphan pages after a site redesign
When we redesign the website, we generally change buttons, content, and hyperlinks(especially in the footer section) and forget to link them as before, which can create orphan pages. I’ve seen this happen when designers focus on aesthetics without considering the SEO impact, leaving some pages unlinked.
The right approach to fix this is to check the new layout and ensure that old content is properly linked within the new structure. Any orphan pages should be reconnected to the site’s navigation. Make sure your redesign considers both user experience and search engine optimization.
5. Products going out of stock
When products go out of stock, especially in e-commerce, they’re often removed from the primary product listings but remain live on the site, creating an orphan page issue. If a product is permanently discontinued, set up a 301 redirect to a related product or category page.
If it’s temporarily out of stock, create a custom 404 page that informs users that “the product is out of stock and will be available soon” and guides them without confusion.
6. Paid marketing landing pages
Paid marketing campaigns often use specific landing pages that aren’t linked to the rest of your site. These pages serve a purpose during the campaign but can become orphaned once the campaign ends.
If these pages are still generating traffic or conversions, add them to your site’s navigation or link them to related content. If they’re no longer useful, set up a redirect to similar pages or another relevant landing page.
Orphan pages and SEO impact
One of the most immediate effects of orphan pages is reduced crawlability. Search engine bots depend on internal links to crawl your site. When pages aren’t linked, it becomes harder for bots to find them.
While search engines may occasionally crawl these pages, they become dead ends. When orphan pages use up your crawl budget, it makes it difficult for crawlers to focus on your main content.
If important orphan pages don’t receive any internal link juice, they don’t benefit from Google’s PageRank algorithm and may struggle to rank on the SERPs for relevant queries.
Pages that aren’t linked within your site are difficult for users to find. This means if the orphan page has valuable content, it may hide your visitors. If you can’t find relevant content while navigating a website, the chances are an increase in bounce rate.
Preventing orphan pages
To effectively prevent orphan pages, I’ve found that regularly audit your site to catch any orphan pages early. I use tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console to scan for pages that aren’t linked from anywhere else.
An internal linking strategy is very important. I closely check each page should be part of the website structure. Whenever I add new pages or update existing ones, I link them to other relevant pages on the website. It helps to avoid orphan page issues and guides users and crawlers in navigating easily.
When redesigning a site or going through a migration, I always make it a point to strictly review the new structure. I verify that all old pages are properly redirected or included in the new design.
I also closely watch my CMS and any plugins I use. Regularly checking and configuring these settings helps prevent unwanted orphan pages. Finally, monitoring site performance through Google Analytics is essential. I track which pages get traffic and which don’t. If a page isn’t performing well, it’s worth investigating whether it might be orphaned.
Ready to find orphan pages on a website?
Whenever I found orphan page issues, I followed the above steps and strategy to fix them. I saw decent improvements in my SEO results. By identifying these orphan pages and integrating them into my internal linking strategy, I improved crawlability and made my site more user-friendly.
You can expect similar benefits by following these steps. Fixing orphan pages will enhance your site’s visibility in search results, make it easier for users to navigate, and ultimately drive more traffic and conversions.
I hope you found my article informative. Now you know how to find orphan pages on a website. If you have any concerns, let me know in the comments below.
