<\/span>How To Find Orphan Pages?<\/span><\/h2>\nHow many times have many of us clicked on a link, only to find it leads to a \u201cpage not found\u201d message? It\u2019s not a rarity, it\u2019s quite common, and can be the source of an orphan page. Search engines like Google or Bing eventually resolve these errors. So, you don\u2019t need to do anything in this case as it won\u2019t harm your ranking ability.<\/p>\n
However, there are cases where you\u2019ll eventually need to take action, and that\u2019s where you\u2019ll need tools to help you find orphan pages on your site.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t matter which tool you use to detect the orphan pages. But what is essential is to have an accurate XML sitemap. Why? Because the tool being used needs to be informed about the URLs on the website, and if it discovers a URL that is unregistered or unrecognized in the sitemap, it will label it as an orphan page.<\/p>\n
Simply put, the crawl will only recognize the pages from the sitemap.<\/p>\n
<\/span>How to Fix Orphan Pages?<\/span><\/h2>\nAfter you\u2019ve identified, orphan pages should be fixed. In an ideal world, you must prioritize fixing all the orphans on your site before attracting new visitors and building your organic traffic. One way to do it is to adopt them by adding internal links to these URLs. Make sure they are also submitted in your sitemap. This method works if you still find the orphan page\u2019s content useful.<\/p>\n
Here are a few tips on how to fix orphan pages:<\/p>\n
<\/span>Internal Linking<\/span><\/h3>\nOrphan pages that are valuable for your site visitors should include an internal link from a related page to the orphan page. This will make them easier for users and search engines to find, enable Google to re-crawl the page and discover the new internal link, helping it to crawl and index the orphan page.<\/p>\n
<\/span>No-Index<\/span><\/h3>\nIf there are any web pages that you purposely did not link internally, you can add a no-index tag to them. This curbs them from being visible in search engine results. To do this, insert the line of code: <meta name=\u201drobots\u201d content=\u201dnoindex\u201d\/><\/em><\/strong> on the page. Otherwise, you can block these pages in your robots.txt file, which would signal to Google and other crawlers to not index those pages.<\/p>\n<\/span>Merge \/ Consolidation of Content<\/span><\/h3>\nOrphan pages with identical or nearly identical content to another page should be consolidated. In that case, the best course of action is to consolidate the content and redirect the orphan URL to the other page.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Delete the Orphan Page<\/span><\/h3>\nIf you find orphan pages that offer no value for visitors and serve no other purpose (e.g., paid traffic campaign), it\u2019s best to delete them entirely from your website and then implement a 301 redirect from the URL to another relevant page on your site.<\/p>\n
For example, an unused CMS theme page can be removed. This will result in a 404 page and naturally drop out of search results over time.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Conclusion:<\/span><\/h2>\nOrphaned pages are a huge problem from an SEO perspective. However, they\u2019re not difficult to identify and fix and are even easier to prevent. With the proper knowledge and tools, you can ensure your website\u2019s internal linking structure is sound and that your pages aren\u2019t falling through the cracks. Prioritize having a regular process to catch any unwanted orphan pages and immediately address them.<\/p>\n