Identifying and Fixing Orphan Pages
Explanation & Implementation Guide
Explanation
Orphan pages are pages on your site that aren’t linked from any other pages. These unlinked pages can hinder SEO and user experience. Without internal links pointing to them, search engines may have difficulty discovering and indexing these pages, reducing their visibility in search results. From a user standpoint, orphan pages can make navigation difficult and limit access to content. Addressing these pages improves website structure, SEO, and accessibility.
Implementation Guide
Download and Install Screaming Frog SEO Spider:
- This tool is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and the free version is suitable for basic website crawling.
Enter Your Website’s URL
- Launch Screaming Frog, enter your website’s URL in the ‘Enter URL to spider’ box, and start the crawl.
View Crawl Results:
- Once complete, go to the ‘Orphaned Pages’ report. Screaming Frog lists pages not linked from any other part of your site.
Identify Orphan Pages
- Review the URLs listed in the ‘Orphan’ section; these are the isolated pages that need attention.
Export the Data
- Click ‘Export’ to download the list of orphan pages for further review.
Steps to Fix Orphan Pages
Analyze Content and Purpose
- Review each orphan page to determine if it provides valuable content that aligns with your site’s goals.
Create Internal Links
- Find relevant pages within your site that can link to these orphan pages and add links with descriptive anchor text to make them part of the broader site structure.
Update Navigation Menus
- If applicable, add links to orphan pages in the navigation menu to make them more accessible to users.
Include in Sitemap:
- Add the orphan pages to your XML sitemap to ensure search engines can locate and index them.
Re-crawl to Verify:
- After linking the orphan pages, re-crawl your site with Screaming Frog or another tool to confirm they’re now part of the site structure.
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