What Orphan Pages Are and How to Fix SEO Mistakes

How to fix internal linking issues and fix orphan pages with Labrika’s advanced technical SEO analysis

Orphan pages are bad for SEO and for your website's rankings in search results and SERPs. Unfortunately, they are easy to create unintentionally in any size website and can be difficult to identify consistently for regular site management. Fixing orphan pages can improve your site's SEO, user experience, organic traffic, and avoid Google penalties that affect overall visibility and deliver better results.

This article explains in detail how orphan pages appear, what impact they have on technical SEO, and how Labrika helps your team track, analyze, and fix an orphan page across your entire domain without wasting crawl budget or link equity.

What are orphan pages?

Orphan pages are web pages that exist on your website but have no internal links to them from any other pages on your site, so search engine crawlers and users cannot easily access them through normal navigation. However, there may be links to them from external sources, such as backlinks, ads, or shared URLs from digital marketing campaigns.

Occasionally orphan pages may be created intentionally for temporary landing pages, testing, or private resources. But, in the vast majority of cases, they are unintended mistakes, that webmasters may be unaware of during a site audit or content updates. They are bad for SEO, and too many may cause Google to lower your site's ranking and question the quality and structure of your content.

On large websites with thousands of pages, orphan page clusters often arise after site migrations, product changes, content pruning, or poor menu and navigation restructuring, so maintaining a clean site structure around orphan pages website sections is essential for good SEO performance and conversion.

Why are orphan pages bad for SEO?

Here are some of the more important negative impacts of orphan pages on crawl efficiency, rankings, and brand trust:

• It was used previously as a Black-Hat SEO technique within low-quality orphan page networks. This included hiding some pages from users but ensuring search engines would find them. Therefore, search engines may presume the webmaster is attempting to trick them and may apply manual actions or algorithmic demotions.
• Search engines view pages with no internal links as unimportant, so those orphan pages gain little authority, pass no signals, and rarely rank for valuable keyword or product terms.
• Google penalizes the entire site when it finds orphan pages at scale, especially when orphaned pages look like doorway content or thin articles.
• Orphan pages waste crawl budget and the craw rate slows with few internal links, so search engine crawlers may no longer index pages that matter most for sales and leads.
• Search engines cannot understand how orphan pages fit within the overall site structure and hierarchy. This means they will struggle to calculate their relevance, topical connection, and pass no authority to them or from them.
• Orphan page content can disrupt contextual keyword targeting and impact SERP rankings, impact internal linking strategy, and confuse both users and search engines about which relevant page should appear for important queries.
• Because orphan pages sit disconnected from pages internal links, analytics and reporting for those URLs are incomplete, so you cannot easily track visits, behavior, or conversion performance.

10 common causes of orphan pages in your site structure

1. A website migration that wasn't successfully managed from old URLs to new URLs, where redirects, XML sitemap files, and internal links were not updated, often leaves behind orphaned pages.
2. Pages that were created early in the site build process, submitted to Google, but then abandoned in later design changes. Meaning they were excluded from the site's navigation architecture, main menu, and internal linking plan.
3. Pages that were added to the XML sitemap when they were created, but no longer form part of the site's flow or updated site structure, can quietly become hidden orphan pages.
4. Pages used in A/B testing that were never deleted or redirected after the experiment ended, leaving outdated variants as isolated orphan pages.
5. Landing pages that are no longer used. Typically landing pages have no internal links leading to them, so once campaigns stop sending traffic they become orphan pages that still exist and may appear in results pages.
6. A blogger wanted to remove pages from public view, but not delete them, such as with an old blog category or outdated article series. The old blog category is deleted but now all the pages are orphaned and disconnected from the homepage and main blog list.
7. Pages that have been forgotten over time. The site was restricted, or its navigation changed, leaving those pages behind as hidden orphans that no longer receive internal links or traffic.
8. Product pages that still exist for items that are out of stock or discontinued. Or expired classified ads and services pages that lost navigation links but remain indexable orphan pages.
9. Old videos, articles, or content that are no longer relevant. So, they have internal links removed and are left as low-value orphan pages that still consume crawl resources.
10. Bad use of CMS to create pages, meaning orphan pages are left undetected because no one reviews new URLs, checks navigation, or updates sitemaps during regular site audit cycles.

These common patterns occur across industries and websites of every size, from small blogs to enterprise ecommerce, and each cause of an orphan page can be prevented with good information architecture, consistent content management, and automated monitoring tools that highlight missing internal links.

How to fix orphan pages

Step 1: Identify orphan pages through URL mapping

• Obviously, you won't find orphan pages by crawling your website alone, so to crawl website data efficiently you must look at search engines, especially Google and Bing, to extract all links from the website and compare them with internal navigation.
• In Google Analytics you can extract a list of all URLs that have been indexed and sort them by “least visited”, which helps reveal hidden orphan pages site segments. Do this by navigating to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. In Bing, the corresponding tool is Indexed Pages Checker. Then export the URLs into a spreadsheet for detailed analysis and mapping.
• Then you need to crawl your website to build a corresponding list of “official” valid URLs, using a professional site audit crawler that respects robots.txt files and noindex tags. You can easily find suitable tools by searching for “website crawler tool” or using Labrika’s integrated crawling engine.
• By comparing both lists, you highlight orphan pages and can quickly see which index pages exist in search but no longer receive internal links from any relevant page on your website.
• Note: the process may be a little more detailed than this summary describes. But this is the basic essence of how to find a list of orphan pages based on live index data, XML sitemaps, and internal crawl results combined.
• You can also use
• Labrika’s own sitemap validator tool
• , this gives you access to any pages that may be on your site, but aren’t indexable or are disconnected, making it a quick and easy way to access a list of orphan pages quickly for further review.

Labrika automatically identifies orphaned URLs during a complete technical SEO site audit and generates a structured report that shows which orphan pages website owners should evaluate first, the number of visits they receive, whether external links exist, and how these URLs impact crawl efficiency and page SEO.

This automated approach allows SEO managers to compare and combine data from Google Search Console, Google Analytics, XML sitemaps, and Labrika’s crawl in one place, so the team can identify whether orphan pages are valuable, outdated, or intentionally noindex, and decide on the most effective action.

Step 2: Assess the orphan pages and decide on an action for each one

• Start by asking yourself the following questions in a consistent process. This will then affect the action you take and help build good internal linking structure rules.
• Q1. How important is the page? If it has importance, then integrate it back into the site, otherwise delete it or return a suitable status code.
• Q2. Does the page rank for your keywords in Google search results or generate organic traffic or sales? If so integrate it back into the site, otherwise, delete it or redirect it appropriately.
• Q3. Is the page a duplicate or almost a duplicate? Perhaps it can be merged with another non-orphan page, or handled via canonical tags to consolidate authority and avoid content issues.
• Q4. Are there backlinks to the page from other websites, valuable domains, or campaigns that still send visitors?
• For pages that you re-integrate back into the website, take the opportunity to assess the page’s quality, relevance, and conversion role:
• Does it need to be optimized for SEO, updated, or expanded to match current search intent and company messaging?
• Where should it be linked from internally within the navigation, menus, related articles, product categories, or FAQs to make sure users and search engine crawlers can access it easily?

Once Labrika identifies and classifies the orphan pages, you can plan clear actions such as updating internal links, adding the URL to appropriate categories, using 301 redirects, applying noindex where necessary, or removing obsolete content that no longer supports your digital marketing strategy.

This structured management of orphan pages also helps ensure that link equity from external links is not wasted on low-value URLs, and that important landing pages receive inbound authority from relevant sections of your website.

Practical options for handling orphan pages

In practice, each orphan page usually falls into one of several scenarios that suggest a specific SEO-friendly action:

• Keep and integrate: for high-quality content or product information, add contextual internal links from related content, update the XML sitemap, and place the page logically in your site structure and navigation.
• Redirect: if the content is outdated but has backlinks, authority, or traffic, redirect to the most relevant page or category to preserve value and avoid orphaning.
• Noindex: for utility or low-value pages such as temporary tests, internal-only resources, or duplicate filters, you may keep them accessible but mark them with noindex and ensure they do not become new orphan pages.
• Remove: when content is obsolete, low quality, or has no traffic or links, remove the URL, serve 404 or 410 codes, and update any internal references to avoid poor user experience.

Labrika’s reports help you review these options at scale and prioritize actions based on potential SEO impact, business value, and the role of each orphan page in your wider content strategy.

How to manage expired pages and old listings to avoid creating orphan pages

Think of eBay for a moment. Every day, millions of auctions end, and their listings expire. eBay does not delete those expired listings without a plan. Many will have been picked up by search engines and will appear on SERPS for years to come in some cases, bringing visitors from results pages. The last thing eBay wants is for a prospective customer to be directed to a “404 Page not found” error on the eBay site, or to a disconnected orphan page with no navigation.

Instead, eBay treats expired listings as valuable lead generators. Visitors who click on an expired listing in the SERP will be shown alternative product suggestions, similar offers, and current inventory. As well as the original expired listing, this approach maintains user experience, supports brand trust, and prevents unnecessary orphaning of content.

This strategy applies just as well to e-commerce sites where products are permanently out of stock or discontinued. Those product pages are still indexed in search engines and can be treated as potential landing pages that direct customers to updated products, categories, or services, rather than being left as isolated orphan pages.

However, you may not wish to retain expired pages on your website for valid reasons, such as regulatory changes, outdated information, or privacy policy updates. In that case, it is best to ensure they return a 404 or 410 (expired content) code that you can control and track. To do this you can use a custom 404 page that offers navigation back to key sections, the homepage, and main categories.

By planning how expired content is handled, you prevent new orphan pages from appearing, protect user journeys, and maintain a clear, logical site structure that supports ongoing SEO growth.

In summary - website management best practices prevent orphan pages

Any SEO professional or website builder is well aware of the dangers to SEO if orphan pages are found across a website, because these disconnected URLs send weak signals to search engine crawlers and reduce overall visibility. Normally, they build checks and detection mechanisms into their processes to stop this, integrating regular technical SEO reviews, automated monitoring, and rules for content creation so orphan pages don’t accumulate unnoticed.

A thorough site audit using the above steps should uncover any orphan pages and show which pages exist only in the index without internal links pages pointing to them. If you have a larger site you may want to bring in professional SEO services to stop you wasting time and money, ensure clean site structure, and support teams with clear workflows for identifying orphan pages and preventing similar issues after future site migrations or major design changes.

Don’t forget that Labrika offers a sitemap validator tool which can give you a list of Orphan pages quickly and easily, and also provides advanced reports that identify which orphan pages bad for rankings should be updated, redirected, or removed based on organic traffic, backlinks, and business value.

Updated on January 20, 2026.