In the dynamic landscape of online marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in enhancing a website's visibility and driving organic traffic. One aspect that SEO experts closely monitor and address is the presence of orphan pages on a website. Orphan pages, when left unattended, can have a significant impact on a website's SEO efforts.
By understanding the implications of orphan pages, SEO professionals in Austin can take proactive measures to optimize their clients' websites and achieve better search engine rankings. In this article, we will delve into the concept of orphan pages and explore how they can affect the SEO performance of a website, particularly within the context of Austin SEO companies.
What Causes a Web Page to Become an Orphan Page?
Orphan pages refer to indexable pages on a website that have no links pointing to them from any other page within the same site. These pages exist outside the site's structure and do not have "parent pages" connecting them to the overall website architecture. Since orphan pages lack internal links, they are typically challenging to discover or navigate to through the website's regular navigation menus or hierarchical structure.
Discovering orphan pages may still be possible through external links or organic search results, which can direct users to these isolated pages. However, users cannot access orphan pages by navigating through the website itself since there are no internal links leading to them.
It is important to identify and address orphan pages when creating content for your website. Sometimes, these pages may unintentionally be left out of the site's structure or forgotten after a specific event or sale. Neglecting orphan pages can have a negative impact on your website's SEO performance.
How Can You Find Orphan Pages?
You'll need a site crawler and a log file analysis tool to find all orphan pages on your website. While the site crawler helps identify pages in your site structure, the log file analysis tool is useful in locating orphan pages that aren't part of your site structure. You can use various tools to determine whether your website has orphan pages.
Your SEO company in Austin can analyze your website's structure and identify any orphaned pages that require attention. An internal tool or crawler can also search for such pages on your site. Regularly reviewing the structure of your website is crucial to ensure that every page is appropriately connected and located.
How Does Having Orphan Pages Affect Your Website's SEO?
When web pages need proper links, search engines may be able to find them. This means that even high-quality pages with links can be noticed. Furthermore, indexed orphan pages tend to have low search engine rankings because it is hard for crawlers to comprehend their value due to a lack of internal linking.
Orphan pages can also harm your SEO performance by using up your crawl budget. The crawl budget refers to the maximum number of pages that search engines will index from a website within a specific period. When crawler bots are busy with low value orphan pages, they may miss out on more important and recent content.
In addition, search engines view the existence of orphan pages unfavorably. This is because people have used these hidden pages and other unethical SEO tactics to boost their keyword rankings. Therefore, orphan pages are considered negative SEO and should be avoided as much as possible.
How Does Having Orphan Pages Affect SEO Negatively?
Having orphan pages on your website can significantly negatively impact your SEO performance. These pages may be difficult to find and impede the search engine's ability to index other parts of your website. These hidden pages can also lessen the impact of internal linking, diminish your crawl budget, and perhaps harm your SERP ranks.
Two main SEO problems are caused by orphan pages:
1. Low Rankings & Traffic
If a website's internal linking structure doesn't include orphan pages, it won't receive any link juice. It may become less visible on search engine results pages (SERPs), significantly declining organic traffic. Despite containing great content, orphan pages usually don't perform well in SERPs or attract significant organic search traffic.
2. Crawl Waste
If your website has fewer orphan pages, it can slow down search engine crawlers. This means less time is spent discovering and indexing new content that could boost your site's SEO. Even low-value orphan pages, such as duplicates, can divert the crawler's attention from important pages, hurting your site's ranking.
If over 70% of the pages that Google explores on your website are orphan pages, it is clear that orphan pages make up a significant portion of your website's pages. This indicates a large problem.
How to Prevent Having Orphan Pages on Websites?
A key component of keeping a properly organised and SEO-friendly website is to prevent orphan pages from appearing on it. A website's search engine ranking may suffer if it has orphan pages, or sites that have no internal links from other pages on your website.
The first step to preventing this is to use site crawlers and log file analysis tools to locate any orphan pages. Once you have found them, you can remove or improve their links. It's important to regularly check your website's structure for any broken or missing links, to ensure that all pages are properly linked.
While you may not want to delete old posts due to their SEO value, keeping them visible to your clients is essential. To maintain the quality of your website's internal linking, it is suggested that you create links to pages within the website instead of making them orphan pages.
Related Posts: Reasons Why Your Website Isn’t Making Sales
Conclusion
Orphan pages can harm SEO, resulting in low search rankings and reduced website performance. To avoid this, keeping track of your website's structure and ensuring no orphan pages is essential. Additionally, it would help if you regularly audit your internal linking structure to identify any broken or missing links.
By utilizing the services of an experienced Austin SEO agency, you can ensure that your site is performing optimally and avoiding any negative SEO implications. This will help ensure that your website has a strong presence in SERPs and provides users with a great experience.
