Orphan page
TL;DR
An orphan page is a web page with no internal links from other pages on the domain, making it hard or impossible for crawlers to find.
Orphan pages usually arise by accident: a page is published but never linked from menu/navigation/other content. Since crawlers navigate via links, orphans are found late or never. Even if they're in the sitemap, they lack internal link equity, lowering ranking potential.
Example
A site launches 12 new campaign landing pages but forgets internal links from menu or blog. Three months later: 0 organic impressions. Screaming Frog reveals the orphans.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find orphan pages?
Compare full URL list (from sitemap + CMS) against crawled URLs (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb). The difference is orphans.
Related terms
Further reading
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