An orphan page is a page that no internal link on the website leads to. It exists and can be opened directly by its address, but a user cannot click through to it, and a crawler discovers it only by chance, for example from the sitemap or an external link. It arises during redesigns, when categories are removed, with campaign pages created outside the site structure, and with content imported in bulk. You find it by comparing two lists: addresses known from the sitemap or analytics, and addresses reachable by clicking through from the homepage. The difference is the orphan pages. Then decide based on value: link content that makes sense from relevant categories and articles, and merge or remove outdated content with a redirect. Simply adding it to the sitemap does not solve the problem – missing links are also a signal of low importance.
See also: Click depth, Index bloat, Topical authority.
