Orphan Page
A page with no internal links pointing to it. If you can't navigate to it from other pages on your site, search engines probably can't find it either.
Why It Matters
If a page has no internal links pointing to it, it's effectively hidden from both users and search engines. Googlebot discovers pages primarily by following links. An orphan page can only be found via direct URL entry or the XML sitemap - both unreliable compared to a solid internal linking structure.
Orphan pages also receive no internal link equity. Even if they somehow get indexed, they're at a disadvantage because your own site isn't vouching for them. Every page you care about should be reachable through your site's link structure.
In Practice
Run a crawl of your site with Screaming Frog or Sitebulb and identify pages with zero internal links. Cross-reference with your XML sitemap and Google Analytics - you might have pages getting traffic that aren't linked from anywhere.
Fix orphan pages by adding relevant internal links from related content. A blog post about technical SEO should link to your technical SEO service page. Product pages should link from relevant category pages.
If an orphan page has no value and no traffic, consider whether it should exist at all. Sometimes the fix is deletion rather than linking.
Related Terms
Glossary
Internal Link
Links between pages on your own site - the most underrated SEO lever available.
Glossary
Crawling
How search engine bots discover and download your pages - the first step to ranking.
Glossary
Sitemap (XML)
An XML file listing all pages you want search engines to discover and index.
Glossary
Link Equity
The ranking value passed through links from one page to another - also called link juice.
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