Have you ever published a blog post, optimized it carefully for SEO, but it got almost no traffic from Google?
Before you rewrite it, check whether any other page on your site links to it. A page with no internal links pointing to it is called an orphan page. Google struggles to discover these hidden pages, and without internal links, they miss out on the crucial link equity needed to rank well.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to find every orphan page on your site, decide whether to relink, merge, or delete each one, and stop new ones from appearing.
Here’s everything we’ll cover in this guide:
How to Find Orphan Pages in Your WordPress Dashboard (The Easy Way)
The easiest way to find orphan pages without leaving your WordPress dashboard is with an SEO plugin. It will map out how every page on your website connects to the rest of your content and show you the data inside your WordPress admin.
We will show you how to do this with All in One SEO (AIOSEO)‘s Internal Link Assistant because we use it on our own websites. You can find similar features in the premium versions of Rank Math, Yoast SEO, and Link Whisper.
First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin in your WordPress dashboard. You can follow our guide on how to set up All in One SEO correctly.
The next step is to enable the Link Assistant feature. Head to AIOSEO » Link Assistant. Here, click the ‘Activate Link Assistant’ button if it isn’t already enabled.
At this point, you’ll see a popup modal prompting you to scan your content.
Go ahead and click the ‘Scan Now’ button.
AIOSEO will then begin analyzing your site’s internal link structure.
If this is your first time activating Link Assistant, give it a few minutes to finish scanning your WordPress site before moving on to the next step. Larger sites may take a bit longer to process, and you’ll see a progress indicator showing the scan status.
Next, click the ‘Orphaned Posts’ number to filter the Links Report down to your orphaned content.
This screen will display every page and post on your site that has no internal links pointing to it.
Here’s what it looks like in the panel:
How to Find Orphan Pages With a Site Crawl (Advanced Method)
Your SEO plugin only scans what’s in your WordPress database. It can’t see raw HTML files, legacy non-WordPress folders, or external landing pages that live on your server.
A site crawl covers those. It compares your XML sitemap, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics data against the pages that its crawl actually reached, then flags whatever is missing.
The best-known tool for this job is Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It’s a desktop program that acts just like a search engine bot and crawls your website by following your links.
The free version allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs. For larger websites, you may need to upgrade to the paid program.
First, you will need to connect your XML sitemap, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console accounts to Screaming Frog.
To enable sitemap crawling, go to Configuration » Spider » Crawl and check the box for ‘Crawl Linked XML Sitemaps.’ After that, select Crawl Analysis » Start.
This compares your connected Google data against the pages the crawler managed to reach. Screaming Frog’s orphan report stays empty until you run this analysis.
After the analysis finishes, you can view your results by going to Reports » Orphan Pages.
How to Fix Orphan Pages in WordPress
Finding your orphan pages is only the first step. The real challenge is deciding what to do with each one.
You might want to add internal links to your orphan pages or delete them and set up a 301 redirect. In some cases, you may even choose to keep a page orphaned on purpose.
Below, we will walk you through the best options for fixing or managing your orphan pages.
Relink the Pages You Want to Keep
Once you know which pages you’re keeping, it’s time to reconnect them to other content on your WordPress site. The easiest way to do this is by finding relevant articles you’ve already written and adding an internal link back to your orphan page.
Start with your strongest related posts, which are the ones that already rank and bring in traffic.
You can use an internal linking plugin like All in One SEO‘s Link Assistant or Link Whisper to quickly find relevant posts that should link to your orphaned page. These tools can even add the link for you without having to open the WordPress content editor.
For a full breakdown, see our ultimate guide to internal linking for SEO.
Set up Redirects for Deleted Pages
If you find an orphan page that doesn’t provide any value, then you might consider deleting it and setting up a 301 redirect. This is a permanent redirect that tells browsers and search engines that a page has moved for good, so anyone who clicks an old link is sent straight to the live page you chose.
The easiest way to handle this in WordPress is by using the free 404 to 301 Redirect Manager plugin.
Alternatively, if you’re already using the premium versions of popular SEO plugins like AIOSEO or Yoast SEO, then you don’t need to install a separate plugin. They both have powerful, built-in redirect managers ready to handle this for you automatically.
When configuring your redirects, make sure to point each old URL to a live page that covers a similar topic.
For a complete walkthrough, check out our beginner’s guide to creating a redirect in WordPress.
Leave Intentional Orphans Alone
Sometimes, you may want a page to stay an orphan on purpose.
These are usually special pages like dedicated sales landing pages, pay-per-click (PPC) ad destinations, thank-you pages, or checkout screens. They are specifically designed to be reached through a specific marketing funnel or an ad campaign rather than from other pages on your website.
You should not add internal links to these private marketing pages. You can prevent Google from indexing these pages by adding a noindex tag.
The noindex tag blocks Google from showing the page to the public while leaving it fully live for your paid ad traffic and email marketing funnels.
For more information on the noindex tag, see our guide on how to stop search engines from crawling a WordPress site.
How to Stop Creating New Orphan Pages Accidentally
There are a few best practices that you can follow to ensure you’re not accidentally creating new orphan pages.
Take a look at some of them below:
Plan Internal Links as You Prepare Your Content
One of the best ways to avoid orphan pages is to plan your internal linking strategy before you start writing.
Every new post should belong to a topic hub, which is a group of related articles that all support one main guide. When you know where a post fits ahead of time, adding internal links becomes part of your writing process instead of an afterthought.
To build an effective topic hub, follow these steps:
- Select a pillar article: Identify a comprehensive guide for each major topic on your website. This pillar page is the main article you want to rank highest in search results.
- Link supporting posts back to the pillar: As you write smaller, specific posts related to that topic, place internal links within those posts that point back to your main pillar guide.
- Link from the pillar out to supporting posts: Update your central pillar page to link out to those supporting articles. This two-way linking structure keeps every new page connected from the moment you hit publish.
For more on building this structure from the start, see our ultimate guide to internal linking for SEO.
Update Internal Links Before You Delete a Post
The most common cause of new orphans is one you control directly. When you delete or unpublish a post, every page that relied on it as its sole source of incoming links suddenly becomes orphaned.
So, before you remove any post from your website, check which pages it links out to. If it’s the only page linking to another important page, add a relevant link to that page from one of your existing pages.
FAQs About Orphan Pages in WordPress
Are orphan pages the same as 404s?
No, they’re different. An orphan page is a healthy, live page on your website that loads normally for anyone who has the direct link. The only issue is that you haven’t linked to it from anywhere else on your site.
On the other hand, a 404 error page happens when a URL doesn’t exist at all on your host’s server. This usually happens when you delete a page without setting up a proper redirect, or when a visitor types the link incorrectly.
Can Google find orphan pages at all?
It depends! Google can discover an orphan page if it’s listed in your XML sitemap or if another website links directly to that specific URL. However, there’s a major catch.
Without internal links coming from your own content, search engines assume the page isn’t very important. Google crawls those pages far less often as a result, and they will struggle to rank well.
Are all orphan pages bad for SEO?
Not necessarily. Some pages may intentionally have few or no internal links, such as landing pages created for specific marketing campaigns, thank-you pages, or pages that are only meant to be accessed through a particular link.
However, if a page is important for your website and you want people to find it through search, it should usually have relevant internal links pointing to it.
We hope this guide helped you find and fix orphaned pages in WordPress. Next, you may want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide and our roundup of the best internal linking plugins to build a stronger site structure.
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