Do orphan pages take away link juice?
-
Hi,
Just wondering about this whether the orphan pages take away any link juice? We been creating lot of them these days only to link from external sites as landing pages on our site. So, not linking from any part of our website; just linking from other websites.
Also, will they get any link juice if they are linked from our own blog-post?
Thanks
-
In my opinion - no, as Ifa as I understand Gooogle doesn't look too favourably at the, maybe it assumes that a page with no links from inside its own website has little or no importance.
-
Orphaned pages stand a very, extremely low chance of ranking well in SEO terms. If you don't really want your users to find these pages and don't want to link to them prominently, you are telling Google that the pages are unimportant and (likely) unworthy of indexation. The best content on the web (which Google wants to rank) is celebrated, internally and externally (internal links, backlinks from other sites). It's displayed prominently, because webmasters and editors are proud of that content
Why should Google display a result proudly, if the creator scorns their own content? It sends definite mixed messages to Google. The lack of link-juice flowing to these pages, is but one aspect of a larger problem - which is that the mindset for creating the content was probably wrong
That's not to say that orphaned pages are a terrible scourge on the internet. They have their place, for example they make great landing URLs for specific ad campaigns (Pinterest Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads, FaceBook Ads etc). But organically, in terms of SEO - they are extremely unlikely to rank well
You can take a fantastically aerodynamic, well optimised automobile to the race track. But if you don't fuel it, and you fuel speculation that it's unreliable by refusing to sit in the seat and drive it... don't expect it to win, don't expect people to get excited over it
-
Hi there! What's the purpose of these landing pages? Are they designed to be findable on Google? Or are they just separate landing pages? It's not uncommon for sites to have landing pages developed for PPC, for example, that aren't indexed because they don't serve a purpose in search.
**If you want people to find these pages on Google - **why are they orphaned? The fact that they aren't getting internal links will be harming them at the very least.
If people finding these pages on Google is not part of the strategy - how many quality links are these pages getting? If not many pages are getting quality links why are they indexed? Adding a noindex tag to these pages could be a clean way to solve this problem.
-
... Yes, would be my best answer. Right now I can't think of a scenario where having an orphaned landing page is a good idea in any case. In most cases, you always want to have a page that is useful for everybody and that can be easily found by a search engine as well. So the worst thing to do, to ensure that the page isn't orphaned would be to create an XML sitemap to still help a search engine to find the actual page.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
PDFs With No Index Contribute To Page Ranks?
I have a question I'm hoping you can help me with. If I upload a PDF and add a no index under the meta robots index so that the PDF doesn't appear in search results when I send people the link to this PDF, does it still contribute to my site traffic/ranking etc? Basically we are deciding whether to put some PDFs with pricing options etc onto our website or on a google drive. We will be sending the links to potential clients. If visitors clicking on the link would still help with increasing traffic and increasing our google rank (without that PDF showing in results) we thought this might be the best solution.
Algorithm Updates | | whiterabbitnz0 -
Do the back-links go wasted when anchor text or context content doesn't match with page content?
Hi Community, I have seen number of back-links where the content in that link is not matching with page content. Like page A linking to page B, but content is not really relevant beside brand name. Like page with "vertigo tiles" linked to page about "vertigo paints" where "vertigo" is brand name. Will these kind of back-links completely get wasted? I have also found some broken links which I'm planning to redirect to existing pages just to reclaim the back-links even though the content relevancy is not much beside brand name. Are these back-links are beneficial or not? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Thousands of duplicate website links at "Who links the most" in Google webmasters. Any risk being duplicate website links pointing to website?
Hi all, As I mentioned some days back here, our duplicate website got indexed a month back. Unfortunately there are links to our original website. I noticed that thousands of links are from our duplicate website at "Links to Your Site". Will this hurts? Now we have blocked the duplicate website getting indexed. What to do to remove these links from "Who links the most"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Why Google changed our page-title suddenly which has been same for years
Hi all, I know Google shows a different page titles. Happens when over optimised or when we copied competitors page title. But we did neither. Suddenly Google changed our homepage page title in search results. Our page title suffix "brand name" has been moved to beginning. Our page title is still for years.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Rel canonical on every page of wordpress CMS website
Can we have rel=canonical across all pages of a wordpress CMS website? I don't know why same page has been as canonical but not for duplicate pages
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Linking to authority / competitor website!? Yes or No?
Here is the dilema .... People say, don't be afraid to link to authority website! What if an authority website in particular niche is actually competing with you in the Search, but you do have a review profile there? Is it ok to link to that profile ? Should I include a no follow tag ? Another case : some other authority high ranked website competing in search with mine directly has a profile page for my company, but this authority website has blocked Google bot to crawl the profile page all the reviews there !? Can I still link to that page and will this be appreciated by Google ? Am I passing PR and link juice from my website to those direct comeptitors / authority websites ?
Algorithm Updates | | montauto0 -
How did my Page Authority and Page Rank disappear?
I've hit a problem. A couple days ago my site's page authority was 51 and the PR was 3 and now they're 1 and 0 respectively. The developer did adjust some of the code in the site in the past couple days but that shouldn't have affected this. It was last cached by Google on the 5th. Can anyone offer some good advice? If it helps the page is www.duracard.com
Algorithm Updates | | Andrea.G0 -
Are you guys finding more No Follows being counted as links?
Wonding if anyone is finding more and more no follows actually being counted as links.
Algorithm Updates | | barrystix30