Fixing “Orphaned” Pages: A Crawlability & Internal Link Audit
Client: A large e-commerce store with 20,000+ product pages.
Challenges We Faced
The client’s new products were not getting indexed by Google, making them invisible:
Orphaned Page Reintegration Failure
A Comprehensive Internal Link Audit with Screaming Frog found 5,000+ “orphaned” product pages with zero internal links pointing to them.
Poor Crawlability
Because the pages weren’t linked, Google’s bots couldn’t find them.
Low Indexation Rate
Google Search Console showed only 60% of their product pages were indexed.
Wasted Crawl Budget Optimization
Google was wasting time on old, thin pages instead of their new, high-value product pages.
No Link Flow to New Products
New product pages weren’t linked from category or related products, reducing visibility and ranking potential.
Fix Your Orphaned Pages
“Are your best products invisible to Google? Our Internal Link Audit will find and fix your ‘orphaned’ pages, getting them indexed and ranked.”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Comprehensive Internal Link Audit
We used Screaming Frog to crawl the entire 20,000+ page site and export a full list of all “orphaned” pages.
Orphaned Page Reintegration
We worked with their developers to fix their category page templates, ensuring all “active” products were automatically linked.
E-commerce Linking (Products & Cats)
We implemented a “Related Products” widget on all product pages, creating a strong, relevant seo internal linking strategy between similar products.
Technical SEO (Crawlability)
We submitted an updated XML sitemap to Google Search Console and used the “URL Inspection” tool to force-index the newly linked pages.
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Orphaned” Product Pages (No links) | 5,000+ | 50 (archived) | -99% |
| Page Indexation Rate (GSC) | 60% (12,000 pages) | 98% (19,600 pages) | +63% |
| Organic Traffic (to “orphaned” pages) | 0/mo | 25,000/mo | +25,000/mo |
Free Internal Link Audit
“Not sure if your pages are orphaned? Book a Free 1,000-Page Crawl and let our internal linking optimization services team find your errors!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- If a page has no internal links, it’s invisible to Google. Orphaned Page Reintegration is the #1 priority for a large e-commerce site.
- Use Screaming Frog to run a Comprehensive Internal Link Audit. This is the only way to find your orphaned pages.
- An E-commerce Linking strategy (like a “Related Products” widget) is a powerful, automated way to build relevant internal links at scale.
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- The Screaming Frog audit gave us the “to-fix” list that was the foundation of the project.
- Fixing the category page templates was a one-time fix that solved the problem for all future products.
- The new “Related Products” widget dramatically improved Crawlability and also boosted “Average Order Value.”
