Search
The pages earning search traffic are linked from your own site
cross.orphan-winners
Why this matters
A page nothing links to is a page Google found some other way — a sitemap, an external link — and is ranking despite the site rather than because of it. That matters twice. Internal links are among the few ranking signals entirely within your control, so a page earning traffic without them is leaving the easiest improvement on the table. And a page nobody can reach by navigating is usually one nobody remembers to maintain.
Who fixes it
You can, usually
Roughly how long
half an hour per page
Care needed
Low risk to change
How to fix it
For each page, find two or three pages on your site that Google already values — the ones with the most search traffic of their own — and link to it from within their body text, using the words somebody would search for as the link text. Body links count for more than navigation links, and links from pages that already rank count for more than links from pages that do not. Adding it to the main navigation works too and is worth doing only if the page genuinely belongs there; a navigation stuffed with everything helps nothing.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 18 points off your search score. It is a fact about your site rather than a measurement, so it reads the same on every scan until you change something.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 121. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Descriptions are a sensible lengthLong descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Each search you rank for is served by one page rather than severalWhen several of your pages answer the same search, the things that decide ranking — links, engagement, relevance — are divided between them instead of accumulating on one. Google picks whichever it currently thinks is best and can change its mind week to week, and the result is that a search you should own is served by two or three pages, none of which does well. It is invisible from inside the site: every page looks fine on its own.