It is a given that your small business website needs a good solid SEO behind it so people can find it when they look on the Internet. But SEO isn’t something you just set and leave. There are several levels to it that you need to think of. One of these things is orphaned pages and post. In this post, we will talk about orphaned content and how to fix them.
What do you mean orphan?
Orphaned content, be it pages or posts, are the ones without links pointing in and out of it, therefore making it hard for search engines to find it. We all know linking posts and pages to each other helps search engines crawl through your site. You want Google to find your posts. Like we said before, SEO is not something you just forget when maintaining your site. It has to be constant and it has to happen each time you add a post on your site — no matter what post it is. Regularly check that you’re addressing the orphaned content. You don’t want to write all those amazing content only to leave it undiscovered.
How do I fix orphaned content?
Here at 3C Digital we use Yoast Premium, which makes it easy for us to know what we need to fix as we go along. Of course, if you don’t want to pay for the premium versions, you can use Yoast for free. The features will be limited but it still works. Go to your SEO plugin and see what pages and posts have been flagged as ‘orphaned’. You will need to individually check the post/page and add the relevant inbound and outbound links. Add links that are related to that post/page. Make sure it’s not some random post that has nothing to do with the text you are linking it to. You want your post to be helpful to your readers, not annoy them.
Do I need to give all orphans good parents?
It may not always be possible to fix all your orphaned pages (or necessary for that matter). For instance, website pages like Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions or Terms of Use may not have outbound links and may be left orphaned. Also, some content like events that are only happening this year and may not be relevant after that, won’t need to be fixed. It really depends on each post. You’ll have to use your judgment on some of these contents. Or ask your agency to do the thinking for you.
One last thing, make sure you check your website’s backend regularly to see if you have posts or pages that are orphaned so you can fix it quickly. Otherwise you’ll end up with a backlog that’s going to be too overwhelming to fix in the future.
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Kristyn is the Creative Director of 3C Digital. She is a freelance writer/journalist with over 13 years of experience in the industry both locally and internationally. She has previous experience as TV and radio broadcast journalist as well as print and online writer. Her novels, The Girl Between Two Worlds and The Girl Between Light and Dark, are out now.
