Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is it bad for SEO to have a page that is not linked to anywhere on your site?
-
Hi,
We had a content manager request to delete a page from our site. Looking at the traffic to the page, I noticed there were a lot of inbound links from credible sites. Rather than deleting the page, we simply removed it from the navigation, so that a user could still access the page by clicking on a link to it from an external site.
Questions:
-
Is it bad for SEO to have a page that is not directly accessible from your site?
-
If no: do we keep this page in our Sitemap, or remove it?
-
If yes: what is a better strategy to ensure the inbound links aren't considered "broken links" and also to minimize any negative impact to our SEO? Should we delete the page and 301 redirect users to the parent page for the page we had previously hidden?
-
-
1. It's not bad to have pages that are not directly linked to your site. In fact a good lot of PPC landing pages aren't typically linked from anywhere within the navigation or website itself.
-
Keep the page in the sitemap if you want it to remain indexed but if you only care about the direct traffic, it doesn't need to stay.
-
You can definitely 301 the old page to the new one but you said you previously hid the parent? I would only 301 redirect if you're 100% sure this is the way it will stay forevermore.
So it really depends on why you're removing and what you essentially want to happen.
-
-
When you have a page that's still on the site (even though it's removed from navigation), the page is still on the site and indexed--so users will still get to it. It's still probably going to rank for at least something in the search results.
What you need to do is figure out if the page still contains valid content and is useful for visitors. There's obviously a reason that the page was requested to be removed by the content manager, though.
If the page needs to be removed from navigation, and it won't have any internal links, then most likely you probably need to remove the page, as well. What I would do is set up a 301 Permanent Redirect from that URL to another on-topic page on the site. As long as you use a 301 redirect and redirect it to another internal page on the same domain, you won't lose and "SEO value".
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
-
So many links from single site?
this guy is ranking on all high volume keywords and has low quality content, he has 1600 ref domains check the attachment how did he get so many links from single site is he gonna be penalized YD2BvQ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Are In-Page Tabs still detrimental to SEO?
Hi Mozers, Are in-page tabs still detrimental for SEO? In-page tabs: allow you to alternate between views within the same context, not to navigate to different areas. As in one long HTML page that just looks like it's divided into different pages via tabs that you can click between. Each tab has it's own URL, which I guess is for analytics tracking purposes? https://XXX https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=1 https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=2 https://XXX?qt-staff_profile_tabs=3
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
SEO value of affiliate external links
There are websites that have linked to my site. Whenever I hover over link I see my direct website URL and I am not seeing "no follow" when viewing source code so I assume these are passing link juice. However when I click on link it directs briefly to shareasale (affiliate account) in web address bar, but then quickly directs back to my website URL as directed. I was curious if these good links I am acquiring truly pass juice or since they briefly pass through an affiliate site if that cancels or dilutes the link juice. Also I am noticing when inspecting element that after the HREF it says class="external-link" I am just not sure if my link building efforts are being ruined by having an affiliate account running.I did not tell them I had one. I guess they are searching to see that I have one and trying to make a few extra commission dollars.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchachula0 -
Sitewide Footer Links & Sister Sites
Hi We have a number of sister sites across Europe - the sites are under a different domain name, but have a very similar layout & product offering. When looking at duplicate content, they are flagged as being a moderate risk with similar content - we don't duplicate product content, however it's similar. We also link to them in the footer in a drop down - not anchor text links - however this is still seen by Google. I don't think I'll be able to remove links to our sister companies, but should I implement the Href lang if the sites are slightly different? Or find another way to link to them? Here's an example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key & https://www.manutan.fr/fr/maf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxweb0 -
When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?
What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Should the sitemap include just menu pages or all pages site wide?
I have a Drupal site that utilizes Solr, with 10 menu pages and about 4,000 pages of content. Redoing a few things and we'll need to revamp the sitemap. Typically I'd jam all pages into a single sitemap and that's it, but post-Panda, should I do anything different?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EricPacifico0