In this new article, we are going to show you how to find orphaned content in WordPress quickly and easily for free so and how you can fix it.
Keep reading because we really have taken all the time and effort out of finding and fixing orphaned content.
Let’s get started
An Introduction to orphaned content
So before we show you how to fix your orphaned content problem let’s put some background information down as to what orphaned content is and why you need to fix it.
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What is orphaned content in WordPress?
Orphaned content is content that doesn’t get any links from other posts or pages on the same website. WordPress posts and pages need internal links to help them get discovered by search engines.
Orphaned content with no internal links pointing to it is difficult to find for both Google and your visitors.
But wait all my posts are in my sitemap!
Content that is linked to from the sitemap on the homepage, or from categories and tag pages, is still considered orphaned content if no contextual links (text links within post or pages) are pointing to the content.
Search engines, like Google, Bing find new pages in one of 2 ways
- The crawler follows a link from another page.
- The crawler finds the URL listed in your XML sitemap.
You want your pages found so relevant pages need to be linked together, as you now know URLs discovered via the site map are still considered orphaned pages if another internal page does not link to it.
This is why you need a good internal linking strategy.
If you don’t have one then you will have a lot of orphaned posts and pages on your site.
Why are orphan pages bad for SEO?
Orphan pages cause two main problems for SEO:
- Low Rankings
- Low Traffic:
Orphan pages just don’t rank well and because they don’t rank well they there is no organic search traffic regardless of how good the content is.
How to find orphaned content quickly and fix it
Finding orphaned content tends to be a time-consuming, dull process.
You have to go through and compare the content in your sitemap with the content that you discover by using a crawler.
The process looks something like this:
-
- Collate a full list of your current posts and pages.
- Crawl your WordPress site for posts and pages with zero inbound internal links.
- Analyze and cross-reference the results.
- Link any orphaned post or page that you find.
You can use SEMRUSH and other tools to help you discover indexed content but all these tools are really expensive and their free versions offer very limited use.
The easy way to find orphaned content is to just use Yoast SEO’s orphaned content filter but you need to have the premium version of Yoast which is pricey and not really a useful fix if you don’t use Yoast for your SEO optimization.
How to find orphan content with Link Whisper
The best option we have found to find and fix orphan content quickly is Link Whisper.
Link Whisper is a premium plugin that scans your content and then tells you which posts have no inbound internal links.
There is a free version of Link Whisper that will find orphaned content and then it is a manual process to link to this content so we would suggest grabbing the premium version which makes the process much simpler.
The premium version is smart and offers link suggestions when writing content within the WordPress editor.
As well as finding orphaned content you can also just as quickly click “add” new internal links to articles with very few internal links pointing to them.
Link Whisper has an “Auto-Linking Feature” that allows you to input the keyword you want to build links from and then specify the URL you want those links to go to.
Link Whisper automatically builds links from the targeted keywords to the posts and pages of your choice giving you that comprehensive internal linking strategy you have been missing.
How to use Link Whisper to find orphaned content
- Download Link Whisper and install it on your WordPress.
- Navigate to Link Whisper via the side menu
- Click on Reports and just click Search
- Check the content listed for inbound internal links.
If any given post has 0 in the inbound internal links section then that content is orphaned content.
Go to an orphaned post you have just found and grab the URL.
Next, go to a related post and edit that post.
Link from the relevant post back to the orphaned post and you are done.
Repeat for every orphaned post you discover.
Premium members of Link Whisper can take suggestions given and link the posts automatically making the process much, much faster.
You can then run a new Search if you want and you will see those previously orphaned posts now have inbound internal links.
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Link Whisper
How to avoid having orphaned content
When you publish a new post grab the post URL and go to a relevant post straight away and link it to your newly published content.
It’s very easy to publish a post and forget about it and before you know it you have orphaned that post.
Linking straight away ensures that the content is not orphaned and the internal link helps Google to index the content much more quickly because it can be found.
Alternatively, you can take suggestions from Link Whisper and link your content on auto-pilot.
How to find orphaned content in WordPress – Takeaways
If you don’t have an internal linking strategy in play then you are going to find a lot of orphaned pages when you start looking.
Just work through them slowly. Link them with relevant content on your site and your start to see better results in the SERPs.
The Free Version of Link Whisper works really well but the process is much more manual when it comes to fixing the issues, on the other hand, the Premium version finds and fixes orphaned content in just a few clicks.
Now it is over to you!
How do you find orphaned content quickly and fix it?
If you have any questions then just leave them as comments in the comments section. I am always happy to engage with good comments.
If you have found this content useful then feel free to link to it.
Regards Dexter
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