Find pages on your site that no other post links to. Orphans get barely any Google attention and miss out on link equity — one of the highest-impact SEO things you can fix. In Linkilo 3.0 the report ranks which orphans to rescue first and hands you straight to the pages that could link to them.
What this is
An orphan page = a page that no other internal page links to. Search engines barely visit them, link equity doesn't flow to them, and readers can't find them through your site's structure.
Orphans are usually:
- Posts you wrote long ago and forgot about
- Stand-alone pages (Contact, About, Privacy) — often legitimate
- Posts whose category was deleted, leaving them floating
- Imported content that was never integrated
Open the report
Go to Linkilo → Diagnose → Orphan Pages.
What you'll see
- Page title: Orphan Page Finder, with Refresh analysis (re-runs the orphan analysis from your link table and GSC data; it does NOT crawl your site), Export CSV and a Settings shortcut.
- Help tooltip: "Pages with zero inbound internal links. Linkilo ranks which ones to rescue, ignore, or review first. Connect Google Search Console for richer signals."
- Stat cards: Total Orphans, Ready to Rescue, Medium Priority, Authority to Reclaim (orphans that already have external backlinks), Intentional and New This Week.
- A Start here panel: Linkilo can rank orphans automatically, but choosing a source sentence is still an editorial decision. Start with Ready to Rescue, open source suggestions for the page, then mark privacy, checkout or deliberately isolated pages as Intentional.
- A Top 3 Orphan Moves box — the pages with the strongest signals (impressions, position, CTR, backlinks), each with a Next move line and a Find source pages button.
- Filter chips (Ready to rescue, Reclaim authority, Not indexed, Uncrawled, Pillar candidates, Intentional) and a search box.
- A table with the columns Page, Search Visibility, Authority & Reach, Indexing Health (including the last Googlebot visit when the Crawler Analyzer is on), Next Move and Actions.
Fix an orphan
Three ways:
1. Find source pages
Click Find source pages on a Top 3 card, or tick rows and click Find source pages in the bulk bar. This opens Linkilo's inbound-suggestion page with the orphan as the TARGET: a list of your own pages that could link to it, each with a suggested sentence and anchor. The list combines Linkilo's keyword matching with AI source-page matching from analysis you've already run — it doesn't spend provider credits. Approve the links you like.
(In earlier versions this button opened Add New Auto Links. It no longer does — auto-link rules are for persistent keyword automation, not one-off rescues.)
2. Manually link to it
Copy the orphan's URL. Edit another post that's topically related. Add a link to the orphan there.
3. Mark it intentional or hide it
For legitimate orphans (Privacy Policy, Contact, thank-you pages) click Intentional on the row, or tick several and click Mark Intentional. They move to the Intentional count and stop being scored. To keep them out of every report, add their URLs to Linkilo → Settings → Content & Ignored Words → Hide from orphan report — see How to exclude a URL from the Orphan Page report.
Other row actions
- Submit — shown when the next move is Submit to GSC first: the page isn't indexed yet, so getting Google to look at it comes before link building. Also available as Submit to GSC in the bulk bar.
- Review — shown when the next move is Delete or 410: a thin or stale page with no traffic that may not be worth rescuing.
- Edit / View — open the page.
- Export Selected — CSV of the ticked rows.
How priorities are scored
- High (Ready to Rescue) — has search impressions AND a good position or external backlinks. Easy wins.
- Medium — indexable, on-topic, decent content, limited visibility so far.
- Low — thin or stale with no traffic. Candidates for deletion or a refresh.
- Intentional — auto-flagged (noindex, canonical elsewhere) or marked by you.
Search Console adds impressions, position, CTR and canonical-mismatch detection. Without it those columns read "—" and scoring uses the other signals.
Common Questions
Why are my Privacy Policy and Contact pages in the orphan list?
Because nothing in your content links to them. That's usually fine — they're navigation links in your footer or menu, not content links.
Mark them Intentional, or add their URLs under Settings → Content & Ignored Words → Hide from orphan report.
How often is the orphan list updated?
Every time you visit the report page, from Linkilo's current link table. Click Refresh analysis to recompute the scores. If the table itself looks stale (for example right after upgrading from 2.9), run Perform Scan on the Summary page once.
My orphan list is huge — where do I start?
Work the Ready to rescue filter top-down. Linkilo's already telling you which orphans are highest-value.
For sites with 100+ orphans, set aside a few sessions:
- Session 1: Top 3 Orphan Moves and the rest of Ready to Rescue (rescue or mark intentional)
- Session 2: Reclaim authority — orphans with backlinks deserve internal support too
- Session 3: Medium priority, using Find source pages in bulk
Will Linkilo automatically fix orphans?
Not without you. Orphans also appear in Linkilo → Fix → Fix Link Health under Rescue orphaned content, but new content links are always "needs review" — you approve each one. Linkilo picks the candidates; the sentence is your call.
What's a "high-impact" orphan?
A page that already gets search impressions or has external backlinks but has nothing pointing to it internally. Give it a few contextual internal links from related posts and it has everything it was missing.
Can I export the orphan list to CSV?
Yes — Export CSV at the top exports the whole list; Export Selected exports the ticked rows.
Last reviewed for Linkilo 3.0.0 (October 2026).