Orphan website pages and dead end pages are the opposites of one another.
One pulls visitors in with no chance to escape, whilst the other has no links from it’s own website, but does provide links to one or more pages.
Dead End Pages
Dead end pages have incoming links from the website, or external links.
Once on the dead end website page there are no links to elsewhere on the website. There is no escape!
Any value gained by attracting visitors to the page will have been lost regards encouraging further interest beyond the information provided.
With no links to any other page of the website a dead end web page has no value within the website. All those visitors and search engine crawlers following a link to the page become stuck. The traffic is in effect wasted.
If you have created a custom web page for an event or product promotion there is likely a call-to-action. From this page you’ll likely wish visitors to make contact or engage with other parts, may be specific, of the website. Ensure this exists and the likelihood that you will have created a dead end page will be minimised. Or ensure all pages always include the standard menu, sidebars and footer links.
Orphan Pages
Orphan pages have links from other websites but no links from their own website.
Either by accident or by design – for example a landing page, the page exists in isolation.
A landing page may well be designed as an incoming page to the website with onward links into the targetted parts of the site. As a landing page it may well be considered unnecessary to provide links to it. Thus making it an orphan page.
If you are on the website there is no means via the menu or links on other pages to gain access to this page.
If its a page which has failed to get the required link to it, perhaps as a sub-page with the link missing from the main page, then the menu and other structural links, are likely to be incorporated. There may even be a link back to its main page (if it’s a sub-page).
Because the orphan page doesn’t have links to it from other pages of the website search engine crawlers are less likely to be indexed. although it may be linked from external websites. and indeed also listed in the sitemap.xml file.
Summary
Orphan pages and dead end pages are opposites of one another.
One pulls visitors into a cull-de-sac with no exit (dead end page), whilst the other provides one or means of accessing the wider website, but the direction flow is one way with no links from elsewhere on the website..
