Technical Definition
Orphan pages are URLs with no internal links pointing to them. They're difficult for crawlers to discover (unless in sitemaps or linked externally) and may receive little link equity. Common causes: deleted navigation links, old campaign pages, pagination edge cases. Find via crawl comparison: pages in sitemap but not found during crawl. Fix by adding internal links or removing if unnecessary.
Simple Explanation (ELI13)
Orphan pages are pages on your site that nothing links to. They're isolated, like an orphan without a family. Google has trouble finding them because there's no path to follow. Check your sitemap against what your crawler finds. Either link to these pages from somewhere or delete them if they're not needed.
Related Terms
Internal Linking, Site Architecture, Crawling, Log File Analysis
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