Dead-End page

A dead-end page is a web page that contains no internal links leading to other pages on the site.

This can create a literal dead-end for users and search engine crawlers, potentially limiting the user experience and the effectiveness of crawling and indexing the site.

Dead-end pages can increase bounce rates, as users may not find a clear path to continue their navigation on the site, resulting in an end point that can interrupt their journey and potentially cause them to leave the site.

From the search engine’s perspective, a dead-end page can limit the crawler’s ability to explore and index other pages on the site, as crawlers follow links to discover new content; without internal links, the crawling process can be hindered, negatively affecting site indexing and link equity distribution.

It is important to avoid the creation of dead-end pages and ensure that each page provides options for users to continue their visit, through relevant and useful internal links, while simultaneously offering clear and logical paths for search engines to continue navigation and discovery of related content within the site.

In some ways, a dead-end page is the opposite of an orphan page: in fact, the latter is a page that is not linked from any other page on the site. In other words, there are no internal links pointing to this page, which makes it difficult for both users and search engine crawlers to find.