You may have heard of zombie pages before, but what are they exactly?
Zombie pages are essentially pages that are no longer relevant to your website, but for some reason, they’re still hanging around.
And like any good zombie, they can be pretty harmful to your SEO.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at what zombie pages are and how you can get rid of them for good.
Let the zombie hunt begin!
What are Zombie pages?
Every website has a few pages that draw very little or no traffic.
For example, these pages include pages that are not mobile-friendly, with low-quality content, not optimized enough, or indexed 404 pages.
Zombie pages can both be indexed and non-indexed. Indexed zombie pages try to feast on live content and non-indexed ones lay dormant in search engine swamps.
While this may not seem like a big deal, these “zombie pages” can actually have a significant impact on your site’s search rankings.
That’s because Google’s algorithm relies heavily on engagement metrics like click-through rate and time on site.
If a page generates little to no traffic, it’s likely that users are quickly bouncing off the page, which signals to Google that the page is not relevant or useful.
As a result, the page will likely be buried in the search results. To avoid this, it’s essential to regularly monitor your website’s analytics and identify any problematic pages.
Once you’ve identified zombie pages, you can take steps to improve their engagement by adding fresh content, optimizing your titles and meta tags, and improving your internal linking.
By taking these measures, you can help ensure that your website’s search ranking stays healthy.
Need help in fixing zombie pages?
How Zombie Pages Affect SEO?
Zombie pages are a real problem for websites. They can gnaw away at your traffic and your rankings on search engines.
Having too many zombie pages can also be a big reason why you aren’t ranking on search engines.
Since they don’t contain the information people are looking for while using Google or other search engines, they also get ignored by search engines.
Unindexed zombie pages can pose serious problems for both the website owner and Google. These pages are usually slow to load or have other technical issues that make them difficult to use.
This can cause visitors to abandon the page, which, in turn, can lead to a decrease in traffic for the website owner.
On the other hand, zombie pages can be indexed by search engines, and they may generate bot traffic from search engine crawlers. However, they fail to attract views from real visitors.
Although these pages are no longer active, they can still show up in search results, which can be frustrating for users who are looking for fresh, relevant information.
To conclude, zombie pages hurt your performance metrics and therefore your SEO.
So, if you have these pages on your website, it’s essential to get rid of them before they cause more damage. Otherwise, you could end up losing a lot of traffic and potential customers.
Types of Zombie Pages
While zombie pages can be a nuisance for users who are looking for specific information, they can also provide opportunities for businesses to generate leads and drive traffic to their websites.
So, it’s a good idea to check out which type of zombie page you’re dealing with and how to deal with them.
These are the 5 types of zombie pages:
- Not mobile-friendly pages
- Pages with low-quality content
- Pages not (or not enough) optimized for SEO
- The orphan and annex pages
- Indexed 404 pages
1. Pages that are not mobile friendly
These pages are not optimized to be used on a phone or take too much to load, which is a big drawback.
Google won’t grant them a high ranking because it considers them to offer a degraded user experience.
These zombie pages can be present in Google’s results but their ranking is penalized.
To avoid these penalties, it is essential to make sure that your pages are optimized for mobile devices and that they load quickly. If you don’t, you risk losing traffic and sales.
2. Pages with low-quality content
A low-quality content page could be considered a page on your website that has less than 300 words usually and doesn’t serve any purpose. Or that could be also pages that haven’t been updated in years.
Whatever the reason may be, these zombie pages aren’t good for a healthy website.
Since different factors could mean other consequences for your website, it’s safe to say that you either need to fix them or delete them.
For example, if the content on the page is thin and isn’t well structured, then it signals to Google that your website isn’t an authority on the subject.
This could result in lower rankings for your website as a whole. On the other hand, if the content on the page is plagiarized, then it not only damages your reputation but also puts you at risk of a Google penalty.
In either case, it’s best to take action to improve the quality of your website.
3. Pages not (or not enough) optimized for Search Engines
It is important to optimize your website for search engines. You may have quality content, but is it user-friendly?
Pages that are not optimized for SEO can still be useful for internet users, but if users cannot find the information they are looking for they will immediately leave the site.
However, that is why these pages will not rank as highly in search engine results.
Search engines use criteria such as the presence of alt, h1, h2, or h3 tags, a good title, and relevant keywords to determine where to rank a page.
If your pages do not meet these criteria, they will be downgraded in the search results.
As a result, it is important to strike a balance between optimization and quality when creating content for your website.
4. Orphan and annex pages
Orphan pages are pages that can’t be found by crawlers because there are no internal links to them.
This can happen for a variety of reasons, but the result is the same: these pages are effectively invisible to users and have no chance of ranking in search results.
On the other hand, annex pages are the opposite of orphan pages. These zombie pages contain important legal information, contact information, and other vital data.
In addition, they help show that a website is trustworthy and legitimate, which can lead to better search engine rankings.
Because of their importance, it’s vital to make sure that your annex pages are easily accessible and visible to users. Otherwise, you could miss out on vital traffic and customers.
5. Indexed 404 pages
Indexed 404 pages or pages that have been indexed by a search engine but contain unnecessary or outdated content, don’t provide information that users looking for.
Although these pages are no longer active, they can still show up in search results, which can be frustrating for users who are looking for fresh, relevant information.
In addition, these pages can also take up valuable space in the search engine’s index, which could be better used to index new, relevant pages.
Depending on the situation, both deleting the page URL and adding a 301 redirect can be effective solutions.
A 301 redirect will work best if you are moving content from one page to another while deleting an URL can be helpful if outdated or irrelevant pages are accumulating on your website.
Both of these techniques, when used properly, will create a better user experience where visitors don’t have to struggle with broken links and can seamlessly access the resources they need.
How to identify zombie pages on your website? (Step by step)
The first step when it comes to getting rid of zombie pages is to identify them on your website.
The best way to do that is by using Google Search Console. There you’ll find all the tools you need to identify poorly performing pages on your website.
So, there are three ways to identify zombie pages:
1. GSC Performance report
The Performance report on Google Search Console is a great tool for website owners. It allows you to compare the performance of different pages on your site.
If any of your pages are not performing well and has little or no traffic, you will be able to identify them.
To find zombie pages, you should first log in to your Google Search Console and click on the Performance tab. Then go to “+” and choose “Page”.
And finally, click on the Compare option and enter the URL of the pages you think are underperforming versus a good performing page.
With the data you get, you will be able to identify a site that is not performing well and has little or no traffic.
2. GSC Indexing
The second method is to go to your Google Search Console and click on the “Indexing” report.
Open Google Search Console and find the Indexing tab and click Pages. You will see the grey section named Not Indexed and the green one named Indexed.
When you click, you will see a diagram with not indexed and indexed pages.
If you scroll down a bit, you will be able to find several reasons why your pages are not indexed.
Zombie pages are usually hidden behind ‘Duplicate without user-selected canonical‘, ‘Crawled – currently not indexed’, and ‘Discovered – currently not indexed’ sections.
First, duplicate without user-selected canonical means that Google didn’t index a given page because it’s a duplicate of a different page and is not canonicalized to a preferred version.
Second, crawled – currently not indexed section means that Google has crawled the page but chose to not index it, and the URL won’t appear in search results for the time being.
And finally, discovered – currently not indexed status means that Google is aware of these URLs but has not made them accessible – yet.
In addition, if there are Not Found (404) pages, you should check manually if they are indexed or not because we’ve already mentioned that indexed 404 pages are the type of Zombie pages.
3. Manual
Searching for zombie pages manually is an effective way to identify and remove them.
To begin, enter “site: site name” (e.g. site:w3-lab.com) into the search bar and run a query.
This will pull up all of the pages that your website contains.
If you notice a page that shouldn’t be there, it means that it is an indexed zombie page.
Additionally, if you come across a page that is outdated or isn’t optimized for user experience and still exists, it is also very likely that it is a zombie page.
Such findings may indicate that there is a zombie page lurking on your site which needs to be removed as soon as possible!
And you found the zombie pages. Now it’s important to know that you need to fix them or just get rid of them.
How to deal with zombie pages?
If you’re like most people, you probably think of zombies as mindless, shuffling creatures that feast on human flesh.
However, in the world of SEO, a zombie page is simply a web page that is no longer relevant or useful.
While there’s no need to panic, dealing with zombie pages can be a bit tricky. In most cases, your best option is to either optimize the page for new keywords or delete it altogether.
However, if you’re feeling brave, you can always try to revive the page with fresh content and a new design.
How to improve zombie pages?
Zombie pages are outdated, forgotten pages that are just taking up space. But just because they’re zombies doesn’t mean they can’t be useful.
With a little bit of effort, you can breathe new life into these pages and create content that people will actually want to read.
Things you need to do to improve zombie pages are:
- Optimize content (add more useful information and organize keywords)
- Enhance UX and loading time
- Add internal and external links
- Improve design
- Promote text on social media
Should you delete zombie pages?
In some cases, yes! Deleting zombie pages can actually have a positive impact on your site’s overall SEO.
However, before you go deleting pages willy-nilly, there are a few things you should keep in mind.
First, consider whether or not the page could be fixed – sometimes a simple title change or adding fresh content can breathe new life into a stale page.
Second, think about whether the page serves any purpose, even if it’s a small one – even if it’s not attracting much traffic, it might still be helping to convert visitors.
Finally, don’t delete any important pages – Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, and About pages are all essential for keeping your website running smoothly.
So go ahead and tidy up your website – just be sure to do it carefully!
To conclude
Now that you know all about zombie pages, what are you going to do? Are you going to identify them and fix or delete them from your website?
Let us know in the comments below!
We hope this post has helped arm you with the knowledge you need to take on these pesky undead pages and improve your website’s SEO in the process.
And don’t forget, if you need help identifying or fixing your zombie pages – or anything else SEO related – we’re always here to help.
Thanks for reading!
