Orphaned Pages
Web sites can grow to be complex, and
may undergo continuous modification and evolution.
As pages become obsolete, you update the links on other pages so that
obsolete pages are no longer pointed to. Since nothing on your site points
to these old pages, there shouldn't be a problem, right?
Would that it were so. Unfortunately, there may still be links to these
orphaned pages -- from other people's web sites. Three possibilities:
search engines that have indexed the page, visitors who have added the
page to their list of personal bookmarks, and visitors who point to your
page with a list of favorite links on their site.
This can be a problem if the pages contain information that is no longer
current, correct, or accurate.
One way to see if this is happening is to check your stats to see if
orphaned pages are still getting hits. If you have really good stats,
they can tell you who has links that point to you.
One thing you can do when a page is orphaned is to delete it from the
server or rename it. Either way, it will return a "not found" error when
someone tries to access it. After this is done, you can re-submit the
original URL to the search engines. This will force them to look for
the page and, not finding it, remove it from their database. Even if
you don't explicitly submit these pages to the search engines, they will
eventually look for them and find them missing.
Another thing you can do is to replace these orphaned pages with a generalized
page that has a link that points to the main page of your site. |
Advice
Don't be a web critic.
Withhold your criticism until someone actually asks for it.
Be positive. Make suggestions, give advice, offer help. Point out problems
such as missing images and bad links.
Be private. Send your comments (especially the negative ones) by email
rather than posting them in public.
Put your ego where others can't see it.
And don't forget to send praise to the sites you really like. It gives
people the energy to keep going. |
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