What Is A Dead-End Page?

Date First Published: 14th September 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 4/10

Learn more about what a dead-end page is in this article.

A dead-end page is a webpage with no internal or external links, creating a 'dead-end', and forcing users to click the back button in their browser. Dead-end pages should be avoided since they give a bad user experience and provide users with nowhere to navigate except the back button. They also increase the chances of visitors leaving and web crawlers cannot discover any links on that page, meaning that no link equity can be passed and they have nowhere to go. For example, as shown below, the default error pages in web servers that run Apache software are dead-end pages since they only consist of text that briefly describes the error with no links to other pages, which is why webmasters should create their own error pages that are consistent with the design of their website.

Difference Between Dead-End Pages and Orphan Pages

Dead-end pages are not the same as orphan pages. Orphan pages are webpages that have no internal or external links pointing to them, meaning that they can only be found by knowing and typing the URL. The orphan page may consist of internal and external links to other pages, but there are no pages that link to the orphan pages. However, dead-end pages might have links to them. But, they consist of no internal or external links, forcing users to click the back button on their browser. A page can be both a dead-end and an orphan page if it has no links pointing to it and no internal or external links pointing to other pages.