Solving SEO orphan pages for classified websites: why dynamic internal linking is essential

Bart Verschueren

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Classified websites are similar to e-commerce platforms, but they have one key difference: listings don’t stay online for long. Every day, users upload thousands of items—everything from smartphones to secondhand furniture. Some listings vanish within hours, others within a few days. This high turnover poses a unique challenge for SEO, particularly when it comes to internal linking.

And that’s where the issue of orphan pages becomes critical.

What are orphan pages (and why do they hurt your SEO)?

An orphan page is a page on your website that has no internal links pointing to it. From a search engine’s perspective, it’s practically invisible. Google and other crawlers rely heavily on internal linking to discover, understand, and index content. So if your page isn’t linked from somewhere else on the site, it’s unlikely to be crawled or ranked—no matter how relevant or well-optimized the page is.

Now think about a classifieds website. If products come and go rapidly, how can you ensure that each new page is quickly discovered by search engines? Static internal linking—the traditional method of manually inserting links in menus, footers, and body content—just isn’t built to handle that level of volatility.

This is where dynamic internal linking becomes not just useful, but essential.

The SEO challenge of classified websites

Let’s break it down:

• High Volume: Thousands—or even millions—of different items exist at any given time.
• Short Lifespan: Listings are temporary, often live for just a few hours or days.
• Unpredictability: User-generated content comes with little structure.

This chaotic environment makes it incredibly difficult for static internal linking to keep up. Without constant updates, it’s easy for valuable product or listing pages to be left without links. And when that happens, you lose SEO visibility—fast.

The solution: Dynamic internal linking

Dynamic internal linking uses smart algorithms to automatically generate and refresh links based on specific rules and behaviors. Instead of relying on a fixed set of links that can easily become outdated, dynamic linking adapts in real-time to changes in your product catalog or listing inventory.

Here’s how it works:

• Dynamically updated link blocks are embedded in key areas like category pages or listings.
• These blocks are populated with contextually relevant links to new or underlinked pages.
• Algorithms determine which pages need visibility—such as those with no incoming links or high potential value.
• The system refreshes regularly, keeping everything up-to-date for users and crawlers alike.

This means that even if a product is live for just a short time, it still has a chance to be discovered and indexed.

Real-world impact: Verbolia’s Vlink in action

At Verbolia, we’ve developed a dynamic internal linking tool called Vlink, designed specifically for large-scale e-commerce and classified platforms.

One of our clients, Leboncoin, one of the biggest classifieds websites in France (recognized by FEVAD), uses Vlink to solve the orphan page issue across its fast-moving inventory. Thanks to Vlink, they’re able to continuously update internal linking across the site, ensuring maximum discoverability.

Another great example is Pet Media Group (PMG), a growing pet marketplace operating across six countries. PMG had a vast number of long-tail keyword pages generated from internal searches. These pages weren’t part of the site’s main category structure and thus had no internal links pointing to them. That meant lost visibility and lost SEO potential.

With Vlink, we dynamically inserted smart link blocks into listing pages, using rules to ensure only relevant matches were displayed. These blocks are invisible if no matching links are found—maintaining a clean user experience while maximizing crawlability.

The result? A 15% increase in organic traffic in just 6 months.

Best practices for dynamic internal linking

If you’re considering a dynamic linking strategy, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Avoid overlinking: Too many links dilute PageRank. Focus on quality over quantity.
• Highlight uncrawled pages: Prioritize pages that haven’t been indexed yet.
• Use semantic matching: Link pages that are contextually relevant to one another.
• Update frequently: Ensure your linking blocks refresh on a regular basis to reflect current inventory.
• Preserve UX: Smart linking should be helpful, not distracting. Keep the design user-friendly.

Final thoughts

Dynamic internal linking is no longer a nice-to-have for classifieds sites: it’s a necessity. With solutions like Vlink, you can automate the process, prevent orphan pages, and improve your site’s overall SEO health without compromising user experience.

If you’re running a marketplace or classified platform and are struggling with visibility, it might be time to rethink your internal linking strategy.

Want to learn more about Vlink or how dynamic linking could help your business grow? Get in touch with our team!