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Is it possible/wise to NOT link any pages from index? (SEO, Search Engines)

I have a humble question 🙂

i plan to set up a rather unusual webproject with about a thousand pages, where there won’t be a classical navigation (only for about page and contact) and all pages won’t link to one and another.

its index > opens random page > opens random page > opens random page.. all via a small php action..

i know from basic SEO understanding, that you should then generate a static directory like a sitemap, that links to all pages, so that google finds all pages from the index downwards..

BUT i don’t want users, to see it.. it kills the fun on using the site, when you can see all content pages at a glance.. this project is all about exploring random things..

is this somehow possible? to have a dead end index page and a thousand dead end html pages that are only connected via a php script?

thanks in advance..

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    There’s not technical problem in having one page generate links to other pages upon generation, but I feel like there are some issues in the general idea here..

    Firstly, why do you want your “sub pages” to be indexed by Google? Per definition, this defeats the “random page” idea. A Google search over your site (for instance using the “site:” feature of Google) will list all your pages, since they’re indexed. This means it is easy to navigate between the “secret pages” (even if only cached versions of them).

    Secondly, unless you prevent Google from indexing your pages (via a robots.txt file, for instance) – the Google bot will generate at least a subset of your pages by visiting the index page and then generating a link to a sub page.

    To conclude, you can create an index which sends users over to random pages, but it probably makes little sense to have the web site indexed by a search engine if you’d like the sub pages to be “secret”.

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  2. 0

    From a technical standpoint, there are no issues in what you are planning. From a SEO indexing and Google standpoint, make sure none of the pages you want discovered and indexed by Google are orphans, i.e. without a link to these pages.

    These “hidden” pages need not be linked from the home page or a sitemap (one-to-many), instead you can try the breadcrumb method where a page leads only to the next page, which leads to the next page (one-to-one) and so on.
    e.g. –

    Parent 1 > child 1 > child 1a > child 1b …….

    Parent 2 > child 2 > child 2a > child 2b …….

    Parent 3 > child 3 > child 3a > child 3b …….

    Here, the home page and your sitemap will have links ONLY to Parent 1, Parent 2 & Parent 3

    UPDATE—
    Also, not having a HTML sitemap for your users will not affect Google indexing as long as your XML sitemap is in place for Google to access.
    Hope this helps.

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