# Site structure and sitemap checks > Triggers and fixes for orphan and weakly linked pages, dead ends, and sitemap entries that redirect, error, or are non-canonical or noindex. Source: https://seofix.ai/help/checks-structure · Category: Issue reference · Updated: 2026-10-08 These checks look at the whole site at once: which pages link to which, and what your XML sitemap lists. None of them is recheckable, because fixing one page changes counts on others. Run a full audit after the fix. ## How SEOFix reads your sitemap and links - **Sitemap**: SEOFix reads `/sitemap.xml` at the root of the audited site, following a sitemap index to its child sitemaps (gzip supported), up to 50 sitemap files and 100 MiB of XML. Sitemaps declared only in `robots.txt` under another path are not read. If any child sitemap fails or a limit is hit, the sitemap counts as incomplete, and "not in the sitemap" checks are skipped. - **Links**: internal `` links from every crawled page. Pages disallowed by `robots.txt` are not crawled, so links on them are not counted. - **Incomplete crawls**: when the audit did not see the whole site (it hit the page cap, pages were firewall-blocked, sections were skipped, or a preview hit its time limit), incoming-link counts can't be trusted. `ORPHAN_PAGE`, `ONE_INCOMING_LINK` and `REDIRECT_NO_INCOMING_LINKS` are then not reported. **Indexable** below means: no `noindex` in the robots meta tag, and no canonical pointing to another URL. ## Internal link graph ### ORPHAN_PAGE — Orphan page (no internal links) - **Severity**: notice. **Recheckable**: no (needs a full audit). - **Trigger**: the URL is listed in the sitemap, answered `200`, is not the start page, and no crawled page links to it. Any internal link counts, including nofollow ones. Not reported when the crawl was incomplete. - **Why it matters**: pages only reachable through the sitemap are hard for crawlers to discover and get no link equity, so they rarely rank. - **How to fix**: link to the page from at least one relevant page: navigation, a category or hub page, breadcrumbs or related-content links. If the page is obsolete, remove it from the sitemap and redirect or retire it. ### ONE_INCOMING_LINK — Only one followed internal link - **Severity**: notice. **Recheckable**: no (needs a full audit). - **Trigger**: an indexable `200` HTML page is linked from exactly one other crawled page with a followed link (no `rel="nofollow"`). Links from a page to itself are not counted. Not reported when the crawl was incomplete. - **Details**: `linked_from`, the one linking page. - **Why it matters**: a page with a single internal link gets little link equity and is easy for crawlers to miss. - **How to fix**: link to it from more relevant pages: hub or category pages, related links, breadcrumbs, or "more like this" blocks in the template. ### NO_OUTGOING_LINKS — No outgoing internal links - **Severity**: warning. **Recheckable**: no (needs a full audit). - **Trigger**: an indexable `200` HTML page has no internal links to any other URL (nofollow links count as links). - **Why it matters**: a dead-end page passes no link equity on and gives visitors and crawlers nowhere to go. - **How to fix**: add links from the page to related pages on the site: breadcrumbs, navigation, related content. If the page renders its navigation with JavaScript only, render the links in the HTML. ### REDIRECT_NO_INCOMING_LINKS — Redirect with no incoming links - **Severity**: notice. **Recheckable**: no (needs a full audit). - **Trigger**: a crawled URL answered `3xx`, is not the start URL, is not in the sitemap, is not the target of another redirect, and no crawled page links to it. Not reported when the crawl was incomplete. - **Details**: `redirect_to`. - **Why it matters**: a redirect nothing links to is usually a leftover URL. - **How to fix**: nothing on your site needs it. Keep the redirect if external sites or old bookmarks may still use the URL; otherwise you can drop it. Make sure no sitemap or feed lists it. ## XML sitemap The sitemap checks run only when the site has a sitemap that SEOFix read. ### INDEXABLE_NOT_IN_SITEMAP — Indexable page not in sitemap - **Severity**: notice. **Recheckable**: no (needs a full audit). - **Trigger**: an indexable `200` HTML page is not listed in the sitemap. Only reported when the whole sitemap was read. - **Why it matters**: the sitemap tells search engines which pages matter; indexable pages missing from it are discovered later or not at all. - **How to fix**: add the page to the sitemap. Generated sitemaps often miss a content type or paginated pages; fix the generator. If the page should not rank, add `noindex` or a canonical to the preferred URL instead. ### SITEMAP_URL_NOT_200 — Sitemap URL is not a 200 page - **Severity**: warning. **Recheckable**: no (needs a full audit). - **Trigger**: a URL listed in the sitemap answered `3xx`, `4xx` or `5xx` (firewall-blocked URLs excluded). - **Details**: `status_code`, `redirect_to` for redirects. - **Why it matters**: redirects and errors in the sitemap waste crawl budget and make search engines trust the sitemap less. - **How to fix**: list only final `200` URLs. Replace each redirect with its target (`redirect_to`) and remove broken URLs. Check that the generator builds URLs exactly as the server serves them (scheme, `www`, trailing slash). ```xml https://example.com/jobs https://example.com/jobs/ ``` ### SITEMAP_URL_NOT_CANONICAL — Non-canonical page in sitemap - **Severity**: warning. **Recheckable**: no (needs a full audit). - **Trigger**: a URL listed in the sitemap answered `200` but its canonical points to a different URL (and it is not noindex; that case is `NOINDEX_IN_SITEMAP`). - **Details**: `canonical_url`. - **Why it matters**: listing a URL that says another URL is the real one sends contradictory signals. - **How to fix**: list the canonical URL instead, or fix the canonical if the listed URL is the one that should rank. ### NOINDEX_IN_SITEMAP — Noindex page listed in sitemap - **Severity**: warning. **Recheckable**: no (needs a full audit). - **Trigger**: a URL listed in the sitemap has `noindex` in its robots meta tag. - **Details**: `meta_robots`. - **Why it matters**: the sitemap asks search engines to index a page that asks not to be indexed. - **How to fix**: remove noindex pages from the sitemap, or drop the `noindex` if the page should rank. ## Related - [Issue reference](https://seofix.ai/help/issue-reference.md) - [Links and redirects checks](https://seofix.ai/help/checks-links-and-redirects.md) - [Indexability checks](https://seofix.ai/help/checks-indexability.md)