Low-value or thin content pages that drain crawl budget & dilute topical authority. SEO best practice: Prune, merge, or improve them.
Unleash Your Website’s Full Potential: The Zombie Page Survival Guide
I know the struggle of seeing your website’s traffic stall, even when I am doing everything right. It is incredibly frustrating, but trust me, there is a common culprit hiding in the shadows: Zombie Pages. I want to share my 15 years of SEO expertise to show exactly how to find and eliminate these traffic-suckers. Get ready for some super useful, actionable tips that will seriously boost your site’s SEO performance today!
What Are Zombie Pages?
Let us start with the basics. What is Zombie Pages? Simply put, they are pages on your site that get almost zero organic traffic and offer very little value to your visitors. They are not intentionally indexed to drain your site’s overall authority and can even hurt your Google rankings. Think of them as dead weight dragging down your whole website.
I find that these pages usually stem from old tags, outdated product listings, or duplicate content that was accidentally created. Removing or fixing these pages is crucial because it helps Google focus its crawling on your best content. This process of pruning your site is one of the fastest ways to see a jump in your SEO.
Zombie Pages Across Different CMS Platforms
WordPress
In my experience, WordPress sites are especially prone to creating Zombie Pages due to things like automatically generated archive pages, unused tags, and attachment pages. The fix is often simple: I use plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to quickly noindex low-value content. I also clean up old drafts and review category pages regularly to make sure they are useful.
Shopify
For my friends in ecommerce, Shopify sites often generate these dead pages from expired products, old filter combinations, or auto-generated “compare” pages. I recommend using the ‘Edit website SEO’ option to noindex discontinued products instead of deleting them outright, which avoids 404 errors. I also make sure I am auditing collection filters to prevent too many thin, duplicate pages.
Wix
Wix has gotten much better for SEO, but I still see Zombie Pages pop up from thin blog categories or unlinked landing pages. I use the Wix SEO Wiz to easily check which pages are being indexed and I am not afraid to manually set low-value pages to noindex. I focus on making every single page on my Wix site intentional and high-quality.
Webflow
Webflow gives me a lot of control, which means I have to be more careful not to create thin pages from unedited CMS collections or staging sites. I always check the project settings to make sure unnecessary pages or testing environments are blocked from indexing. I also make sure that I am optimizing the sitemap and checking the robot.txt file before launching a new feature.
Custom CMS
With a custom CMS, I have full control, but I also have full responsibility for page creation and indexing rules. I often have to work with developers to implement proper canonical tags and ‘noindex’ rules for internal search results or user-generated thin profile pages. I make sure I am setting clear parameters for what content should and should not be crawled by search engines.
Industry Impact of Zombie Pages
Ecommerce
In ecommerce, Zombie Pages like out-of-stock products or pages for old sales categories can seriously dilute your product page authority. I always advise either redirecting these old pages to a relevant category or marking them as ‘noindex’ to consolidate link equity. This is a vital step I take to improve my core product pages’ rankings.
Local Businesses
For a local business, thin pages for niche services I no longer offer or outdated event listings become the common Zombie Pages. I prioritize deleting and redirecting these old pages to the main service pages or my contact page. I focus all my link juice on high-value pages like my ‘About Us’ and main service area pages.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
SaaS sites often have lots of outdated feature documentation or old marketing landing pages that turn into Zombie Pages. I make sure I am redirecting old feature pages to the latest version of the documentation or an updated pricing page. I use this pruning to make sure all authority is flowing to my core ‘Features’ and ‘Pricing’ pages.
Blogs
On a blog, the main culprits are often very short, low-quality posts or pages created by tag and category archives with only one post. I either combine several short, related posts into one in-depth ‘pillar’ article or use ‘noindex’ on my thin archive pages. I make sure that I am only letting my best, most comprehensive content compete for rankings.
FAQ: Your Zombie Page Quick Fix
What are the main consequences of having too many Zombie Pages?
The biggest problem is ‘crawl budget waste,’ which means Google spends its time crawling low-value pages instead of your best content, slowing down your good pages’ ranking. They can also dilute your site’s authority and confuse search engines about your site’s main topics.
How do I find Zombie Pages on my own website?
I start by using Google Search Console and looking for pages with zero or very few impressions and clicks over a 6-12 month period. I cross-reference this with a tool like Google Analytics, filtering for pages with minimal organic traffic, usually under 10 visits a month.
Should I delete or noindex a Zombie Page?
I follow a simple rule: if the page has zero value and no backlinks, I delete it and let it become a 404 (Google is fine with some 404s). If the page has backlinks or still holds some minor value, I ‘noindex’ it so Google ignores it, or I sometimes redirect it to a more relevant, high-value page.
Does a ‘noindex’ tag hurt my website’s overall SEO?
Absolutely not; in fact, I use ‘noindex’ to help my site’s SEO! It tells search engines to ignore that specific page, which focuses their attention and passes the link equity to the pages you actually want to rank. This is a very clean and effective way I use to manage my site’s index.
