SOP: Don't use the sitemap to rescue orphan pages

SOP: Don't use the sitemap to rescue orphan pages

A sitemap is a discovery aid, not an internal-linking substitute. Pages reachable ONLY via the sitemap get crawled rarely and rank poorly. Audit:

— ✅ Every sitemap URL is also reachable by ≥ 1 internal link from a crawlable page
— ✅ Orphans (in sitemap, zero internal links) flagged and either linked or removed
— ✅ Click-depth from homepage ≤ 4 for priority URLs
— ✅ Sitemap URL set ⊆ internally-linked URL set (sitemap adds no secret pages)

Why: Google uses internal links to judge importance. A URL that exists only in the sitemap reads as "nobody on the site thinks this matters."

To find orphans: diff your sitemap URL list against your internal-link crawl.

Definition of done: orphan count (in-sitemap, zero internal inlinks) = 0.