Dead-end page: A page with no links out to other pages on the same site, so a reader who finishes it has nowhere to go next except back or away.
Why it matters
A dead end is the mirror image of an orphan page: links come in, but none go out from the content. A reader who reaches the bottom of a sourdough troubleshooting post with no link to the starter guide, or a personal-finance article on emergency funds with no link to the high-interest savings comparison, has nowhere to go but back or away. For a crawler, the page passes nothing on. Links on a page are how Google finds new pages to crawl, so a site full of dead ends leans on menus and archives to do all the work.
The template doesn’t save you
Strictly, almost no WordPress page is a dead end: the header menu, footer and sidebar link everywhere. That is why it is more useful to count only the links inside the post content. Those template links are the same on every page, so they tell neither readers nor search engines which page is the logical next step from this one. A “related posts” block helps a little, but it is chosen by tags or recency rather than by what the paragraph is about. The difference is covered in contextual vs navigational links.
How to check and fix
Look for posts where the content area contains zero links to your own domain. Short news posts, old announcements and landing pages built in a hurry are the usual suspects. A crawler that separates body links from template links will list them for you; the internal link audit checklist includes this as one of its checks.
The fix is usually one or two contextual links from sentences that already mention a related topic. You do not need many: a 600-word gardening post on pruning roses needs one link to the rose-feeding guide and perhaps one to the tool review, not a block of ten. Pages whose whole job is to convert, such as a checkout or a booking form, are a sensible exception.