Every website has a robots.txt file that supports search engines in collecting data for indexing. It is the first factor that Seoers need to check and optimize to improve the website’s ranking on the search results page. At the same time, the robots.txt file plays a decisive role in whether or not websites are indexed on Google. What is the robots.txt file? How important is it and how to use the standard robots.txt file? Optimal Agency will answer all in detail in the article below. Follow now!
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What is the robots.txt file?
It is a specialized file used in website administration with the extension .txt. It is part of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) containing a group of Web standards that regulate web robots to collect data, access, index and provide content to users. The purpose of the robots.txt file is to help webmasters have flexibility and initiative when controlling Google robots. The robots.txt file is used to grant indexing permissions to search engine bots.
Robots.txt plays an important role in managing search engine bots’ access to website content. Specifying links that bots do not access to ensure privacy and optimize the data collection process. This helps improve SEO efficiency and ensure that important pages are prioritized. The robots.txt file helps control search engine bot traffic, protect the information, and speed up the indexing of important pages.
When a crawler accesses your website, it will look for a robots.txt file. If this file exists, the crawler will read the instructions in this file to determine which web pages or directories can be accessed and crawled. At this point, the crawler will follow the instructions in the robots.txt file to collect data on your website. If you know how to use the robots.txt file, you can control the access of bots to locations on the website. This helps improve website performance, optimize user experience, and increase website search rankings.
The role of the robots.txt file for the website
By creating and using the robots.txt file, the administrator can control the access of search engine bots to the website. At the same time, it prevents duplicate content from appearing on the website, protects the privacy of information on the page, and brings the following benefits:
Access control
With the ability to allow website administrators to control the access of robots and search engines to parts of the website. You can specify the parts you want bots to access and protect the privacy of important parts of the website. If you detect an untrustworthy robot or search engine, you can use the robots.txt file to deny access to them.
Save resources
When a search engine bot accesses a website, it consumes server resources and page load time. By using the robots.txt file, you can specify that robots should not access unnecessary parts or parts that consume a lot of resources. Thereby reducing the load on the server to increase the website loading speed.
Protect sensitive content
Thanks to its maximum control, the robots.txt file helps prevent crawlers from accessing and collecting sensitive content such as login information and personal information. From there, administrators can protect their personal information from being stolen or misused. The robots.txt file helps protect important content and keeps specialized websites from being indexed.
Improve SEO rankings
By creating and using robots.txt files on your website, Google can better understand the structure of your website and important content. When used properly, it will help optimize the search process and display important content on your website. By clearly specifying the parts that are allowed to be accessed and indexed, you can ensure that robots access important content, saving resources. Through the process of specifying Google bots to crawl data on the desired page. Then you can ensure that Google indexes your website most efficiently and accurately, improving SEO rankings.
Instructions on how to create a standard robots.txt file on WordPress
Creating and managing robots.txt files is important to optimize SEO for WordPress websites. Before learning how to use robots.txt files, let’s explore how to create a standard robots.txt file according to the following instructions:
Using Yoast SEO
You can create and edit robots.txt files for WordPress on the dashboard. To do this, log in to your website. On the Dashboard interface on the left side of the screen, select SEO, then select Tools, then select File Editor. You will see the robots.txt section and you can create or edit robots.txt files in these locations. After you edit the file as required, click Save Changes to complete.
Using the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin
In addition to using Yoast SEO, you can use the All in One SEO plugin to create robots.txt files for your website. Here’s how to do it:
Access the main interface of All in One SEO Pack, then select All in One SEO, and then select Features Manager. In the Robots.txt section, select Active so that All in One SEO Pack will automatically create a robots.txt file with basic settings. This option allows you to edit the robots.txt file according to your needs. Finally, click Save Changes and you’re done.
Create and upload the robots.txt file via FTP
If you don’t want to use a plugin to create a WordPress robots.txt file, you can manually create a robots.txt file for your WordPress. Then, create a WordPress robots.txt file manually and upload the file via FTP. Open Notepad or TextEdit to create a WordPress robots.txt file template. Next, open FTP and select the public_html folder, then select the robots.txt file and select Upload.
How to use robots.txt file properly
Once you have a robots.txt file, you can start using this file to control search engine bot access to specific areas on the site as follows:
Do not allow bots to access any folder you don’t want
If you want to block access to a specific file or folder, including subfolders in that folder. To apply this to WordPress, you can block the entire wp-admin or wp-login.php folder. Now you can use the following commands:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Using Robots.txt to block access to the entire site
In case you want all crawler access to your site. This usually applies to a newly developed site or you don’t want search engine bots to index temporary content. Then you add this code to your WordPress robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Using Robots.txt to block access to a bot
You don’t want search engine bots to crawl your pages. Specifically, you don’t want Bing to crawl your pages. Instead, you want Google to index as much as possible and don’t even want Bing to look at your site. To block Bing from crawling your site, use the following command:
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /
Use Robots.txt to allow access to a file in a disallowed folder
Suppose you have blocked a folder but still want to allow access to a specific file in the folder, use the Allow command as follows:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
This blocks access to the entire /wp-admin/ folder except for the /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php file.
How to block bots from crawling WordPress search results
If you want to prevent search crawlers from crawling your search results pages. By default, WordPress uses the “?s=” query parameter. To block access, use the following rule:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /?s=
Disallow: /search/
How to create different rules for different Bots in Robots.txt
If you want to apply different rules to different bots, add each set of rules in the User-agent declaration for each bot. Specifically, if you want to create a rule that applies to all bots and another rule that applies to only Bingbot, execute the following command:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /
Then all bots will be blocked from accessing /wp-admin/ and Bingbot will be blocked from accessing your entire website.
At this point, you have understood the importance of the robots.txt file as well as how to use the robots.txt file effectively. If used incorrectly and not knowing how to manage and configure this data file will greatly affect the SEO ranking of the website. Please learn carefully about the robots.txt file before using it. In addition, our website also has a lot of other useful information such as how to optimize Google Shopping feed.
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- How to effectively optimize EEAT for your website to Increase SEO Rankings?
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Frequently asked questions
You should not use the Robots.txt file for multiple websites because each page has a different structure and content. Therefore, each website needs a Robots.txt file to optimize data collection efficiency for each website. Using the Robots.txt file can lead to problems such as wasting crawling resources. Robots can miss important websites that affect website rankings. Moreover, you will have difficulty managing and monitoring data collection efficiency.
You can use the Robots.txt file to prevent data collection bots from accessing specific directories and websites. It is useful when bots access the website administration area or unfinished or sensitive websites. Besides the benefits, blocking bots from crawling can affect your website’s search rankings. Therefore, you should only block bots from accessing directories or web pages that are necessary.
