Robots.txt is one of the sorted files on a website, but it’s also one of the easiest to damage. Just one key out of place can cause a mess on your SEO and restrict search engines from reaching vital content on your site. A robots.txt file asserts search engine users which pages or files the user can or cannot see from their site. This is used mostly to get rid of overloading your site with requests, and it is not an instrument for keeping a web page out of Google. A blogger/content writer should know how Google Search Engine Algorithms work. To keep a web page out of Google, you should use no index directives; keep your page password protected.
It is must to understand the basics of how robots.txt works. After creating a robots.txt you must optimize the website content to increase the ranking.
Create Robots.txt
The simplest way, to create, or edit the robots.txt file in the WordPress Dashboard is through Yoast SEO. To do this, the steps are:
1. Log in to your WordPress site: when you will log in, your ‘Dashboard’ will be visible to you.
2. Click on ‘SEO’: on the left-hand side of the Dashboard, you will see a menu option. Click that menu option, and you will see SEO, and then click on the ‘SEO’.
3. Click on ‘Tools’: after clicking on the SEO option, it will open up providing you some extra options. From the expanded options list, click on the ‘Tools’.
4. Click on ‘File Editor’: if your WordPress install has disabled file editing, then this File Editor menu will not appear in WordPress. Activate file editing, or you can edit the file through FTP. If you are not aware of the use of FTP, then your host provider can help.
5. Make the corrections to your file
6. Save your changes.
How to Create or Edit on Your Server?
Creating or editing robots.txt through the WordPress Dashboard can fail if your WordPress install has disabled file editing. In that situation, you can edit the file through the server. WordPress creates a virtual robots.txt file if the core site does not include any physical file. To overrule the virtual file, follow the following steps to build a physical robots.txt file.
1. Use your preferred text editor to build a text file.
2. Save the blank file with the name robots.txt.
3. Upload the file to your server, but if you are uncertain where to upload then you can take the help of your web host.
If WordPress was jamming access to the virtual file, you should be able to revise the physical file from our plugin. If not, you can always revise the robots.txt openly on your server using FTP or a server file manager. You can always take the help of your web host whenever you find difficulty in uploading or editing files on your server.
Why do You Need a robots.txt File?
Robots.txt file is not always necessary for all the websites, particularly the small ones. There is no specific reason why you don’t need a robots.txt file. It gives you more clarity about search engines, like which website to choose and which not. Robots.txt can also assist you in other things like:
- Preventing the crowding of duplicate content.
- Keeping private sections of a website.
- Avoiding the jamming of internal search results pages.
- Preventing server from overloading.
- Helping Google from straining “crawl budget”.
- Preserving images, videos, and original files from being seen in Google search results.
It needs to be mentioned that Google does not usually index web pages that are jammed in robots.txt. There is no way to assure omission from search results using the robots.txt file. According to Google, if the content is similar to other web pages, it may still show in Google search results.
