Robots.txt and SEO: Everything You Need to Know
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 7:00 am
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Robots.txt and SEO: Everything You Need to Know
Robots.txt is one of the most basic files on a website, but it is also one of the easiest to mess up. It can cause damage to your SEO and prevent search engines from accessing important content on your site .
This is why incorrect robots.txt file configurations are extremely common, even among the most experienced SEO professionals.
Table of Contents view
What are robots.txt files?
A robots.txt file tells web crawlers from Google and other search croatia phone number data where they can and cannot go on your site.
First, list all the content you want to block from search engines like Google. You can also tell certain search engines (not Google) how they can crawl the allowed content.
What does a robots txt file look like?
This is the basic format of a robots.txt file :
Sitemap: [URL location of sitemap]
User-agent: [bot identifier]
[directive 1]
[directive 2]
[directive ...]
User-agent: [other bot identifier]
[directive 1]
[directive 2]
[directive. ..]
If you've never seen one of these files before, it might seem daunting. However, the syntax is quite simple. In short, you assign rules to bots by indicating their user-agent followed by directives .
Let's explore these two components in more detail.
User agents
Each search engine identifies itself through a different user agent. You can set custom instructions for each of these in your r obots txt file .
There are hundreds of user agents, but the most useful for SEO are:
Google: Googlebot
Google Images: Googlebot-Image
Bing: Bingbot
Yahoo: Slurp
DuckDuckGo: DuckDuckBot
Baidu : Baiduspider
You can also use the asterisk (*) wildcard character to assign directives to all user agents.
For example, let's say you wanted to block your site from being crawled by all robots except Googlebot. Here's how you would do that by editing your robots.txt :
User agent: *
Disallowed: /
User agent: Googlebot
Allow: /
Know that your robots.txt file can include directives for as many user agents as you want. That said, each time you declare a new user agent, it acts as a blank slate. In other words, if you add directives for multiple user agents, the directives declared for the first user agent will not apply to the second, or third, or fourth, and so on.
The exception to this rule is when you declare the same user agent more than once. In that case, all relevant directives are combined and followed.
Robots.txt File Directives
Directives are rules that declared user agents must follow.
Robots.txt and SEO: Everything You Need to Know
Robots.txt is one of the most basic files on a website, but it is also one of the easiest to mess up. It can cause damage to your SEO and prevent search engines from accessing important content on your site .
This is why incorrect robots.txt file configurations are extremely common, even among the most experienced SEO professionals.
Table of Contents view
What are robots.txt files?
A robots.txt file tells web crawlers from Google and other search croatia phone number data where they can and cannot go on your site.
First, list all the content you want to block from search engines like Google. You can also tell certain search engines (not Google) how they can crawl the allowed content.
What does a robots txt file look like?
This is the basic format of a robots.txt file :
Sitemap: [URL location of sitemap]
User-agent: [bot identifier]
[directive 1]
[directive 2]
[directive ...]
User-agent: [other bot identifier]
[directive 1]
[directive 2]
[directive. ..]
If you've never seen one of these files before, it might seem daunting. However, the syntax is quite simple. In short, you assign rules to bots by indicating their user-agent followed by directives .
Let's explore these two components in more detail.
User agents
Each search engine identifies itself through a different user agent. You can set custom instructions for each of these in your r obots txt file .
There are hundreds of user agents, but the most useful for SEO are:
Google: Googlebot
Google Images: Googlebot-Image
Bing: Bingbot
Yahoo: Slurp
DuckDuckGo: DuckDuckBot
Baidu : Baiduspider
You can also use the asterisk (*) wildcard character to assign directives to all user agents.
For example, let's say you wanted to block your site from being crawled by all robots except Googlebot. Here's how you would do that by editing your robots.txt :
User agent: *
Disallowed: /
User agent: Googlebot
Allow: /
Know that your robots.txt file can include directives for as many user agents as you want. That said, each time you declare a new user agent, it acts as a blank slate. In other words, if you add directives for multiple user agents, the directives declared for the first user agent will not apply to the second, or third, or fourth, and so on.
The exception to this rule is when you declare the same user agent more than once. In that case, all relevant directives are combined and followed.
Robots.txt File Directives
Directives are rules that declared user agents must follow.