dos and dont’s of robots.txt for seo success

when it comes to seo people talk a lot about keywords backlinks and content but they forget a small file that can change everything robots.txt robots.txt is like the gatekeeper of your website it tells search engines what they can look at and what they can’t if you use it right it helps your site rank better if you mess it up your site can disappear from google this is why every top seo company takes robots.txt for seo seriously they know how to control crawling and indexing the smart way using this file so in this guide we gonna talk about what to do and what not to do with robots.txt so you can keep your site healthy and visible online

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what is robots.txt

robots.txt is a small file that lives in the root of your website it gives rules to bots like googlebot or bingbot telling them what pages or folders they should not crawl

for example if you don’t want bots to go into your admin area you write

• User-agent: *
• Disallow: /admin/
• this means all bots should not crawl anything inside /admin/ folder
• easy right but also easy to mess up

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why robots.txt matter for seo

robots.txt help control

• crawl budget
• indexing of private or duplicate pages
• load on server
• what show in search results
  if your robots.txt is not done right you might block good pages or allow bad ones and that can really hurt your seo

Best digital marketing company always check robots.txt when they do a seo audit they know it’s basic but critical

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the do’s of robots.txt

do place it in the root directory

your robots.txt for seo file must be at the root level like not inside a folder or somewhere else bots look for it in the root if its not there they ignore it

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do use clear rules

• be specific with your rules use user-agent and disallow clearly like
• User-agent: Googlebot
• Disallow: /temp/
• this tells googlebot not to crawl the /temp/ folder keep it simple and direct

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do allow important files

some css js or images are needed for your page to look right in search results so make sure u allow them

• User-agent: *
• Allow: /css/
• Allow: /js/
  if you block them your site may look broken to google and rankings drop

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do block low value pages

some pages don’t help your seo like

• login pages
• thank you pages
• cart and checkout
• internal search pages

block them using disallow so bots don’t waste time there

Disallow: /checkout/

Disallow: /login/

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do add your sitemap

• put your sitemap url in the robots.txt to help bots discover all your pages
• Sitemap: https://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
• this is a pro move every top seo company does it

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do test in search console

google has a tool to test your robots.txt always check if your file is working as expected no typos no wrong blocks

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do update when site changes

if you add new sections or remove old ones update your robots.txt to match your site keep it fresh always

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the don’ts of robots.txt

don’t block entire site by mistake

• one small line like this
• Disallow: /
• can stop bots from crawling your whole site this is a big mistake and happens a lot when people copy code or use plugins carelessly

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don’t block resources needed for rendering

don’t block folders like /wp-content/ or /assets/ unless u really know what’s inside sometimes bots need access to these to understand your site

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don’t use robots.txt to hide sensitive info

robots.txt is public anyone can see it by typing /robots.txt in your site so don’t try to hide passwords or private stuff there use proper security

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don’t confuse disallow with noindex

robots.txt only control crawling not indexing even if u disallow a page google may still index it if someone links to it

to stop indexing use meta noindex tag inside the page not robots.txt

top seo company always use both tools in right way

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don’t overuse disallow

blocking too many pages can hurt your site’s visibility only block what’s really needed don’t go crazy and block everything

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don’t forget about mobile bots

google uses different bots for mobile and desktop make sure your rules apply to both if u want consistent indexing

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don’t assume all bots obey robots.txt

good bots like googlebot follow robots.txt bad bots might ignore it so if u really want to block something use server rules or password protection

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common mistakes people make

• wrong spelling like Disalow instead of Disallow
• placing robots.txt in wrong folder
• blocking css or js needed for layout
• forgetting to allow ajax files in wordpress
• adding sitemap link but writing wrong url
• a top seo company can catch these things fast and fix them for you

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example of a good robots.txt

• User-agent: *
• Disallow: /admin/
• Disallow: /checkout/
• Disallow: /cart/
• Disallow: /search/
• Allow: /css/
• Allow: /js/
• Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
• this setup blocks low value pages allows resources and shares the sitemap its clean and useful

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when to change your robots.txt

• after launching new site sections
• after moving from staging to live
• after redesign
• after adding big scripts or plugins

always review robots.txt when big changes happen

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robots.txt for wordpress sites

• wordpress creates a lot of pages automatically like tag archives author pages and search results these are often low value
• use robots.txt to block them and keep your seo clean
• Disallow: /tag/
• Disallow: /author/
• Disallow: /?s=

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robots.txt for ecommerce

ecommerce sites have filters variants and internal search that create tons of pages not all of them are good for seo

use robots.txt to block

• faceted navigation
• checkout
• cart
• login pages

also use canonical tags and noindex where needed a top seo company can help setup this right

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robots.txt vs meta robots vs x robots

they all sound same but do different stuff

• robots.txt = blocks crawling
• meta robots = control indexing from inside page
• x-robots-tag = same as meta but from http header

use them together for full control over seo

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how to check if bots are blocked

use google search console to check blocked resources also use site operator in google

type

site:yoursite.com

see what’s indexed and if something is missing that should be there maybe robots.txt is blocking it

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seo audit and robots.txt

every seo audit must include a check of robots.txt file if your seo agency don’t look at it they missing something big

top seo company always start audit with technical stuff and robots.txt is part of that list

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can robots.txt help with duplicate content

yes it can help block access to duplicate pages but it’s better to use canonical tags or noindex for that robots.txt should be last resort

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using robots.txt with multilingual sites

if your site has versions like /en/ /fr/ /de/ then don’t block them by mistake check that all language folders are allowed or only block the ones not needed

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using robots.txt with subdomains

every subdomain needs its own robots.txt file so blog.yoursite.com and shop.yoursite.com need separate rules if u want to control them

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robots.txt for news and media sites

news sites want fast indexing but also don’t want old junk to get crawled too much balance is needed a seo company can plan this better

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conclusion

robots.txt may look like a boring little file but it can make or break your seo success if u use it smart it saves crawl budget protect pages and boost rankings

but if you mess it up your site can get hidden from search and that’s bad

so always follow the do’s and avoid the don’ts and if you not sure then let a top seo company help you they know how to manage crawling indexing and everything else to make your site shine in google

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