When improving search rankings, webmasters stress content and backlinks, yet technical SEO counts are just as important. Perhaps lesser-known in this regard is the robots.txt file. This simple text file is of prime importance in telling search engines what they may crawl and what they may not. According to Ahrefs, misconfigured robots.txt files are present in more than 17% of the analysed websites, mostly blocking important pages from being indexed by mistake.

So what does robots.txt mean, and why does it matter more than most users think?

What is Robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a text-based directive for search engine crawlers in the root directory of your website (for example: www.example.com/robots.txt). When modifying the robots.txt file, Allow and Disallow commands can be used to restrict crawler access to certain pages and folders of your choice. If configured properly, it will direct crawlers to index your important pages and keep them from seeing content that is not of much worth or is repetitive.

How to Create a Robots.txt File

The process for creating a robots.txt file is outlined below:

1. Open up a basic text editor, for example, Notepad or TextEdit.

2. Insert directives in the format of:

User-agent:

Disallow: /private/

Allow: /public/

3.   Save as robots.txt.
4.       Upload it into the root directory of your site.

The tools available to help you create and test the file include:

• Google Search Console
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• SEOptimer Robots.txt Generator

Ask yourself, do you already have a robots.txt file in place? If so, is it serving your SEO goals?

Robots.txt vs XML Sitemap: What’s the Difference?

Both tools aid SEO, but serve different purposes:

Though they complement each other, the robots.txt and XML sitemap discussions are primarily about access control versus content discovery. Both, used effectively, improve site indexing and crawl efficiency.

Robots.txt Best Practices

Maximizing the use of www robots.txt SEO requires the following best practices:

• Pages of low quality should be disallowed. Admin, login, and thank you pages are typically not for users through search engines.

• Avoid completely blocking directories unless necessary. Be specific to avoid over-restricted.

• Use wildcards sparingly. Overuse of * and $ can block too much.

• Reference XML site map in your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

• Update regularly, as your website now grows, your directives have to be reviewed and matched as goals change.

Common Robots.txt Mistakes to Avoid

Common Mistakes in Robots.txt to Avoid

A tiny error in these files can negatively impact your SEO endeavours. So here are some major ones to avoid:

• Erroring the whole site:

makefile

CopyEdit

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

• Disallowing major assets such as CSS or JS which are required for proper page rendering

• Any typing error in the file, like a misspelt directory name or misplaced colon

• Not testing the changes before going to production.

How can I test my robots.txt file?

It is very important to test your robots.txt file to ensure that it is functioning as expected. This can be done using the following methods:

• Prefer Google Search Console which simply accesses the robots.txt Tester tool as part of the “Legacy Tools” section.

• Use crawl tools like Screaming Frog to detect which URLs are being blocked.
• You might also check manually by entering https://www.yoursite.com/robots.txt in your browser for a direct review of the file content.

Pro Tip: Always test after making updates, especially before launching a new site or migration.

Where to Keep Robots.txt File for Effectiveness?

Your robots.txt file must be placed in the root of your domain and not in a subfolder. For instance:

 https://www.example.com/robots.txt

Otherwise, it may simply be ignored by the crawler and the whole directive will fail.

Summing up

It is quite important for any website that wants to keep itself within crawlability and indexation boundaries to know what a robots.txt is and implement it correctly. It is not really a technical requirement, but rather an SEO strategic asset. You may use robots.txt to disallow non-essential pages along with saving crawl budget because robots.txt is power in the hands of webmasters on how search engines engage with your site.