[FAQ]

I was running my site through an SEO checker tool and it mentioned the robots.txt file. I found mine, and it’s just a simple text file, but I’ve been reading online and now I’m terrified to touch it.

People are saying that one wrong line in this file could tell Google to completely ignore my website. That sounds incredibly scary for such a simple-looking thing.

Can someone explain in plain English what this file is actually for? And more importantly, what does a “safe” robots.txt file look like for a standard website or blog? I don’t want to block anything important by accident.

[Jeff Bullas]

It’s wise to be cautious with this file; it’s simple but powerful.

Short Answer: The robots.txt is a plain text file that provides instructions to search engine crawlers, telling them which pages or content files they are not allowed to access on your website.

Its main purpose is to manage crawler traffic and prevent them from visiting low-value or private areas of your site.

Your caution is justified because this single text file can have a massive impact on your SEO. First, you create this file to guide search engine bots by telling them which directories or files to ignore, which is useful for keeping admin pages, internal search results, or shopping cart pages out of their index. Second, for a typical website, a safe robots.txt file often just disallows access to backend system folders while allowing everything else, ensuring all your important text and image content can be crawled. Finally, it’s considered best practice to include a line in this text file pointing to your XML sitemap, which helps search engines easily find a list of all the pages you want them to index. The one command you must never use unless you intend to hide your entire site is Disallow: /, as this single line will block every search engine from crawling any of your content.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Author]

Posts