What are the best HTML tools for optimizing your robots.txt file?

1 Why robots.txt matters

Your robots.txt file is a simple text file that lives in the root directory of your website. It contains a set of rules that instruct search engines how to behave when they visit your site. For example, you can use robots.txt to block certain pages or directories from being crawled, such as your admin panel, your login page, or your checkout page. You can also use robots.txt to allow or disallow specific search engines or user-agents, such as Googlebot, Bingbot, or mobile devices. By using robots.txt, you can control how your site is indexed and displayed in search results, and avoid potential issues with ranking and performance.

2 How to create robots.txt

To create your robots.txt file, you need a text editor and an FTP client. You can use any text editor, such as Notepad, Sublime Text, or Atom, to write your robots.txt file. You can use any FTP client, such as FileZilla, Cyberduck, or WinSCP, to upload your robots.txt file to your server. The basic syntax of a robots.txt file is:

User-agent: [name of the search engine or user-agent]
Disallow: [path of the page or directory you want to block]
Allow: [path of the page or directory you want to allow]        

For example, if you want to block all search engines from crawling your images folder, you can write:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/        

If you want to allow only Googlebot to crawl your blog folder, you can write:

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /blog/        

You can also use wildcards (*) and patterns ($) to match multiple pages or directories. For example, if you want to block all search engines from crawling any page that ends with .pdf, you can write:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.pdf$        

3 How to edit robots.txt

To edit your robots.txt file, you need to download it from your server using your FTP client, make the changes you want in your text editor, and upload it back to your server. You should always backup your original robots.txt file before making any changes, in case something goes wrong. You should also test your robots.txt file before publishing it, to make sure it works as intended and does not block any important pages or resources.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?