SEO continues to evolve and spark increased interest due to consumer demand. Understanding SEO takes years of research, practice, and definitely plenty of trial and error. When working on optimization of your site it’s important to consider the accessibility factor. It’s one of the four cornerstones of successful SEO. Those being Accessibility, Indexibility, On-Site Optimization, and Off-Site Optimization. Providing certain access for search engine robots to your website is extremely important in ensuring indexing of specific content, images, and sections deemed of highest importance to your website users.
Understanding the Meaning of a Robots.txt File
What is a robots.txt file? A robots.txt file is a basic text file comprised of certain indicators allowing or disallowing access to specific sections of a website. The file is utilized by search engine robots to determine access to specific sections of content. It resides within the virtual root location of the primary domain of a website. You can find more information about creation of a robots.txt file on the Web Robots Pages website. For any website floating around on the web it’s important to create and maintain a robots.txt file for the sake of accessibility and security.
Modifying Robots.txt File Inside WordPress
By default, WordPress creates a robots.txt file that resides at the root location of your website on the virtual server. The file remains raw most times and requires some attention to detail. As outlined in the Web Robots Pages section above certain sections of WordPress are in need of restriction. For example, excluding access to the /wp-admin/ directory or /wp-includes/ for that matter. Restricting access to these directories for search engine robots would ensure that content from such locations remains inaccessible within the SERPs. One way to modify your robots.txt file is by accessing Google Webmaster Tools (if you prefer that route). Another way of accessing and modifying the contents of a robots.txt file is by installing the WP Robots Txt plugin that simplifies the modification process.