Using the robots.txt file
- Robots are configured to read text. Too much graphic content could render your pages invisible to the search engine. Use the robots.txt file to block irrelevant and graphic-only content.
- Indiscriminate access to all files, it is believed, can dilute relevance to your site content after being indexed by robots. This could seriously affect your site’s ranking with search engines. Use the robots.txt file to direct robots to content relevant to your site’s theme by blocking the irrelevant files or directories.
- The robots.txt file can be used for multilingual websites to direct robots to relevant content for relevant topics for different languages. It ultimately helps the search engines to present relevant results for specific languages. It also helps the search engine in its advanced search options where language is a variable.
- Some robots could cause severe server loading problems by rapid firing too many requests at peak hours. This could affect your business. By excluding some robots that might be irrelevant to your site, in the robots.txt file, this problem can be taken care of. It is really not a good idea to let malevolent robots use up precious bandwidth to harvest your emails, images etc.
- Use the robots.txt file to block out folders with sensitive information, text content, demo areas or content yet to be approved by your editors before it goes live.
- The robots.txt file is an effective tool to address certain issues regarding website ranking. Used in conjunction with other SEO strategies, it can significantly enhance a website’s presence on the net.