What is Robots.txt?
Robots.txt is a simple text file in the area of a website. The file defines whether a website may be crawled or not. It is possible to crawl individual files, complete directories and entire domains and not have them scanned. A bot always calls up the robots.txt file first and recognizes which pages should be included and which pages of the project should not be included.
What does Robots.txt mean for SEO?
The robots text file is very important for SEO, as it has a major influence. If a website is excluded from crawling, it will of course not be able to rank in the search results lists. If the restrictions are too great, it has a negative effect on the ranking. There is also a negative impact if pages are scanned that should not be crawled (possibly due to duplicate content).
This is why it is very important to maintain the Robots.txt file conscientiously. However, it is also the case that information in Robots.txt does not prevent indexing. It therefore makes sense to use noindex meta tags on pages that are not to be indexed. This information is included in the header and excludes indexing in any case.
Nevertheless, the Robots.txt file is an important tool for SEOs to control the behavior of the crawlers. If errors occur in this area, it could happen that websites are not accessible at all or appear in the search engine index.
