How to Create Robots.txt File for Blogger SEO

Every search engine bot first interacts with a website’s robots.txt file, which defines crawling rules. This makes the robots.txt file a crucial part of a Blogger blog’s search engine optimization (SEO). This guide will help you create an optimized robots.txt file for Blogger and understand the implications of blocked pages in Google Search Console.

What is the Function of the Robots.txt File?

The robots.txt file tells search engines which pages they should and shouldn’t crawl, allowing control over web spiders' access. It can:

• Specify rules for different search engine bots.
• Allow or disallow certain pages.
• Declare sitemaps for better indexing by search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex.

A well-configured robots.txt file ensures efficient crawling without exhausting the website’s crawl budget.

Default Robots.txt File in Blogger

Blogger generates a default robots.txt file with the following content:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Understanding the Default Robots.txt File:

1. User-agent: Mediapartners-Google – Refers to Google AdSense, allowing it to access all pages.
2. User-agent: * – Applies to all other search engine bots.
3. Disallow: /search – Prevents search and label pages from being indexed.
4. Allow: / – Allows all other pages to be crawled.
5. Sitemap: – Provides the sitemap location to search engines.

This default configuration is decent but has some drawbacks, such as indexing archive pages, which can create duplicate content issues.

Optimizing the Robots.txt File for Better SEO

To improve SEO, we need to:

• Prevent the indexing of archive pages to avoid duplicate content issues.
• Stop search engines from crawling unnecessary sections like feeds.
• Ensure proper indexing of important pages and posts.

Optimized Custom Robots.txt File for Blogger

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search*
Disallow: /20*
Disallow: /feeds*
Allow: /*.html

Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap-pages.xml

Key Changes in the Custom Robots.txt File:

• Disallow: /search* – Blocks crawling of search and label pages.
• Disallow: /20* – Stops crawling of archive pages.
• Disallow: /feeds* – Prevents crawling of Blogger feeds (unless needed for XML sitemaps).
• Allow: /*.html – Ensures posts and pages are indexed.
• Additional sitemap entry (sitemap-pages.xml) ensures both posts and pages are indexed properly.

Important: Replace www.example.com with your Blogger domain.

Effects in Google Search Console

After implementing these rules, Google Search Console may report blocked pages. However, these should be non-essential pages like search results and archives. This prevents duplicate content from affecting SEO. If needed, you can configure robots.txt to allow full crawling and manage indexing through meta tags instead.

How to Implement the Custom Robots.txt File in Blogger

1. Go to Blogger Dashboard and click on Settings.
2. Scroll down to the Crawlers and Indexing section.
3. Enable Custom robots.txt.
4. Click on Custom robots.txt, paste the optimized code, and save.
5. Verify changes by visiting https://www.example.com/robots.txt (replace with your domain).

Conclusion

A well-optimized robots.txt file improves Blogger SEO by controlling crawling activity and preventing duplicate content issues. While Google Search Console may report blocked pages, understanding their importance helps in fine-tuning SEO strategies. Properly configuring robots.txt along with SEO-friendly content ensures better search engine rankings.

If you have any questions regarding Blogger or WordPress SEO, feel free to comment below!