Confused About Robots.txt in WordPress? Here’s How to Unblock It!

As a website owner, one of the most perplexing things you can do to maintain the visibility of your site in search engines is to have a robots.txt file in place. This file signals to search engine crawlers which pages to crawl and which to avoid. However, sometimes you may need to unblock certain pages or directories in your website that you originally blocked through robots.txt. In this article, we’ll explore why and how to unblock robots.txt in WordPress.

What is Robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a file that tells search engines which pages or sections of a website to crawl and index. It’s a simple text file that’s placed in the root directory of the website, which is named robots.txt. This file instructs the search engine crawlers which parts of your website to exclude in searches.

Why Do You Need Robots.txt?

Without a robots.txt file, search engines may crawl all pages and directories of your website. This is not ideal as you may have sensitive or private information that you don’t want to be seen publicly, or it may cause search engine crawlers to overload your website’s servers.

There are quite a few situations where you might want to use robots.txt to control what search engines see on your site. For example, you might want to keep certain pages private or block low-quality pages such as duplicate content.

But sometimes you may want to unblock certain pages or directories that you had previously blocked or disallowed. In this case, you’ll need to know how to unblock robots.txt in WordPress.

How to Unblock Robots.txt in WordPress

Unblocking robots.txt on your WordPress site is a simple process, and it can be done in two different ways:

1. Editing robots.txt File

The first way to unblock certain pages or directories is to edit your robots.txt file.

To do this:

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Click on Appearance > Theme Editor.
3. Under ‘Templates,’ click on robots.txt.
4. In the editor, you will see the contents of your current robots.txt file.
5. Locate the section of the file that contains the URL you want to unblock. This will usually have ‘Disallow:’ followed by the URL path.
6. Remove the ‘Disallow:’ followed by the URL path that you want to unblock.
7. After making the necessary changes, click on Update File to save the changes you made.
8. You can confirm that the robots.txt file is working properly by using the ‘Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool.’

2. Using Yoast SEO Plugin

The second way to unblock certain pages or directories is by using the ‘Yoast SEO Plugin’. This method is easier if you are not comfortable editing the robots.txt file manually.

To do this:

1. Install and activate ‘Yoast SEO Plugin’.
2. Go to the Yoast SEO Plugin’s ‘Search Appearance’ section.
3. Click on the ‘Content Types’ tab.
4. Look for the specific page or post that you want to unblock under ‘Posts’ or ‘Pages’.
5. Click on the checkbox next to ‘Show in search results’ for that particular page or post.
6. Save changes.

This method is less risky as you won’t have to touch the robots.txt file directly. Just be sure to double-check the page or post you want to unblock, as you may accidentally allow search engines to crawl through sensitive information.

When you’ve successfully unblocked the page or directory, the content can now be accessed by search engines.

In Conclusion

While blocking certain sections of your site makes sense in some situations, unblocking them can be just as essential for search engine optimization. Knowing how to unblock robots.txt in WordPress is a useful skill to have, as it can help you avoid any unnecessary restrictions that could ultimately affect the search engine visibility of your site. By following the two methods we’ve outlined in this article, you can easily and safely unblock those pages or directories that you had previously blocked for a reason.