robots.txt: An SEO issue that has been ignored

Author:neo yang Time:2024/02/29 Read: 7469

After constructing two sites with Next.js last month and noticing poor Google indexation, the issue was identified as a missing robots.txt file. To address this, a robots.txt with rules to allow all user-agents, enable access to all content excluding the 'private' directory, and link a sitemap was added to the Next.js app directory. This resolved the indexing issue, underscoring the importance of robots.txt for site visibility.

question

Last month, I used nextjs to build two websites, but I haven’t bothered with them since. Recently I found that the Google inclusion status of these two sites is not good. I took a closer look today and found that it was a problem with robots.txt.

Checking a URL that is not included in GSC, the results are as follows

In recent years, when building websites, most of them use mature CMS, such as WordPress, etc., and there is no need to consider the issue of robots.txt. Therefore, robots.txt has always been ignored.

This time I used nextjs to build the website, and I noticed this problem.

Solution

Add robots.txt file.

1. Add the robots.txt file to the app directory of the nextjs project

2. Add the following rules to the robots.txt file

User-Agent: * Allow: / Disallow: /private/ Sitemap: https://www.xxx.com/sitemap.xml

illustrate:

"User-Agent: *": Indicates that all crawlers can access the website.

"Allow: /": Allows access to all content.

"Disallow: /private/": Indicates that access to the private directory is not allowed.

3. Test again after completion

Summarize

The absence of the robot.txt file will greatly affect the inclusion of content by search engines.

refer to

How to fix: Robots.txt prevents desktop pages from being crawled – Google Merchant Center Help

Metadata file: robots.txt |Next.js (nextjs.org)

tags:SEO