If you are new to the world of SEO, then you must have come across the terms Google Sitemaps and Robots.txt. These are important technical aspects of any SEO campaign and you must learn about them if you are to perform the ranking of a website in the best possible manner. Let’s have a closer look at Robots.txt and Google Sitemaps and learn about how Google uses them for SEO.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt can be described as a unique and simple text file which is placed on the root directory of a website. The Robots.txt text file informs the search engine robots about what elements they should crawl and avoid crawling on the site. The Robots.txt also contains multiple commands that clearly state which of the search engine robots have the permission to crawl the website and which ones are not allowed to do so.
Generally, the search bots try to find the robots.txt file within a website once they enter it. Therefore it is important to have the robots.txt file at a point where they can be detected instantly. Even if you are okay with all search robots crawling all the existing pages on your website, you still need a default robots.txt which can detect the movements of the search robots. The Robots.txt file also includes important information about the sitemaps.
Google Sitemaps
The Google Sitemaps are an important feature for any kind of website. Basically a sitemap can be defined as an XML file which includes a detailed list of all the web pages that are present on your website. The Google Sitemaps can also include additional information regarding each and every URL as meta data. Google Sitemaps are considered to mandatory for any website just like the Robots.txt. The Google Sitemaps help the search engine bots to crawl, explore and index the various web pages that are present in a site. The Google Sitemaps make it a lot easier for the search engine bots to carry out the crawling process.
As a business owner, it is quite natural that you would want to have the best ranking for your website. In order to do this, you will need to have the support of the Robots.txt and Google Sitemaps. In order to have the best ranking, it is important that your site and its web pages get discovered as easily as possible. Google Sitemaps and Robots.txt can make it a lot easier for your website to be discovered by the search engines.
When users conduct a search for specific keywords and key phrases, the search engine bots look for websites that are optimized to those keywords and key phrases and present them with the results in less than a second’s time. It is therefore extremely important that you do everything on your part so that the search engine bots can crawl through your website easily and consider your content relevant for the keywords that are searched for. Having a Robots.txt and Google Sitemaps makes it a lot easier for the search engine bots to go through your web pages and present the users with the search engine results which includes your website.
Under the guidelines of Google, it has now become absolutely necessary for any website owner to make use of Robots.txt and Google Sitemaps for SEO purposes. Unless you have a Robots.txt and Google Sitemap, it won’t be possible for you to get the visibility that you are looking for. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that you get in touch with your SEO services provider to set up the Robots.txt and Google Sitemap that can help your website to get noticed.
