(Article) Drupal and Robots.txt (An important aspect of Drupal SEO is the robots.txt file)
Article : Drupal and Robots.txt (An important aspect of Drupal SEO is the robots.txt file)
An important aspect of Drupal SEO is the robots.txt file. Drupal 5 was the first version of Drupal that came with a robots.txt file, but it still needs some modifications.
One of the most serious SEO problems with Drupal is duplicate content. With the addition of contributed modules it can get so bad that one might refer to it as druplicate content. (ow...)
A key element of SEO on sites is getting a good, clean crawl. A robots.txt file is important for a clean crawl because it tells robots where they aren't supposed to go. There are many places on a Drupal site that search engine crawlers shouldn't go.
Drupal's Default Robots.txt File
I've attached Drupal 5's default robots.txt file for reference and will address it in sections:
Crawl Delay
The first thing I would do is remove the Crawl-delay line. Unless you have a very large site or spidering problems, it's not needed. The other robots.txt rules that I mention here and in the Drupal module section should help cut down on the number of pages crawled.
User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 10
Directories
The next section of the default robots.txt file addresses the physical directories created by Drupal:
# Directories
Disallow: /database/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /misc/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /sites/
Disallow: /themes/
Disallow: /scripts/
Disallow: /updates/
Disallow: /profiles/
That section can be left as-is. Just keep in mind that it will probably keep search engines out of your logo and image files also because you are blocking your /sites/, /modules/, and /themes/ directories. If you use an alternate logo image, rename it so that it includes a keyword and place it in your /files/ directory.
Files
The next section addresses files that are included with Drupal. I've never seen any of these files indexed, but you can leave this section in if you wish. Don't delete your CHANGELOG.txt file as some people recommend, because it lets you know what version of Drupal you are running in case you forget later.
Courtesy : Drupalzilla.com
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