robots.txt File
Manage requests from participating crawlers and understand why robots.txt is not a privacy or no-index control.
SEO Guides for Beginners
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps search engines discover and understand useful pages. Explore beginner guides to sitemaps, robots.txt, canonical URLs, and technical site setup.
A practical technical SEO starting point
First make important pages easy to reach through clear internal links. Next, use canonical URLs to identify the version you prefer when duplicate or very similar pages exist. An XML sitemap can help search engines discover canonical URLs, especially on a large or recently updated site, but submission does not guarantee crawling, indexing or rankings.
Use robots.txt to give instructions to cooperating crawlers; it is not a privacy tool and does not by itself remove a URL from search results. For site-specific search reports, see the Google Search Console guide. Make one change at a time and review the available data before drawing conclusions.
These guides explain the purpose and limits of each setup step, so you can build a site that is easier for people and search engines to navigate.
.htaccess file
Learn how Apache per-directory rules work, when overrides are required, and how to use common directives carefully.
Sitemap
Create and submit an XML sitemap to help search engines discover canonical URLs, without expecting guaranteed indexing.
Canonical URLs
Signal which URL you prefer when duplicate or very similar pages are available at different addresses.