Robots.txt is blocking Wordpress Pages from Googlebot?

[ENSO]

I have a robots.txt file on my server, which I did not develop, it was done by the web designer at the company before me. Then there is a word press plugin that generates a robots.txt file. How Do I unblock all the wordpress pages from googlebot?

[Desiree-CP]

I'm not sure to what extent your website is being blocked with the robots.txt file but it's pretty easy to diagnose.  You'll first need to identify and confirm that googlebot is being blocked by typing in your web browser ~> www.mywebsite.com/robots.txt

If you see an entry such as "User-agent: *" or "User-agent: googlebot" being used in conjunction with "Disallow" then you know your website is being blocked with the robots.txt file.  Given your situation you'll need to go through a two step process.

First, go into your wordpress plugin page and deactivate the plugin which generates your robots.txt file.  Second, login to the root folder of your server and look for the robots.txt file.  Lastly, change "Disallow" to "Allow" and that should work but you'll need to confirm by typing in the robots URL again.

Given the limited information in your question I hope that helps.  If you run into any more issues don't hesitate to post them here.

[ENSO]

Here is my robots.txt from google webmaster tools. These are the pages that are being blocked and I am not sure which of these to get rid of in order to unblock blog posts from being searched.

http://ensoplastics.com/theblog/?cat=743

http://ensoplastics.com/theblog/?p=240

These category pages and blog posts are blocked so do I delete the /? ...I am new to SEO and web development so I am not sure why the developer of this robots.txt file would block pages and posts in wordpress. It seems to me like that is the reason why someone has a blog so it can be searched and get more exposure for SEO purposes.

Sitemap: http://www.ensobottles.com/blog/sitemap.xml

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /*/trackback

Disallow: /*/feed

Disallow: /*/comments

Disallow: /?

Disallow: /*?

Disallow: /page/
User-agent: *

Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Disallow: /wp-admin/

Disallow: /wp-includes/

Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/

Disallow: /wp-content/themes/

Disallow: /trackback

Disallow: /commentsDisallow: /feed

[Desiree-CP]

Delete everything under the following directives and you should be good.

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /*/trackback

Disallow: /*/feed

Disallow: /*/comments

Disallow: /?

Disallow: /*?

Disallow: /page/

As a rule of thumb, it's not a good idea to use wild cards in your robots.txt file - you may be excluding an entire folder inadvertently.