Application & understanding of robots.txt

[MarketingChimp10]

Hello Moz World!

I have been reading up on robots.txt files, and I understand the basics. I am looking for a deeper understanding on when to deploy particular tags, and when a page should be disallowed because it will affect SEO. I have been working with a software company who has a News & Events page which I don't think should be indexed. It changes every week, and is only relevant to potential customers who want to book a demo or attend an event, not so much search engines. My initial thinking was that I should use noindex/follow tag on that page. So, the pages would not be indexed, but all the links will be crawled.

I decided to look at some of our competitors robots.txt files. Smartbear (https://smartbear.com/robots.txt), b2wsoftware (http://www.b2wsoftware.com/robots.txt) & labtech (http://www.labtechsoftware.com/robots.txt).

I am still confused on what type of tags I should use, and how to gauge which set of tags is best for certain pages. I figured a static page is pretty much always good to index and follow, as long as it's public. And, I should always include a sitemap file. But, What about a dynamic page? What about pages that are out of date? Will this help with soft 404s?

This is a long one, but I appreciate all of the expert insight. Thanks ahead of time for all of the awesome responses.

Best Regards,

Will H.

[Yoav-Blustein]

Hi Will

There are some concerns that you have which I do not understand.
Why you want to block News & Events page? If it has unique content and on top of that if it is updated regularly, you have no reason to block access to the page. If it is "relevant to potential customers who want to book a demo" its great. I would definitely keep it indexed and followed.

Google explicitly states that you should not block access to a page if you simply want to de-index it/remove it. If the page should not be indexed publicly you should remove it or password protect it (a google suggestion).
About tags, i assume you are talking about meta tags, correct?
There is no need to use any kind of meta tag to signal search engines that they need to index or follow the page, you use it only when you want to limit them not to take certain actions.
Also there is no difference between a static or dynamic page when it comes to tag usage. There is no rules for that. A page perfectly be static for years and still get indexed and ranked very good. (but, well we all know that updating the site is a ranking signal)
If you believe that certain page should be tagged "noindex" it is not because it is not updated within the last month or year. Just for an example: contact us pages, about us pages and terms of use pages. These are super static pages that in many cases probably wont be changed  for years.

best
Yossi

[ChrisAshton]

I completely agree with Yossi here; no need to go blocking that page at all.

I can't really add any further value to the points he has covered but one other part of your question suggested that perhaps you're looking at this the wrong way (and it's very common, don't worry!). Rather than having your site stay as-is and just obscuring the bad parts of it from search engines, the thought process should really around creating a great website instead.

If you're ever considering blocking a page from search engines, the first step should always be "why am I blocking this page(s); could I just fix the issue instead?".

For example, you asked if this might help with soft 404s. Rather than trying to find a way to hide these soft 404s, spend that time fixing them instead!

[MarketingChimp10]

Great Advice Yossi & Chris. Thanks for taking the time to reply. I will have to dig into the Google Guidelines for additional information, but both of your points are valid. I think I was looking at robots.txt the wrong way. Thanks Again Guys!

[Yoav-Blustein]

Yup.. also don't forget that robots.txt is just a "recommendation" for robots. they do not obey it
Basically Google does what ever it wants to
Also if you want to block a folder so its inner content wont be "accessed", in case anylink will point to this page, even if its coming from outside of your domain, it will be indexed.. Although the content of it wont be shown on search results but it will show up with a notice stating that the site content is blocked due to the sites robots.txt..

best of luck!