JohnnyScience

This is currently my new robots.txt file I created with Yoast SEO:

​​​User-agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /readme.html
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

Sitemap: https://www.ohiocannabis.com/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.ohiocannabis.com/news-sitemap.xml

It seems all of my crawl issues are related to images for the most part.

But for some reason when I click on “See Live Robots.txt file” in the Google Robots.txt tester, it is still populating this old robots.txt file:

Sitemap: https://www.ohiocannabis.com/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.ohiocannabis.com/news-sitemap.xml
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

I’ve verified the actual robots.txt file in FTP and it shows the updated robots.txt file that Yoast SEO has created.

So why is this “See Live Robots.txt File” option still showing the old, default file?

Shouldn’t the Allow: /wp-content/uploads/ clear up all of these image crawl issues now that I’ve added that specific Allow to the robots.txt file?

Also, is it necessary to have both of those Sitemaps? Is the news-sitemap.xml really needed? It was auto-generated by Yoast SEO when I had it create the robots.txt file.

I hope someone can help me get this fixed already, I’ve been getting destroyed with this terrible Indexing for over a year. I even get errors that my Home page isn’t Indexed!

Finally, when it comes to “Properties” in Google Search Console, I was originally told to add the following 4 Properties by someone:

https://www.ohiocannabis.comm
http://www.ohiocannabis.com
https://ohiocannabis.com
http://ohiocannabis.com

I’ve come to realize only the https://www.ohiocannabis.com had any real stats, the other 3 Properties literally had 4 crawls on them.

I did notice that my robots.txt file was only updated on the https://www.ohiocannabis.com URL, for some reason the other 3 kept the old/default robots.txt file

Could perhaps this be part of the problems I’ve been having?

I just deleted the other 3 as I didn’t think they were doing anything based on their stats and clearly seemed to be negatively affecting Indexing with the old/default robots.txt file

Why wouldn’t these 3 other Properties have their robots.txt files updated when I had Yoast SEO create a new one for me?

Should I add them back?

Sorry this is so long, but I’m really in a bad place with SEO & Indexing and it’s really been devastating to my business this last year by having very low traffic.

Thank you.

[Moderator note: Please, No bumping.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Steven Stern (sterndata).
• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Steven Stern (sterndata).

Also, when it comes to my Doctor Directory, (www.ohiocannabis.com/doctors) I add the proper MD or DO title after their name as the actual Page Title and try to keep the Page Title as simple as possible:

Dr. Alan Wine, MD

https://www.ohiocannabis.com/doctors/dr-alan-wine-md/

Dr. Muna Orra, DO

https://www.ohiocannabis.com/doctors/dr-muna-orra-do/

These doctor profiles don’t really need to have the city or the company name in the Page Title or anything else like I do with the Dispensaries page. Just their simple name is fine as I add their company they work for, Ohio Marijuana Card is the only doctors I list and can keep the Page Title simple and add Ohio Marijuana Card’s info to the various parts of the doctors Profile Page.

However, for the Focus Keyphrase, this is how I have them since they work for Ohio Marijuana Card:

Dr. Alan Wine MD Ohio Marijuana Card

Dr. Muna Orra DO Ohio Marijuana Card

Is that a bad idea to include the MD & DO Doctor title in the Focus Keyphrase? Is it just cluttering it up?

Do you think the word “Dr.” should also be included in their Focus Keyphrase, including the period? Or should I remove it?

Then for the SEO Title and Snippet Preview it gets created as:

Dr. Alan Wine, MD | Ohio Marijuana Card | OhioCannabis.com

So does all of this look like it works together pretty well right?

I’m only getting orange SEO scores for the doctors this way.

Usually it tells me since some of these are 5 words in a Keyphrase, that it’s bad, but I really don’t know how to get around ONLY using 4 words for the Keyphrase when Page & SEO Titles are this longer format:

Dr. Muna Orra DO Ohio Marijuana Card

Do you think adding the MD & DO to the slug is a good idea too?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by JohnnyScience.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Steven Stern (sterndata).

Ok great, thanks for the update!

I will go back through and delete all of the parenthesis within all of the Focus Keyphrases then.

Thanks!

Ok thanks for the info!

Hmm. I don’t think the regular Disclaimer is what I’m looking for then.

I am being required to add an FDA disclosure to the bottom of my website, but I really only need it to populate on the Shop’s page and all product pages.

Any ideas on how to accomplish what I need to do with a foot specific to the Shop & products within it?

Sorry I wasn’t ready to close this yet. Haven’t had a chance to catch up on everything.

Ahh I definitely don’t want to use parentheses for the Focus Keyphrase then.

I highly doubt people will use them during a search.

So I would like to keep my Page Title with the parentheses: Strawberry Fields Dispensaries (Monroe)

Because listings looks better when displayed on the dispensary directory page:

http://www.ohiocannabis.com/dispensaries

But keeping the Page Title & Focus Keyphrase the same is a requirement to get a green light

Now I know that you don’t have to chase the magical green lights, but is it really ok for me to use parentheses on the Page Title and not the Focus Keyphrase?

Or should I do away with the parentheses all together and instead do page names like:

Strawberry Fields Dispensaries – Monroe

Any thoughts?

Ahh thanks for that info/link @devnihil it was helpful to understand the green bullets.

I will try to still get as many green bullets as possible of course.

Thanks for the info!

Hmm so I just tried that and it doesn’t seem to be working for me.

I edited my already published “dispensaries” page permalink to dispensaries

The SEO title was already set

As soon as I went back to update the slug, it was changing the permalink.

So how do I get it to stick?