When it comes to SEO, there’s a lot to take in and to do. Keyword links and in-depth content all have a say in your ability to rank with the search engines. Competition is fierce and everybody is jockeying for position. So what is breadcrumb navigation?
Breadcrumbs
Is a navigational feature for your website, and they can have a huge impact on your SEO and your user experience. But there are still hundreds upon hundreds of websites that don’t implement breadcrumbs at all! Which can be a huge mistake and it’s not just because they can have an impact in your SEO but also because they are relatively easy to implement on your site. The term is borrowed from the tale of Hansel and Gretel where the children dropped a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way back.
So below is all you need to know about breadcrumbs what they are, what they do, how they can improve your SEO and mistakes you can easily avoid.
Breadcrumbs And SEO
Breadcrumbs are the website links that allows a user to track where they are on a website and how far they are away from the homepage
You can usually find them at the top of a website or just under the websites navigation bar. As with internal links they help keep the user on a website and help them find the information they are searching for.
The breadcrumbs make it easy to backtrack to a previous page if I need to and are a useful user experience feature that makes site navigation much easier, but they also do a lot more. With the recent changes to Google, breadcrumbs are becoming even more important as now they can impact SEO directly and we will tell you how they will.
Google now displays breadcrumbs in their search results and uses breadcrumbs to categorise information in the search results. Breadcrumbs can help users navigate around your website and in return help Google categorise and navigate your website. So breadcrumbs are becoming a very important part of any SEO strategy
What Breadcrumbs Will Work For You?
Not all breadcrumbs work the same way as each has its own purpose, so its best to figure out which type of breadcrumbs will be the best for your website
- Hierarchy-Based Breadcrumbs (Location Based Breadcrumbs)
The most common breadcrumb that tell the user where they are on the site and also tells them how to get back to the homepage.
For example hmv looks like this hmv > hmv offers >Vinyl 2 for £30
- Attribute-Based Breadcrumbs
This is commonly used on ecommerce sites to show the users journey .
For example Office, looks a little bit like this: Home > Mens > Boots > DM eight lace boots
- History-Based Breadcrumbs
Show users what other pages on the site they have visited and is very similar to browsing history and is used as ‘Back To Results’
For example, on the Marks & Spencer site it might look a little bit like this: Home > SEO > woman >coats & jackets > back to search results
When it comes to ecommerce many companies think that breadcrumb navigation is a bit old hat and not for them but in 2021 according to Directline Development they are integral part to future SEO
Author
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Mac McCarthy has been involved in the digital marketing field for over 20 years, having worked with the Jeeves, Alta Vista and Yahoo search engines in the early 90s through to the modern current day Google and Bing platforms.
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A keen follower of search engine algorithm updates and trends, he works and advises on digital strategies for a variety on SME’s and more recently the World Wildlife Fund, the single largest animal welfare charity in the world.
Qualifications include Google Advanced Analytics, Google Ads, Google Search and the Google Partnership Program.