What are Breadcrumbs & Why are They Important for SEO

Breadcrumb is a link or path, often shown near the upper side of the page close to the site menu or primary navigation. Generally, you can find breadcrumbs on websites that have a large amount of data or content arranged in a well-organized manner.

Breadcrumbs is an alternative navigation system that shows a user’s location in a site or web app. The breadcrumbs of SEO are important because :

• Breadcrumbs are a primary element of an SEO-friendly website.  
• They make navigation easier – It is the main role of breadcrumbs, and because of this, they are preferred in a website. 
• They attract people to stick to similar pages of the website, and thus cut down the bounce rate. 
• They are good enough for SEO techniques to draw traffic to the website.

What is a Breadcrumb on a Website

When you see the word website breadcrumb or breadcrumb trail, it refers to the secondary navigation system of a website or application. It presents a sub-navigation about the website and permits users to follow their path while browsing a website or using an application. Generally, you can find it below the original navigation bar, and it actually appears as other navigation bars.

When to Apply Breadcrumbs

• Breadcrumbs deepen the User Experience if you divide the content into subdivisions and are grouped by associated types. 
• If the content available on the website is not organized, breadcrumbs are not at all efficient.

Read More: SEO Basics: Complete Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Different Types of Breadcrumbs

There are different types of breadcrumbs. The three most common types of breadcrumbs are explained below:

1. Hierarchy Based Breadcrumbs

These are very common, and it depends upon us how we apply breadcrumbs on our website. The bread crumbs help you to locate the exact location where you are in a website structure. And how many steps do you need to get back to the homepage or the starting page. 

For Example : Cart > Billing > Shipping > Delivered

2. Attribute Based Breadcrumbs

Attribute-based breadcrumbs are experienced normally when a user is looking out products on an e-commerce website, and the breadcrumb path is created of the listed products. 

For Example: Home > Commodity > Category > Gender > Fitting Size > Colour.

3. History-Based Breadcrumbs

They are also known as path-based breadcrumbs. They represent the followed by the user while navigating through the website. Nowadays, just for your knowledge, it is recognized as the inferior breadcrumb type. This is because it does not enhance the representation of any website. To navigate through the website, we can make use of the arrow buttons/keys to go forward and backward.

Read More: What is Keyword Density- A Complete Guide

Importance of Breadcrumb in SEO

With reference to SEO, breadcrumb Seo best practice navigation mainly helps in contributing to the user overall experience. It serves well for surfing through the website pages. As a result, making it easier to navigate and can attract more organic visitors. Hence, leads to engaging the target audience for a longer period of time and navigating more pages. Because of this, the bounce rates get down, at last, it is ultimately good for SEO.

1. Higher ranking of your website in Search Engine Result Page:

Breadcrumbs help in informing the search engine and organizing the content of your page for search engines. This, in turn, helps in higher ranking of the webpage on the search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher rank will attract more traffic to your website and will boost sales.

2. Reduced Bounce Rates:

The bounce rate can never be considered as a direct ranking component, but it closely affects SEO. An issue with the UX  of a website will show a higher bounce rate, this can be fixed by applying breadcrumbs.

3. Controlling Behavioral Factors in Growth:

Using a hierarchy-based breadcrumb, you can fix any representation issues that users generally face. This type of breadcrumbs makes it easier for the user to locate their position within the website’s organized structure. 

By applying an attribute-based breadcrumb, you can serve your readers to explore what is available on your website, hence, making the hunting process effortless.

Both the above-mentioned breadcrumbs will ensure that you engage your users on the website and encourage them to spend more time on your website. To conclude, breadcrumb helps you to design an effortless interface for users so that they spend more time on your website and get knowledge about your brand.

4. Understanding the Structure of Your Website:

Breadcrumb makes surfing easier for the user through a website. It provides the user a  clear thought of the page to hop onto. This facilitates the user with less time taken to decide whether to stay on this webpage or visit the next page.

5. Modified UX

Since the breadcrumbs aid the surfing of users, they also work as a driving force for users to surf through the leftover sections of the website.

Multiple Ways to Apply Breadcrumbs in WordPress :

You can easily apply breadcrumbs to your website. As we have already covered, what are breadcrumbs and the importance of breadcrumbs in SEO? Now we will proceed with What is breadcrumbs in WordPress site?

You can apply breadcrumbs to the WordPress site using different SEO tools. Some of them are described below:

1. Yoast SEO:

Most individuals are familiar with the Yoast SEO tools, and adding breadcrumbs is an easygoing process. To apply these breadcrumbs, you just need to log in and follow the steps mentioned on the screen to apply the breadcrumb feature to your website.

2.  WordPress Plugins:

WordPress also renders an arrangement of plugins, which can help you in applying breadcrumbs in a few steps. Some SEO experts propose Breadcrumb NavXT for the ease of carrying it out, and it helps you to customize it according to your requirement.

3. Rank Math

You can hit Rank Math breadcrumbs general settings through the WordPress menu. It contains the settings that affect the total SEO performance of your website, links, images. If you wish to surf through the General settings, you can follow the below path:

WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math 

Applying breadcrumbs SEO to your website not only makes it organized, but also makes it easier for users to navigate through your site. It also aids you in finding what the users are looking for and also assists to modify the search engine result page ranking.