Breadcrumbs in SEO: Definition and What It Has to Do with SEO

Every website owner needs to keep up with the latest SEO trends and techniques to improve their online visibility and attract more visitors. There are plenty of SEO elements that can help your website rank better, including breadcrumbs navigation.

Breadcrumbs play a crucial role in SEO, where they help search engines better understand the structure of your website and ultimately boost your rankings. In this article, you will learn what breadcrumbs are and how they help your SEO efforts. Read on to find out more!

What Is Breadcrumb?

Do you ever notice the little lines of text that appear at the top of some pages? That’s what we call a breadcrumb trail. Breadcrumb trails are small text links that help users navigate your site easily. 

It looks like this: Home > SEO Guides > What Is SEO? 

They show the users where they are on the website and where they can go to reach the previous page they were on. Every step is a clickable link that can take the users back to the main page.

You can also find breadcrumbs in Google search results. When you search for a query, Google displays a set of links under the site’s name. It will help the users understand where the page sits on your website.

You might be wondering why we call it a breadcrumb trail. It goes back to the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. In this story, Hansel left breadcrumbs behind along their paths so that they could find their way back if they were lost. This idea of a breadcrumb eventually became the inspiration for the trail we see on websites today.

Why Does Breadcrumb Matter in SEO?

A breadcrumb may look like a simple piece of text, but it holds great importance in SEO. It helps your users navigate your site easily without any hassles. To understand why you should consider using breadcrumbs for your website, let’s take a look at the following benefits.

1. Improving User Experience (UX)

You can improve the user experience by adding a breadcrumbs website design. Of course, the main aim of any website is to provide users with a pleasant experience. However, imagine the frustration of a user who is not able to find their way back to the previous or main pages of the website. 

This is why breadcrumbs are crucial for your website. By providing a breadcrumb, you will be able to help users navigate through your site with a single click. This will improve the user experience of your website and increase the chances of users returning to your site.

2. Engage Visitors on Your Site Longer

Bounce rate may not be a ranking factor, but lowering it will surely help your SEO efforts in many ways, one of which is making sure that your visitors stay on your site for a longer time. The longer a user stays on your site, the higher the chances of your site ranking better in the SERPs.

For example, a user lands on the Proud Angeles website, a streetwear brand in Saudi Arabia, looking for a t-shirt. However, the user is not able to find the t-shirt in their size and decides to look for another t-shirt. 

By using a breadcrumb, they can go back to the t-shirt category and continue searching for a different piece. This will allow the user to browse your site further rather than hitting the back button and leaving to find another site.

3. Enhancing Internal Linking

A breadcrumb can also enhance the internal linking of a website. Internal linking is the practice of linking pages on your website to one another. These links can also be used to improve your site’s SEO. 

Google uses internal links to determine the relationship between pages on your website and the hierarchy of your content. Therefore, implementing this navigation aid will help Google crawlers better understand the structure of your website. 

4. Rich Snippets on SERPs

Breadcrumbs in SEO benefit both user experience and search engine results. Not only does it help users to navigate easily, but it also provides rich snippets, which is a feature on Google search results. 

Please note that in order to display breadcrumbs as rich snippets on SERPs, you need to make sure the breadcrumb is visible to users as per Google guidelines. Faking or hiding breadcrumbs will lead to a manual penalty. 

This means that your website will be disqualified from showing any rich snippets in SERPs and eventually decrease the click-through rate. Therefore, every schema markup needs to reflect the actual breadcrumb trail users can see on the page.

How to Create Breadcrumbs Elements in the Page

You can display the breadcrumbs trail on top of your page using some basic CSS and HTML code. We'll start by using HTML to create the links. 

We can organize these links in an unordered list, with each list item representing a link in the breadcrumb trail. The last item in the list will show the current page. Look at the HTML template that you can use, created by HubSpot.

Note that you also need to style the HTML to make it look like a breadcrumbs trail. You can do this with CSS to style the appearance of the breadcrumbs, including fonts, colors, spacing, and separators. It will also ensure the breadcrumbs are easy to read and navigate on different screen sizes.

Now, let's add some CSS styles to the HTML you created earlier using the HubSpot template above.

Combining HTML and CSS, you have created a simple breadcrumb navigation that you can use on any website. Take a look at the final result below the template.

How to Create Breadcrumbs Snippet

To create a breadcrumb, you also need to build structured data to display a breadcrumb snippet in the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Structured data is a standardized format that contains information about a page and the classification of its content. Here are a few steps you can take to build, test, and release structured data.

1. Add the Required Properties

The very first step is to add the required properties. In this step, you need to determine which structured data formats are relevant to your content. It can be a JSON-LD format, microdata format, or RDF format.

Based on the format you are using, learn where you can insert structured data into your website. If you are using CMS, you can simplify the process using a plugin that is integrated with your CMS. On the other hand, if you are using JavaScript, you need to insert the code directly.

2. Follow Google Guidelines

To be able to display your breadcrumb in Google Search results, you need to follow Google guidelines about content policies for Google Search, which include spam policies. 

If your page contains structured data issues, such as it is not representative of the content or is hidden from the user, then it can lead to manual action. This means that your page will not be eligible for rich results in Google Search, though it will still be ranked for the search. 

3. Validate Your Code

The next step is to validate your code using the Rich Results Test and fix any critical errors that may have been found. You can also consider fixing non-critical errors that may be identified in the tool to help you improve your structured data. Keep in mind that this is not necessary to pass the requirement for rich results.

4. Deploy a Few Pages

Then, you can launch a few pages with the structured data as well as utilize the URL Inspection tool to help you understand how Google sees your page. Make sure that your page is open to Google and not restricted by a robots.txt file, the noindex tag, or login requirements.

If your page looks fine, you can ask Google to recrawl and reindex your URLs. This process may take several days for Google to find and crawl your page after it ipublished.

5. Submit a Sitemap

It is recommended that you submit a sitemap to inform Google of future changes. A sitemap is a file that provides information about your site’s pages, videos, images, etc. It also provides information about the relationship between those files. You can automate this process using the Search Console Sitemap API.

Conclusion

Those are the A to Z of the breadcrumbs that you need to know to get your head around it. This navigation aid is meant to help your website’s visitors find their way around quickly and easily. It may not be a magic solution for higher rankings, but it enhances the user experience and aids search engines in processing site structure, which contributes to better SEO performance.

While breadcrumbs may look like a simple navigation tool, it is actually the backbone of your website. The breadcrumb trail provides a more holistic view of your website structure and how it is interconnected. To get the most out of this, you can consult an SEO specialist on how to best use breadcrumbs to your advantage.

SEO Services by cmlabs is ready to help you with your SEO needs and ensure that your website is optimized for the search engines. Our team at cmlabs is made up of SEO experts who are committed to helping you rank higher on the search engines by maximizing your website’s potential.

So, don’t wait any longer and contact our marketing team today to get special offers. Let’s take your website to the next level and unlock its full potential together!