Semalt Knows How To Improve Your Site Ranking With The Help Of Breadcrumb Navigation
What are breadcrumbs?
Breadcrumbs are website navigational elements we use to create better user experiences (UX) and improve how easy it is for web crawlers to move through your site. Breadcrumbs are small text paths often located at the beginning of webpages when the user loads a site. For Yoast.com as an example, you will find the path to your Yoast SEO Plugin page. This breadcrumb trail immediately shows where you are on your website—every path listed as a breadcrumb is clickable back to the home / landing page.
When it comes to SEO, there are a lot of elements to consider. For example, you will continually hear things like keywords, links, in-depth content, and user experience as elements that affect your ability to rank on search engines such as Google. It's as difficult as going to the fast-food spot and having to decide between bagels or hot dogs. However, for many, this will be among the first few articles they've come across that mentions breadcrumbs. And NO, these aren't the tasty breading for your fried chicken.
There are still tens of thousands of websites that do not have breadcrumbs, which is a huge mistake. They fail to realize how much something so "insignificant" can have a significant impact on their SEO and UX. We understand that it may sound like extra work; however, implementing bread crumbs isn't a difficult process.
Types of breadcrumbs
Not all breadcrumbs are equal. There are three primary categories of bread crumbs, and each serves a particular purpose before making up your mind on your preferred type of breadcrumb.
1. First, we have the Hierarchy based breadcrumbs (a.k.a. the location-based bread crumb):
This is the most common type of breadcrumb, and it tells users where they are in the site structure. It also provides them with the necessary information to navigate back to the home page. For example, you will see something like: Home> Shoes> Leather > Men.
2. Attribute-Based Breadcrumbs:
These are mostly seen on e-commerce sites where a user has searched a particular product, and the breadcrumbs are made up of the product attributes. Example: Home> product category> age> Size> Gender>…
3. History-Based Bread Crumbs:
It shows users what other pages they have visited as your browser history does. For example, if you search for articles relating to SEO on a website, and you read three articles, your breadcrumbs will look something like: Home> SEO> Article 1> Article 2> Current page.
Benefits of having breadcrumbs on your site
Ever since we began, we have been introducing you to breadcrumbs, and here we will be explaining to your just what breadcrumbs do to your site. If you aren't sure how including breadcrumbs to your site can help, here are some reasons why it is worth the effort.
1. Breadcrumbs Improve UX
Breadcrumbs make it easier for visitors to navigate the website.
This also goes a long way in ensuring users to browse other sections of the site, improving your bounce through rate as well. For example, you want to learn about Semalt, you first head on to our website and end up on our landing page, giving you an introduction to Semalt and our history. With breadcrumbs, it will be easy for users to navigate to our about us page, history, or our service page. It encourages users to move around a website by finding the pages they want to read up. Hopefully, using this can lead visitors deeper into your website.
2. Improve your site ranking
Breadcrumbs are great UX tools, and as we've learned, UX is an essential ranking factor. If you are doing both great user experience as well as breadcrumbs, you make Google happier. According to Google, their algorithm uses breadcrumbs to categorize and contextualize content. In 2018, Google added breadcrumbs to their official website and their result pages making it an important feature to feature on your site.
Breadcrumbs are specifically beneficial to local or state level pages. A recent case study found that using breadcrumbs on a website can help it crack the top 10 results in Google.
3. Keep people onsite longer
Bounce through rates may not be a direct ranking factor, but it still influences your SEO performance. Having a high bounce through rate can also indicate better UX experience, and when your UX has an issue, breadcrumbs can help solve such problems.
If you are looking to buy a new pair of slippers, you find a pair, but you do not like it, maybe you prefer sneakers. Using breadcrumbs, you can easily navigate back to the footwear section and select sneakers instead of slippers.
This is great for such an e-commerce website because it keeps the traffic, and it eliminates the need for users to go back to Google and end up visiting another website for products or services that you offer.
How to implement breadcrumbs on WordPress
As we have established, breadcrumbs are a useful navigation tool, and we will be showing you some ways to add this feature to your website.
- Use Yoast SEO: if you're already using Yoast to optimize your website, adding breadcrumbs will only require a few steps. You should log in and follow these steps to implement breadcrumbs:
- Log into your account on the WordPress website.
- Click on SEO.
- Click on 'search appearance.'
- Click on the breadcrumbs tag.
- Toggle the 'breadcrumbs' switch.
- If enabled, configure your setting to your preference.
- Click save changes.
- Show the blog page feature.
- WordPress plugins: if you use WordPress, there are several plugins you can use to add breadcrumbs. Select a plugin that is easy to implement and generate locational breadcrumbs that you can customize to meet your need.
- WooComerce Breadcrumb Plugin: if you run an e-commerce site that uses WooCommerce, consider using the breadcrumbs plugins they come with. Using their plugin allows you to restyle the default breadcrumbs.
- Finally, your site builder or WordPress theme may have a built-in breadcrumb feature. For example, some WordPress plugins have their breadcrumb option.
- If you're trying to add breadcrumbs to Wix or Squarespace site, you will need to add your breadcrumbs manually by coding.
Common mistakes when using breadcrumbs for SEO
There are certain instances where implementing breadcrumbs could be harmful to a website. However, you shouldn't bother as we will highlight some of the common mistakes you should avoid.
- Do not repeat your Navigation Bar: It is understandable that you forget yourself and just duplicate your navigation bar. Although your bread crumbs and navigation bar are similar, there are areas where they differ. There is no need to add more codding if it doesn't help.
- Don't forget about your navigation bar while chasing breadcrumbs: While you do not want to repeat navigation, you also shouldn't have your website depend solely on breadcrumbs. The navigation bar serves as a supplement, and your Breadcrumbs shouldn't replace them.
- Using the wrong type of breadcrumbs: Location breadcrumbs might be the most popular type of breadcrumbs; however, they may not the best type of breadcrumbs for your website. Do not use breadcrumbs if your site doesn't use an organized structure where most of your pages fit only a few categories. In such cases, a history-based breadcrumb is a more appropriate choice.
Understanding your breadcrumbs
Bread crumbs can be considered as the butter you apply to your bread when having breakfast. Or whenever you decide to have bread. It is the topping on your donut and the fat to your bacon. Do you get the point? It is the minor underground factor that can change your website for the best. It can help you stand out and appear on SERP.
Though implementing breadcrumbs doesn't mean you have 50% more traffic or some other immediate improvement to your SEO performance, they help the search engine and your users. This indirectly improves the SEO performance of your website.
Despite using breadcrumbs, certain websites still get lost in the woods. Keep in mind that getting lost is not something you want happening to your traffic because if it happens, you lose your traffic as they will all head back to Google SERP. Use breadcrumbs to make your website easy to understand and navigate. Your visitors can also deduce the purpose of your website in the shortest time possible, which is great. Head on to Semalt and have your Breadcrumbs activated to make things easier for everyone.