What is breadcrumbs Navigation that visually indicates the location of the user who visited the website in an easy-to-understand manner.
Breadcrumbs improve usability and crawlability, so you can expect good SEO effects.
On the other hand, without breadcrumbs, visitors will not know the location and attributes of the page they are viewing.
Also, crawlers have less chance to follow links, making it harder to find pages and recognize attributes.
In this case, usability and crawlability will decrease, so you will not be able to expect good SEO effects.
To avoid these bad situations, understand the basics of breadcrumbs and use them appropriately.
Based on this point, this time, I would like to explain the points that are easy for beginners to understand, focusing on the basics of a website, such as the definition of breadcrumbs.
What is a breadcrumb?
Breadcrumbs accurately tell visitors and search engines the hierarchy and categories that apply to the page they are currently viewing. Is it thematic content? such asIt helps you understand what the page is about.
And when setting up a breadcrumb list, it is basic to display the route from the top page to the current page with a link in an easy-to-understand manner as follows.
Of course, the purpose of this breadcrumb list is not to get users to click through the site, so it is also important to pay attention to the global menu in the first place and to create an easy-to-use UI.
Also, you may have trouble deciding whether or not to display the current page in this breadcrumb, but it is better to choose a presentation that does not cause confusion for the user. (You don’t need to add a link to the current page, so that’s probably where you can tell it’s the current page.)
Especially recently, the landing page on the site is not always the top page, so when considering usability, there are many cases where it is easier to understand what the article is about if there is a breadcrumb list. It is good to display it.
Read Also: What is a meta description? How to write effectively for SEO!
Breadcrumb Name Origin
Breadcrumbs got its name from inspired by the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel”.
In this Hansel and Gretel story, there is an episode in which the main characters leave breadcrumbs on the path they took so that they would not get lost when they entered the forest.
The “breadcrumbs” that appear in this episode show the current location of the main character’s brother and the route they have followed.
If you replace this with a website, the “breadcrumbs” will play the role of showing the user’s current location and the directory hierarchy that has been traced.
In other words, the word “breadcrumb” that appears in the episode is the origin of the name of the breadcrumb list.
Breadcrumb type
There are three main types of breadcrumbs.
Positional breadcrumbs
What is Positional Breadcrumbs? A breadcrumb that shows where a user is currently in the hierarchical structure of a website.
This breadcrumb is the most commonly used, especially on sites with multiple content and many layers like our blog “Infowikiz”.
Also, since positional breadcrumbs are static, the wording of the anchor text doesn’t change.
So you can easily go back to the previous hierarchy or higher level hierarchy with one click. Positional breadcrumbs are a type of breadcrumb that is easy to improve user convenience
Attribute type breadcrumbs
What is attribute type breadcrumbs? Breadcrumbs that change constantly based on user interaction and act like a search filter.
This breadcrumb is displayed on Amazon’s product category page.
Attributed breadcrumbs are also dynamic, changing according to the attributes of the page the user is viewing.
So, on the TV Recorder category page, you’ll see a filtered list specifically for TV recorders, such as accessories and home projectors.
The earphones/headphones category page shows a filtered list specifically for earphones/headphones, such as connection type, noise control, and model.
As you can see, there is no function to easily return to the accessed page, but the type of attribute breadcrumbs that allows users to customize and search for “what they want to buy” with filters.
By the way, car sales sites are also examples of using attribute-type breadcrumbs.
Path breadcrumbs
What is a path breadcrumb It is simply a navigation link that lists what the user has followed, also called a “history breadcrumb”.
This breadcrumb has almost the same function as the browser’s “back” button, and is rarely used in recent home pages.
Also, a user who directly accesses a page deeper in the site hierarchy will not see the path breadcrumb because they have never navigated through the site.
In this case, it is difficult for the user to move to a higher level hierarchy, so the user’s convenience is low.
As you can see, the type of breadcrumb that is prone to UX problems is path breadcrumbs.
Benefits of breadcrumbs
There are several benefits of this breadcrumb.
Expected SEO effect
Benefits of breadcrumbs include: There is no doubt that it has some SEO effect.However, cramming internal links by unnaturally stuffing your keywords into categories you deem important won’t do you any good, and probably won’t rank well. (It means that countermeasures of the superficial side are not effective.)
Therefore, the category name is of course very important, but the site structure should also be emphasized as well. On top of that, by setting internal links in the breadcrumbs, the site / site that is easy to see for both visitors and search engines. This makes the site easy to use.
In other words, you shouldn’t expect SEO effects from breadcrumbs, and the most important thing is to set them up correctly as an indirect effect, so don’t expect meaningless effects.
Rather than that, it is better to write breadcrumbs based on user convenience and ease of understanding the site structure, which will lead to crawler optimization, make it easier to follow the target page, and organize categories. In the long run, it can be said that categorization that is easy to understand is more effective for breadcrumbs.
Improved usability
Benefits of breadcrumbs include: It can also contribute to usability.
This is because users select and land the content they are looking for by referring to the page titles and descriptions displayed on the search results page. What category does the article fall under? This is because it can be a simple hint, and it will also function as part of the global menu after page transition.
Also, simply writing breadcrumbs using tags such as ul may not display well, so if you want to display breadcrumbs on the search results page, use structured data correctly. recommend.
By the way, if you write breadcrumbs without using structured data, if there is content listed before it, the search engine will give priority to it and it will not be displayed correctly. (In this case, it is not uncommon for the URL hierarchy to be displayed as a breadcrumb.)
Therefore, for search users, after transitioning to the search results page, it affects these two ways, and what category does the article fall under on the search results page? You can judge at a glance, and you can of course know which page in the site you are viewing even after page transition. (It’s also very easy to move to that category, isn’t it?)
Good impact on crawler patrol
Benefits of breadcrumbs include: It also helps the crawlers that need to be indexed by search engines.
This cannot be said to be crawler optimization if you set up internal links more than necessary, and it also leads to unnecessary crawling. Therefore, it is important to keep the categories as simple as possible.
It is necessary to understand that the crawler does not crawl all pages, and if the site structure is too complicated, it will be difficult for the crawler to crawl.
By making this an easy-to-understand site structure, evaluations that are scattered in various categories can be gathered into one category, which will increase expertise and make the site structure highly convenient for browsing users. is also possible.
So if the pages you visit are in one category, the crawler only has to crawl through that one breadcrumb, making it easier to crawl each page that falls into that one. In that sense, it can be said that a simple structure has a positive effect on crawler patrol.
Things to keep in mind when creating breadcrumbs
There are a few things to keep in mind when creating breadcrumbs.
- Make your home easier to understand with web icons
- Use icons such as arrows to clarify parent-child relationships between categories
- Don’t link if you include the current page title
- Less noticeable than main content
- Clarify and clarify the structure of your site
- Make your breadcrumbs relevant
especially It is important that it does not stand out from the main content.
On the other hand, if it is too conspicuous, it may affect the first view and you may not be able to read it.
To avoid this, usually use a simple text format with easy-to-understand colors and underlined links, or use the css standardized on your site.
Conclusion: Understand the Basics of Breadcrumbs and Use them Properly
So, this time, I explained in detail about the “breadcrumbs”, which can be used as an internal link, as a marker for which page the landing user is viewing on the site.
In this way, breadcrumbs have only merits for both users and crawlers, so let’s set them up in a list format using structured data so that they can be displayed on the search results page.
Being aware of this will lead to an easy-to-understand site structure, and narrowing down the categories will have a positive impact on the high level of expertise.
Therefore, keep the categories simple rather than subdivided site structure, and if there is a group of articles with content that you absolutely want to archive, use tags well and it will not affect the breadcrumbs, so try to use them properly. I think it’s good.