In SEO, breadcrumbs are links that let users track their path from the page they are currently viewing on your site, to your homepage. They are an important piece of a well-designed website, as these navigational aids help improve user experience while helping search engines understand your site’s structure.
They are usually located at the top of a website and denote a users’ position relative to the home page. A typical breadcrumb might look like:
Home >> Blog >> What are Breadcrumbs.
With each instance along the path being a clickable link that aids navigation.
Types of Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are often classified into three types.
• Location breadcrumbs: In website navigation structure today, they tell the position of a page within the site’s hierarchy. They help users visit a page that hosts similar sites.
• Path breadcrumbs: These are probably the most common type, and the one discussed above. They show the path a user has taken through your site.
• Keyword breadcrumbs: Similar to location breadcrumbs, they use keywords instead of page titles. Most often seen in e-commerce websites.
Breadcrumbs, UX, and SEO
It doesn’t take much to see why breadcrumbs are useful to users. They give them an extra way to orient themselves in your content, and navigate it more efficiently, letting the retrace their path or navigating to similar pages. The results of smoother navigation through a site is often an improved UX.
On the SEO side, breadcrumbs give crawlers easy access to the inner and outer pages of your site. They can also be used to relate individual pages to specific keywords and improve the internal linking structure.