Breadcrumbs are a valuable navigation feature for businesses looking to accelerate their SEO and digital marketing results .
This “trail” shows your website user the entire path they took to reach the current page. The feature is an excellent way to improve the user experience and position content on Google.
Through breadcrumbs, your domain categories and subcategories and strategic keywords are organized more efficiently. This way, your website signals Google to scan your posts and optimize the positioning of content.
But after all, how to use breadcrumbs properly and improve the results of your pages in search engines? Keep reading our article to discover this and much more!
What are Breadcrumbs?
In a literal translation, Breadcrumb means “bread crumb”. In the digital context, breadcrumbs are the entire path taken by the user while browsing a given website.
This way, the internet user has a clear view of the pages they have visited and can access each one of them easily.
This feature is extremely important in e-commerce and marketplaces, for example. With it, potential customers can access as many products and categories as they want without any major worries.
Breadcrumbs are usually located in a horizontal or vertical bar at the top of the site, ensuring easy navigation.
However, there are two main categories of Breadcrumbs and it is essential to understand them to avoid further doubts. Let’s go.
Main types of Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are typically presented in two main ways: breadcrumbs based on the path taken and those related to the site hierarchy.
- Path-based breadcrumbs: represent the entire path that the user traveled in the domain. Thus, each page accessed before arriving at the current one is presented.
- Breadcrumbs based on hierarchy: they are arranged considering the website’s categories and subcategories. Therefore, even if you access 10 different articles in the same section of a blog, Breadcrumbs only displays the text you are currently reading.
Therefore, when accessing a website with structural navigation, you can identify what types of Breadcrumbs are used.
What are the advantages of using Breadcrumbs?
It’s time to talk about the benefits of using Breadcrumbs on your website. Let’s go to the main ones:
SEO Optimization
SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) is a set of practices to position a page at the top of Google, Bing and other search engines.
Therefore, by implementing Breadcrumbs on your domain, you optimize your SEO by ensuring more fluid and transparent navigation.
For starters, Breadcrumbs help search engines identify your pages easily. They create clear paths and reinforce domain categories and subcategories, an important positioning factor for search tools.
Furthermore, the fact of having relevant keywords (such as blog categories and content keywords ) also stimulates positioning and relevance in the eyes of the algorithms.
Additionally, breadcrumb navigation offers a better user experience, which reduces your bounce rate and increases the time spent on each page.
Finally, this feature takes up very little space on the website, which helps with loading speed. This factor, one of the main Web Vitals, is of great importance to ensure good optimization for SEO.
Improves user experience (UX)
One of the main benefits of joining Breadcrumbs is the improvement it provides to the user experience.
After all, given that the visitor can navigate through the website pages in fewer clicks, the experience becomes simpler and easier.
Enhances the customer experience
Your customers also have a lot to gain from using Breadcrumbs. With them, you make your solutions available in a pleasant and intuitive way and bring the consumer closer to the purchasing decision.
Furthermore, it also allows you to return to previously accessed pages with a single click, generating an intuitive shopping experience.
Good practices related to the use of breadcrumb navigation
Knowing how important it is to use Breadcrumbs on your website, let’s learn a little more about applying the resource.
We have separated the essential good practices to help you implement structural navigation that makes sense and generates good results:
Create mobile-friendly Breadcrumbs
Everything done for your website needs to consider navigation on mobile devices, and Breadcrumbs doesn’t shy away from that.
The majority of traffic generated on the internet comes from mobile devices. Therefore, failing to optimize your pages is a serious mistake that can cost your Content Marketing strategy dearly .
Therefore, ensure that the visualization of the structural navigation bar is clear, with links that are easy to click. Also, check if they are getting in the way of other elements, leaving them at an appropriate size.
Use separators
Separators help the user know they are going from one place to another. The most common is the arrow (>), which makes it easier to understand the site hierarchy.
Pay attention to the position and source of the Breadcrumbs
The place occupied by the Breadcrumbs bar should be easy to see, usually just below the domain search bar. This way, they do not overlap the central content of the page.
Another important element is the font used, which needs to be in harmony with the rest of the page. The idea is not to attract attention, so even the color should be subtle.
From crumb to crumb your website will rise to the top!
Now you know what Breadcrumbs are, why structural navigation is important for SEO and user experience and the main best practices to pay attention to.
A well-optimized website is capable of generating traffic, positioning and, therefore, authority. Therefore, add the “bread crumbs” to yours to have another element capable of providing all these important benefits.
This way, all your marketing and sales strategies related to the domain tend to increase performance and drive the growth of your business!
