A Guide to Breadcrumbs in SEO: Are They a Ranking Factor?

Intro

Practically every commercial website owner is asking the same question. What’s the best way to climb the search engine results and rank well for my desired keywords? Most agree that more internal linking, better use of keywords, and improving user experiences all help. Most business owners also invest in SEO tools to help them with their strategies.

But there’s one SEO factor that many people are still scratching their heads about - breadcrumbs. They are an important navigational feature, but do they impact your SERP positions?

Today, we’ll explore all that and more in our guide to breadcrumbs.

What are breadcrumbs?

They might sound like something that you’d find on your favorite food, but breadcrumbs are important on your website. They provide a trial for Google to follow when indexing.

However, breadcrumbs are also an important feature for website users. As mentioned earlier, they can be a useful navigational feature.

As you can see in the image above, breadcrumbs help visitors understand how a site is structured. They signpost the route to get to the page that the visitor is currently on. By clicking any of the stages, we can easily move backwards in website hierarchy

What are the different types of breadcrumbs?

When it comes to breadcrumbs on your website, there are three common types.

Attribute-based breadcrumbs

This kind of breadcrumb is commonly found on shopify e-commerce websites. The breadcrumb trail usually relates to the details surrounding a product. The image above shows one example. To find the particular product shown, we have to go to the computing page>laptops>all laptops.

By selecting an attribute, a user can get quick access to products similar to the one they’re already looking at.

History-based breadcrumbs

As the name suggests, history-based breadcrumbs are unique to a user’s journey. Let’s imagine that you start on the homepage, go to the product page, and choose a category of products. All these interactions would be displayed through breadcrumbs. E-commerce sites often favor this option as it allows users to easily retrace their steps.

In the image above, you can see this breadcrumb in action on the Adidas site.

Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs

Every page on your website has a ranking. Think about it, the first page you probably want a user to go to is your Home page. Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs display website pages in the order of their importance.

By viewing this form of breadcrumb, a user can find out where they are in a website’s hierarchy. Using the trail, they can also easily see how to get back to the homepage or somewhere higher in the hierarchy.

The image above shows an example taken from the Target website. The products are the lowest in the ranking, with the home page at the top.

Best practices for using breadcrumbs

Thinking about using breadcrumbs in SEO? We’ll talk later about the evidence for doing so. But what is the best way to include breadcrumbs on your site? Below are some examples of best practices.

Always be clear and consistent

After a few moments of using your website, a visitor should understand its layout. This means they can easily find breadcrumbs when they go to a new page. But if you’re inconsistent with font choice and size, the user might not spot the breadcrumbs as easily. Instead, the font should be consistent across different web pages.

Don’t miss a page

There’s no use having breadcrumbs on some pages but not on others. To provide the best navigation and user experience, breadcrumbs should be present on every page.

Outline a clear route

Every breadcrumb should begin at the home page and end of the page that a user is on, Always make sure there is a clear route mapped out in your breadcrumbs. Take a look at your design, and make sure that no important steps are missing.

Evidence for using breadcrumbs in SEO

Unfortunately, we’ll never get a clear answer from Google themselves regarding breadcrumbs. The company is notoriously quiet when it comes to explaining SERP rankings. Instead, we’ll have to look at the evidence.

And even though Google won’t provide many answers, there is a lot of evidence out there. Let’s look at some of the reasons why it is a good idea to use breadcrumbs.

Breadcrumbs markups warning

Warning: If Google detects that some of the markups on your pages may be using techniques that are outside our structured data guidelines, your site may receive a manual action.

Let’s unpack this. A manual action is when Google decides that your website is not compliant with its webmaster quality guidelines. When a manual action is taken, your website gets severely pushed down in search engine results.

But why would Google penalize your website in this way? Most commonly, in Google’s own words, it's because a site has made ‘attempts to manipulate our search index’.

The fact that this warning is contained in the breadcrumbs section is telling. It strongly suggests that breadcrumb markups are a factor in the Google indexing system. If not, why would Google include a warning against their misuse?

They improve user experiences

(Image Source)

It’s in your best interest to create better user experiences. By doing so, your visitors will have a more enjoyable time on our website. We can increase conversion rate and boost sales by bringing in new users. User experience is also extremely important to Google for search engine rankings. That’s why so many website owners are scrambling to make their properties mobile friendly.

Breadcrumbs are an often overlooked way of helping users to better navigate your site. If your property contains multiple pages and product categories, it's easy for a user to get lost. Some users might even get frustrated and look elsewhere.

But with breadcrumbs, a user knows exactly where they are on your site and where they came from. Of course, breadcrumbs alone won’t have much of an impact on the position of your site on the SERP. Instead, build them into a wider strategy. Use Google Analytics and other tools to find other areas of your website that need improvements.

Comments from a Google spokesperson

It’s true that Google tends to remain tightlipped with regard to breadcrumbs in SEO. But there have been occasions where Google representatives have given some clues. Gary Illyes, the Google webmaster trend analyst, said this when asked about breadcrumbs:

‘We like (sic) them. We treat them as normal links in e.g. PageRank computation’.

Again, let’s unpack this information. PageRank is a Google algorithm. As the name suggests, it lays out pages in search results in order of their importance. Illyes’ comment shows that breadcrumbs _do _influence search engine performance.

Breadcrumbs help search bots

Search bots or crawlers, allow google to index your site. A crawler will learn about every page on your site. By gathering this information, Google can recommend more relevant queries for users in search results.

Breadcrumbs explain the layout of your website to search crawlers. This means that they will index your site more effectively.

Are breadcrumbs a ranking factor?

From the evidence we’ve looked at today, we can say that there is enough information to suggest breadcrumbs _do _impact SEO. We could look at the documentation, like the GSC guide, as a source of evidence. Not only that, but we’ve had further confirmation from a Google spokesperson.

The question now is ‘how big of an impact do breadcrumbs have?’. Sadly, there is still no way of answering this question. The only real solution is to avoid putting all of your eggs in one basket.

Using breadcrumbs in SEO will help. But don’t discount other steps. For example, make sure you have a strong link-building operation and carry out keyword research. There are plenty of tools out there to help you. For instance, the Ranktracker keyword finder produces a quick list of relevant keywords, complete with search volumes and difficulty ratings.

Alongside other SEO steps, breadcrumbs are a useful ranking factor. Why not include them in your SEO strategy?