Breadcrumbs are an essential part of almost every decent website. These small navigational aids don’t just tell users where they are on your website, but they also help search engines work out how your site is structured. That’s why it makes a lot of sense to include these helpful small pointers. Let’s have a look at how breadcrumb navigation works.
What are breadcrumbs?
A breadcrumb is a little text path, often positioned at the top of a page indicating where the user is on the site. On yoast.com, for example, the path to the Yoast SEO plugin page is Home > WordPress Plugins > Yoast SEO for WordPress. This breadcrumb trail immediately shows users where they are. Every step of that path is clickable, direct back to the homepage.
we will be talking about types of breadcrumb navigation, the advantages of having breadcrumb navigation, and best practices of breadcrumb navigation. So, let’s get going with the first topic of discussion.
Different types of breadcrumbs:
You may have seen that there are different types of breadcrumbs. Following are the 3 most common ones:
1.Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs
These are the most common and it’s how we use breadcrumbs on our site. They tell users where they are in a website structure and how many steps there are to get back to the homepage. For example Home > Blog > Category > Post name.
2.Attribute-based breadcrumbs
Attribute-based breadcrumbs are seen mostly when a visitor has searched on an e-commerce site, and the breadcrumb trail is made up of product attributes – for example: Home > Product category > Gender > Size > Color.
3.History-based breadcrumbs
History-based breadcrumbs do same as it says on the tin; they are arranged according to what user have been doing on the site. Think of these as an alternative to the internet history bar, then you get something like this: Home > Previous page > Previous page > Previous page > Current page
Advantages of using breadcrumbs
There are many advantages to using these helpful little pointers on your site. Let’s have a quick gaze at them:
1. Google loves them
Your users like breadcrumbs, but Google loves them. They give Google another way of figuring out how that website is structured, but, as talked earlier, Google may also use them in the actual search results, which makes the result much more appealing to visitors. To boost the chances of your breadcrumbs appearing in Google, you should include structured data like Yoast SEO does.
2. They enhance the user experience
People don’t like getting lost. When confronted with a new location, User often look around in search of familiar objects or landmarks – and the same is true of websites. You have to keep users happy and reduce friction as much as possible. Breadcrumbs can help your visitor experience since they are a common interface element that instantly shows user a way out. User don’t need to click the back button!
3. They lower bounce rates
Hardly anyone enters a site through the homepage — It’s all about organic search. That means any part of your site could be an entry gate. You have to come up with a way to guide these users to other parts of your site if the selected page doesn’t satisfy their needs. Breadcrumbs can lower bounce rates because you’re giving users an alternative way to browse your site. Don’t you think it’s better to send a user to your homepage than send them back to Google?
