Breadcrumbs on your site: what they do for visitors and for Google

The short answer: breadcrumbs are the small line at the top of a page that shows the path: Home > Products > Chairs > Office chair. They help the visitor see where they are and go up a level, and they help Google understand how the site is organised. On a small site they are not essential; on a site with many pages, they are worth it.

What the site needs

What What to do
For the visitor It shows where they are and gives a way back without using the back button.
For Google It shows the site’s hierarchy, and may appear in the search result as a path instead of the address: Structured data.
When they pay off Shops with categories, blogs with many sections, directories. On a five-page site, no.
How to create them In WordPress, many themes and SEO plugins have an option to show them; the WooCommerce shop brings them too.
What they are not They are not the menu, nor the history of what the visitor has seen. They show the page’s position in the site’s structure.

Getting started

1 Order the site into clear categories: if the structure is confusing, so are the breadcrumbs: Categories and tags.
2 Turn on breadcrumbs in the theme’s or the SEO plugin’s options and pick the separator (the “>” sign is the usual one).
3 Choose where they appear: above the title, after the menu.
4 Check one page of each type: the top-level one, a category and a post. Each link should go to the right place: Internal links.
5 Test on a phone: if they take two lines and push the content down, shorten the names.
Breadcrumbs follow the structure you have. If a page is in several categories, it shows just one path, and if you change a name or a category, the path changes and old links may give a 404. See 301 redirects if you change names or addresses.
To be found, breadcrumbs help but content counts for more: Being found on Google.

Want help adding breadcrumbs to your site? Open a ticket with the address and the theme.

Open a support ticket

SEE ALSO

Structured data and rich results: what they are and how to add them

Categories and tags in WordPress: how to use each without making a mess

Internal links: how to link your own pages so nothing stays hidden

Being found on Google: Business Profile, Search Console and the basics

robots.txt and sitemap.xml: what they do and how to check them

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