When you have an online store or e-commerce, it is important that your website or digital platform has a simple and intuitive structure so that your customers navigate through it knowing at all times where they are and how they got there. Otherwise, you run the risk that they get lost, end up abandoning it in the middle of the purchase process and, therefore, you lose a sale.
Well, there is a key element in web navigation called breadcrumbs that can help you in all this. But what are breadcrumbs and what exactly are they for? Did you know that there are different types of breadcrumb navigation and that they can have a positive impact on your SEO positioning in Google?
What are breadcrumbs?
Breadcrumbs, also known as breadcrumbs, are a navigation element that shows the path or hierarchical structure of a website.
These usually appear at the top of the page, near the main menu or in another prominent place, and in online stores they present a format very similar to this one: Home > Main Category > Subcategory > Current Page. Other separators such as arrows, slashes or double arrows are also common.
In this case, in addition, each of the elements of the breadcrumbs is a clickable link that allows you to go back to previous levels of the hierarchy, even directly back to the home page of the site.
The main function of breadcrumbs is to help users and search engine bots understand the structure of a web page and at which level each URL is located within it, thus facilitating usability and crawling, respectively.
Types of breadcrumb navigation
Currently, there are several types of breadcrumbs. Among the most common are:
- Location-based or hierarchy-based breadcrumbs: this is the most common breadcrumb navigation option. It shows the structure of a site from the current page to the home page or main category page. This type is useful for complex sites, with an organizational scheme more than two or three levels deep.
- Attribute-based breadcrumbs are often used for online stores with a wide range of products where users can refine their searches by selecting or removing filters or attributes. This type of breadcrumb navigation lets them easily adjust their preferences while browsing the site’s content.
- History-based or path-based breadcrumbs: this is the least used type of breadcrumb navigation. Instead of the hierarchical structure or selected filters, the sequence of pages a user has visited on a website during their current session is displayed.
The choice of the type of breadcrumb navigation to implement in an online store will depend on the structure and specific needs of the website. It is important that you opt for the most suitable one for this.
SEO advantages of using breadcrumbs
The truth is that breadcrumbs are elements that, if well implemented on a page, can bring many advantages to the SEO positioning of an e-commerce.
To mention some of the most important ones:
- They improve the user experience, as they help the user to understand the structure of the website and navigate effectively. This can lead to a lower bounce rate and higher visitor retention.
- They strengthen the internal linking between the pages that make up the website, which helps search engines find them, index them and understand the contextual relationship between them.
- Increase visibility in search results and, consequently, the click-through rate (CTR).
- Facilitate navigation through mobile devices.
- Reduce the number of clicks needed to reach a specific page.
How to improve the SEO of an online store with breadcrumbs
Next, we want to give you some guidelines that can help you to optimize the SEO of your e-commerce using breadcrumbs:
- Make sure that the structure of your website is logical and hierarchical. Have well-defined categories and subcategories.
- Implement consistent breadcrumbs throughout the site. This means that the category names in the breadcrumbs should match the URLs and the actual structure of the site.
- Optimize link texts so that they are descriptive and relevant. Use keywords related to the products or categories instead of generic terms.
- Add breadcrumbs also on product pages. Do not include them only on category pages.
- Check that breadcrumbs are navigable, that is, they are active links that users can use to go back to previous levels in the hierarchy.
- Limit the number of levels in breadcrumbs in order to keep them simple and useful.
- Perform usability testing to identify any problems in the implementation of breadcrumbs.
- Use tracking and analytics tools to help you evaluate how users interact with breadcrumbs and how they affect your site’s SEO. Make adjustments as you see fit.
