What are Breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs are a series of navigation guides that help users and search engines understand the structure of a web page.

This element is usually placed at the top of a web page to help the user to locate within the portal itself.

However, other webmasters place their breadcrumbs in the footer of the web page since they are essential when it comes to delivering the link juice and improving the SEO web positioning of a web page without “destroying” the design.

Such was the rise of breadcrumbs in recent years that even Google created its own schema markup for breadcrumbs in order to help Google bots or spiders understand the architecture of web pages.

Types of breadcrumbs

Although the most common are hierarchical, other types of breadcrumbs can be found on the different web portals, such as:

Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs

They are the most common. They mark the path where the user is located within the web portal within the structure of the web page. In addition, these breadcrumbs help to return the user to the main page at all times by making a “panic button” when going back.

An example of hierarchy-based breadcrumbs would be:

Home > Category > Product / Posts / Page

Breadcrumbs based on user browsing history

These breadcrumbs are less common since they are ordered according to the navigation made by the user on the web page. Example:

Home > Previous page > Current page.

Advantages of using bread crumbs

The widespread use of breadcrumbs is a consequence of its multiple advantages such as:

1. They help Google Bot understand the structure of the website. In this way, the tracking budget is improved. In addition, Google in its SERPs shows these breadcrumbs in its Snippets which always helps to improve the CTR.
2. They help the user to be located at all times without getting lost. Therefore, they improve the user experience.
3. They serve as a guide to search engines to find the areas of the website that interest us most through conditional breadcrumbs.
4. They improve the transfer of pagerank or link juice throughout the web page as they improve internal linking.

How to create breadcrumbs on my website

To include breadcrumbs or breadcrumbs on your website there are different methods:

Include Breadcrumbs by hand

You can include breadcrumbs manually, but this is not recommended. If you decide to do it this way, you may lose too much time in a “not so important” process.

Include breadcrumbs or breadcrumbs on a WordPress website

If you want to include breadcrumbs or breadcrumbs in your WordPress website, the best option will be to install the Yoast SEO plugin.

This plugin will automatically create these breadcrumbs just by modifying a line of code within your WordPress template. Sometimes you won’t even need to touch code if you use a visual layout artist like Elementor or Beaver Builder.

However, Yoast SEO’s breadcrumb system is not active by default. You must activate it by following these steps:

1. Access the WordPress control panel.
2. Click on SEO (Yoast SEO Icon) and on “Search engine appearance”.
3. Go to the “Breadcrumbs” tab.
4. Click on the asset tab and configure all the parameters shown.
5. Include the PHP code of breadcrumbs in your WordPress template or the corresponding widget and with it it will be enough to show the breadcrumbs on your website.
6. If you know a little bit of PHP code and you want to do this implementation “by hand”, just include the following PHP code in the area of ​​your template where these breadcrumbs will be installed: