Breadcrumbs for SEO
Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox recently included a post about the usability benefits of breadcrumbs. We have long counseled clients to use them when their site design and organization allow for the same reasons that Jakob advocates their use. We add one more reason: SEO.
One of the important aspects of site optimization is creating abundant, keyword-rich links between pages of the website. Breadcrumbs are a great mechanism for creating these links. The larger the site, more numerous these cross-links become. The “deeper” the page on a hierarchical site, the more links it will have to other pages.
Breadcrumbs have some qualities that make them the ideal cross-linking tool:
- Every page links to the home page and parent pages.
- The number of links to “higher level” pages grow with the total size of the site.
- Breadcrumbs result in more links to important pages — those that have more subordinate pages.
- Useful breadcrumbs typically use keywords, thus the links are automatically keyword-rich.
- They can usually be created programmatically / semi-automatically on sites with CMS’s or stores.
In general, unless your site is non-hierarchical, we recommend integrating breadcrumbs into your design to help with usability and SEO.
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