If you’re running a website, ensuring your visitors can easily find their way around is a must. One way to do so is by using breadcrumbs – a navigation aid showing the visitor where they are on the website and how to get back to where they came from.
Keep reading to learn more.
What Are Breadcrumbs?
Breadcrumbs are a signal showing you where you are on a website – a set of contextual links that function as a website navigation aid. Just like in the tale of Hansel and Gretel, they are like a trail of breadcrumbs that leads you back to where you started.
Breadcrumbs typically appear horizontally across the top of a web page, usually under the title or heading. They are usually separated by >> or > symbols.
Why Use Breadcrumbs?
Breadcrumbs provide a trail for visitors to follow back to the home page or starting point. They help people orient themselves on your website and navigate their way around.
Breadcrumbs also help search engines understand the structure of your website and determine which pages are more important than others, which can positively affect your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).
How to Find Breadcrumbs?
If you’re unsure if your website has breadcrumbs, search >> or > symbols. These are typically used to separate the different levels of breadcrumbs.
You can also check your website’s source code to see if there’s any code related to breadcrumbs. To do this, right-click on a web page and select View Page Source.
If you see a code that looks like this:
<div class=”breadcrumbs”>
…it means your website has breadcrumbs.
Adding Breadcrumbs to Your Website
If you’re using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, there may be a plugin or theme that will add breadcrumbs to your website automatically. You can also add breadcrumbs manually by editing your website’s code.
If you’re not using a CMS, you’ll need to edit your website’s HTML code to add breadcrumbs. The code for breadcrumbs is usually added to the header or footer of a web page.
Here’s an example of breadcrumb code:
<div id=”breadcrumbs”>
Home > Category > Page
</div>
This code would produce breadcrumbs that look like this:
Home > Category > Page
You can customize the code to suit your website’s needs. For example, you can change the text or symbols that are used to separate the different levels of breadcrumbs. You can also use different symbols in between the levels to show hierarchy like “>” or “/”.
The code would look like:
<div class=”breadcrumbs”>
Home > Category.html / Page.html
</div>
which would give you a visual like this:
Home > Category.html / Page.html
Once you’ve added the code, you’ll need to style the breadcrumbs using CSS. You can use CSS to change the color, font, size, etc. of the breadcrumbs.
Here’s an example of how you might style the breadcrumbs:
.breadcrumbs {
font-size: 16px;
color: #000000;
}
This CSS code would change the font size and color of the breadcrumbs.
If you aren’t using CMS, you can add breadcrumbs manually by adding the HTML code to the header or footer of your web pages.
Breadcrumb Visual Representation (last trail path NOT clickable)
Breadcrumb Visual Representation (last trail path NOT clickable) means that it shows you where you are on a website. It is like a trail of bread that leads you back to the beginning.
Breadcrumbs are clickable except for the last one, which shows the current page that you are on. Clicking on any of the breadcrumbs will take you back to the home page or starting point.
The code for this would look like:
<div class=”breadcrumbs”>
Home > Category.html > Page.html
</div>
which would give you a visual like this:
Home > Category.html >
Benefits Of Breadcrumb Links
Breadcrumb links are important for a seamless website user experience. They take up very little space on the page, yet come with an array of lucrative advantages since they:
Facilitate Website Navigation
Implementing location-based breadcrumb links allows users to navigate a website more easily by reducing the number of actions they need to take to get to a higher-level page.
By clicking on one, visitors can easily move from one page to another without using the ‘Forward’ and ‘Backward’ buttons time and time again.
Support Website Usability
The key factors determining website usability are the effectiveness and efficiency of task completion – if users can achieve their desired goals on your website and how quickly.
By aiding task completion in website navigation, breadcrumbs support website usability and user experience, thus, encouraging browsing, increasing the amount of time users spend on the website, and, consequently, lowering bounce rates.
Assist Content Findability
It’s not just the visitors who enjoy breadcrumbs – Google loves them too. Breadcrumb links help both searchers and search engines understand your website’s structure and are even shown in Google search results for select keyword searches.
Provide Information Scent
Information scent consists of textual and visual cues that aid clear navigation, quick orientation, and communicate content value. Breadcrumb links can provide a strong and enticing information scent to other content on your site before and after people land on it.
Communicate Context
Breadcrumb links also provide the opportunity to communicate the aboutness and context to both humans and search engines.
By helping users easily navigate your website and find what they are looking for, you’re also explaining what your pages are about to search engines. This can also give you a little extra SEO boost, as search engines use the text and links in your breadcrumb trails to determine relevancy.