Breadcrumbs

Making a visitor take a certain path on the website with breadcrumbs: it’s a smart way to get better results. But what exactly are breadcrumbs and when is it interesting to deploy them? You read it here.

What are breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs are literally breadcrumbs: it is a term for indicating a visible path on a website with clickable intermediate steps. By using breadcrumbs, you lead a website visitor down a path to multiple pages, so to speak.

Breadcrumbs on a website

There are several ways in which it is possible to use breadcrumbs on a Web site. Below is an overview of the possible paths with breadcrumbs that it is possible for a website to use:

  1. From home page to a category, from there to a sub-category and possibly from there again to a sub-sub page;
  2. From home page to a category, from there again to a subcategory, from here to another category and then again to a subcategory and back to the home page.

The impact of breadcrumbs on SEO

Breadcrumbs definitely have an impact on SEO, provided they are optimized for it. Optimizing breadcrumbs for search engine optimization makes it easier for a search engine to interpret the intent of individual pages and the entire website. Therefore, choose terms that are clear to visitors as well as to the search engine’s search algorithm.

My advice

Using breadcrumbs: how interesting is this for your website? We recommend first looking at the usefulness of breadcrumbs on your website. In fact, it is not always necessary to do so. Smaller websites with few pages or simple navigation do not benefit much from this method. For a comprehensive site, it may be very interesting to do this, with respect to search engine optimization.


Frequently Asked Questions

What are Breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs is the English translation for breadcrumbs. We all know the story of little thumb, who marked the way back home with bread crumbs. With a website, you create a clear path for the user to the various pages and the way back to the home page.

What is the impact of Breadcrumbs on SEO?

Breadcrumbs, when optimized for SEO, have a big impact. It makes it easier for the search engine to determine the structure of a site. When doing so, choose clear designations. This is useful not only for your site’s visitors but thus also for the algorithm of Google or other search engines.

Senior SEO-specialist

Ralf van Veen

Senior SEO-specialist
Five stars
My clients give me a 5.0 on Google out of 77 reviews

I have been working for 10 years as an independent SEO specialist for companies (in the Netherlands and abroad) that want to rank higher in Google in a sustainable manner. During this period I have consulted A-brands, set up large-scale international SEO campaigns and coached global development teams in the field of search engine optimization.

With this broad experience within SEO, I have developed the SEO course and helped hundreds of companies with improved findability in Google in a sustainable and transparent way. For this you can consult my portfolio, references and collaborations.

This article was originally published on 27 March 2024. The last update of this article was on 27 March 2024. The content of this page was written and approved by Ralf van Veen. Learn more about the creation of my articles in my editorial guidelines.

Articles you might like