Apr 05 2009
Breadcrumbs in SEO
Simply put, a breadcrumb trail is a few text links on a page that shows where you are in the navigation of a site and allows you to get back to every page that got you to where you are in the site at the moment. They usually come in the from of a line of text across the top of a site, each element links back to a root page:
SEO > Articles > Breadcrumbs in SEO
In terms of SEO, this navigation structure is brilliant. Each section is linked back to a relevant page that gives an idea of what is in the page itself. The anchor text is highly likely to be relevant to the content and should aid user navigation hugely.
Navigation structures such as trees also show a trail of where the user has browsed, but they are often a little over-the-top for some simpler sites. They can take up a large amount of the screen and are difficult to integrate into sites.
It is worth keeping in mind though that breadcrumbs do not show how a user can progress into a site; it only shows how the user can go back out through the navigation structure. It is therefore important to provide an SEO friendly way of navigating through various pages in a site, like a sucker fish menu or a categorised series of pages that narrows down different sections of a site.
Simon Davies
SEO Programmer
