Everything you need to know about WordPress Breadcrumbs

Everything you need to know about WordPress Breadcrumbs

What Are Breadcrumbs?

WordPress Breadcrumbs is a term that refers to a useful website navigational tool meant to simplify the navigational process. With these, visitors can identify how the current page is fitting into the entire structure of the site through an inline links track leading to the homepage.

Indeed, breadcrumbs are way more essential for your WordPress website than you’d think. Not only it improves the user experience but can also enhance the search rankings. This structural element is extremely preferable by Google, and visitors can have an essential navigational help while reaching your site organically.

Why Are WordPress Breadcrumbs Important for Your WordPress Website?

wordpress website breadcrumbs

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Breadcrumbs Navigation:

Such kinds of navigation assist visitors to comprehend on which page or section of the site they’re on. And, it helps them reach back to the main category or homepage seamlessly.
Breadcrumb navigations intend to make the entire website user-friendly. Furthermore, they even help Google Bots crawl and reach every internal page of the site; thus, making the indexing better.

WordPress SEO Breadcrumbs:

Although there are several ways and techniques through which SEO can be executed, however, through breadcrumbs, results can be enhanced even more. So, here’s how breadcrumbs SEO can be boosted:

Bounce Rate Reduction:

Breadcrumbs create a positive experience for first-time visitors and appeal them enough to explore your site further. Thanks to the Google search, whenever a person stumbles upon the page, looks at breadcrumbs and would click on the higher-level link so as to see all the relevant topics or items. In such a scenario, a breadcrumb trail can easily decrease the bounce rate for you.

Enhancing User Experience:

Often, your visitors would be browsing the site enthusiastically. They might click on attractive headlines and pictures. Chances are, they may end up forgetting the original plan of visiting your site altogether. And, that’s something nobody would like.
Breadcrumbs provide your visitors with a thorough way to navigate to a higher-level page just with one click. It’d be easier for them to click the Back button dozens of times to reach the homepage.

Small Size and Functionality:

Breadcrumbs are short, horizontally oriented, and typed in a simple font. Hence, they don’t consume a lot of space, which could be essential for the mobile version of your website.
Considering their small size, they free up the space for content, precisely alternating traditional third-rate tools for navigation.

Impact on Google to Boost SEO:

Apart from users, Breadcrumbs have managed to gather enough appreciation from search engines as well. Google has defined them as one of the improvement tools that can positively affect the ranking of your site.
Lately, Google has also added breadcrumbs, complemented by pictures, to the top position of their search result pages. A breadcrumb trail offers search engines with an idea of how is the structure of the website. On top of that, Google may even display your breadcrumb trail in the search results, bringing more clicks to the links.

WordPress Breadcrumbs on Website:

Sometimes, a navigational menu doesn’t seem enough to guide the visitors and make them have a good experience on whichever page they visit on the site. If you have an online store, you might have thousands of categories and products on the site.

After assessing a specific page, if a person would want to go back, it shouldn’t take them too far away. Instead, using breadcrumbs will help them click on the page that’s useful to them.

How to Display Breadcrumbs Navigation Links in WordPress Website?

There are different ways that you can use to display breadcrumbs navigation links on your WordPress website. Here are the most common ones:

Through the Breadcrumb NavXT Plugin:

What are breadcrumbs
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So far, this one is the easiest way to add breadcrumbs navigation to the site. This best WordPress breadcrumbs plugin is easy to use, flexible and provides more options than you can imagine.

To begin with, you’d have to install and activate the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin. Either you can install this plugin from the WordPress repository or look out for it in the search bar on your WordPress dashboard.

Once activated, then visit Settings >> Breadcrumb NavXT page to configure and customize it.

Although the default settings might work for a majority of sites, however, if you’d want to customize it as per the requirements, you can do so easily as well.

To show breadcrumbs through this plugin, you’d have to edit the theme files. You’d have to add the below code in your child theme or theme’s header.php file wherever you wish to display the breadcrumb navigation:

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<div class=”breadcrumbs” typeof=”BreadcrumbList” vocab=”http://schema.org/”>
<?php if(function_exists(‘bcn_display’))
{
bcn_display();
}?>
</div>

And, that’s it. You can then visit the site and see breadcrumb navigation links on any page or post.

Through WordPress Yoast:

Enable Breadcrumbs through Yoast SEO

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To execute this method, first, you’d have to install and activate Yoast SEO plugin. Once activated, visit SEO >> Advanced page and check the ‘Enable Breadcrumbs’ option.

Breadcrumbs Through Plugin For WordPress

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After checking the option, you’ll find different options to alter how breadcrumbs would be displayed on the website. If you’d do any settings, save them and then proceed further.

There are certain themes that already support Yoast Breadcrumbs. To check this, visit every page and post to see if the navigation is displayed or not. However, if the theme doesn’t support it automatically, you’d have to add a code snippet to the WordPress theme.

You can add the code in your theme or child theme’s header.php file towards the end and you’ll be done.

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<?php if ( function_exists(‘yoast_breadcrumb’) )
{yoast_breadcrumb(‘<p id=”breadcrumbs”>’,'</p>’);} ?>

 

Through Simple Code:

If none of these options work out for you, adding breadcrumbs navigation through coding might help you better. Paste the below-mentioned code into the functions.php file within the theme directory.
function the_breadcrumb() {
$sep=’ » ‘;
if (!is_front_page()) {
echo ‘<div class=”breadcrumbs”>’;
echo ‘<a href=”‘;
echo get_option(‘home’);
echo ‘”>’;
bloginfo(‘name’);
echo ‘</a>’ . $sep;
if (is_category() || is_single() ){
the_category(‘title_li=’);
} elseif (is_archive() || is_single()){
if ( is_day() ) {
printf( __( ‘%s’, ‘text_domain’ ), get_the_date() );
} elseif ( is_month() ) {
printf( __( ‘%s’, ‘text_domain’ ), get_the_date( _x( ‘F Y’, ‘monthly archives date format’, ‘text_domain’ ) ) );
} elseif ( is_year() ) {
printf( __( ‘%s’, ‘text_domain’ ), get_the_date( _x( ‘Y’, ‘yearly archives date format’, ‘text_domain’ ) ) );
} else {
_e( ‘Blog Archives’, ‘text_domain’ );
}
}
if (is_single()) {
echo $sep;
the_title();
}
if (is_page()) {
echo the_title();
}
if (is_home()){
global $post;
$page_for_posts_id=get_option(‘page_for_posts’);
if ( $page_for_posts_id ) {
$post=get_page($page_for_posts_id);
setup_postdata($post);
the_title();
rewind_posts();
}
}
echo ‘</div>’;
}
}

Common Problems After Adding Breadcrumbs:

Despite the benefits that these navigational links provide, sometimes they can be even harmful to the website. Here are some of the common problems that may arise after adding breadcrumbs:

No Full Path Display:

Sometimes, breadcrumbs might not show the full path, which can be a grave inconvenience for the users. It might only show the homepage option or the one where users already are.

Unsystematic Categories:

Since a breadcrumb trail is a liner-structured link set, it’d be useful only if all of the pages are categorized neatly. If one page is related to different categories, adding breadcrumbs can be confusing and puzzling. So, make sure your one page isn’t inter-linked to different categories.

Replicating the Primary Navigation:

On the page, navigation options should be visible, functional, and clear. If they’re not, the main navigation could be replicated, which can cause a problem. A breadcrumb trail is used as just an additional navigation tool to offer unique links to former categories on the page.

Needless Usage of Breadcrumbs:

Some sites may not necessitate breadcrumbs because of the secondary navigation, main menu, and other blocks. So, if your site’s main navigation menu is visible after choosing categories, there are chances that the breadcrumbs might not work on the site.

Final Thoughts:

Breadcrumbs are an essential part of the site for both SEO and usability purposes. So, if you’re considering adding them on your WordPress website, it’s recommended to begin with the plugin method, be it Breadcrumb NavXT or Yoast SEO.
It’ll make the process more exciting and easier for you. So, are you ready yet?

1 Comment on “Everything you need to know about WordPress Breadcrumbs

  1. Thanks for the great guide. From my experience, I used those two plugins: Breadcrumb NavXT plugin and YOST and every time all worked well. And what I like most of all is that you have a huge amount of options for breadcrumbs customization.

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