A Brief Guide to Understanding Breadcrumb and Their Types

by Jiya Roy Digital Marketing Expert

Disclaimer: This article does not include recipes using white or brown breadcrumbs. It is about the breadcrumb’s relevance to the website and SEO. So, let’s begin.

What is a breadcrumb?

Breadcrumbs help humans, and Google navigate through the in-depth website architecture. It sits at the top of the webpage or the main content, consisting of several clickable links showcasing the path the viewer chose to reach the current page.

Simplifying it further with an example. Consider that you are looking for a product on the website, the breadcrumb, in that case, might represent “home > products > product name.” Generally, e-commerce sites host heavy architecture, and thus they use breadcrumbs. However, any digital marketing agency in Ahmedabad and India may advise using breadcrumb for two reasons. They are;

To enhance the web user’s or viewer’s experience by making web navigation easy.
To be in the eyes of Google as it helps Google understand the web hierarchy, which ultimately positively affects SEO.

Types of breadcrumbs

Based on location and hierarchy
Based on the location or hierarchy of the site structure, Breadcrumbs showcase the path from the main page or search to the current page. It helps users quickly navigate to explore web pages consisting of a broad spectrum of information.
It is a widespread application in e-commerce websites and ones with a hierarchical architecture.
Based on attribute
Breadcrumbs based on attributes appear instantly depending on the user’s search query and clicks. They are usually used in e-commerce websites with a combination of hierarchy or location-based breadcrumbs. It is more or less relevant for the product and service category pages wherein users choose what to view from the available filter options, ultimately resulting in the breadcrumb trail.
Based on path
The trail of breadcrumbs based on the path is a result of the web route that users choose to arrive at on a particular page. Also known as history-based breadcrumbs, they are usually represented with a back button without listing the whole path to allow users to easily return to the previous webpage.

Since the primary function of a path-based breadcrumb is the same as the back button, they are not popular among developers and UX designers.

Wrapping up

Breadcrumbs are a vital website component, and a digital marketing company in Bangalore and anywhere in the country will advise you to pay attention to them. They aid in smooth customer experience, reduce bounce rate, improve internal web linking, enhance crawl ability, and, most importantly, help in SEO.

So, make sure to ping your website developer or designer and confirm the requirement of the breadcrumb.