A form of navigation of great interest, the breadcrumb trail is nevertheless neglected. For its operation, this navigation aid is responsible for indicating to the reader, its location in the tree structure of your site. It is a great help for users to find their way around your site. It can even have a beneficial impact on the way your content appears when users search.
In the past, adding, inserting a WordPress breadcrumb trail could present difficulties. Things have now changed as WordPress has been able to seriously streamline the process. There are several ways to do this and they vary depending on the level of customization you want to achieve. Through this article, you will have all the information you need to get through it easily.
Mastering what a breadcrumb trail is
A breadcrumb trail is the tree structure of a web page, which can be clicked. Most of the time, it is located before the title, at the top of the page. Its role is to help search engines to personalize the content of a page.
It is therefore an advantage for Internet users as well as in the perspective of an SEO strategy. Indeed, it plays a valuable role for prospects. It is the same for Googlebot during the scanning of your website.
Breadcrumbs can act in various ways, although the ultimate goal is to make the site clean and pleasant for the user. They can be placed at the top of the structure of your website.
Breadcrumbs, from another perspective, can rise above the various attributes that the user is looking for. This is a possibility that would be great for e-commerce sites, whose catalog structure is more horizontal than for other sites with a more normal structure.
Finally, breadcrumb trails can be based on the history of actions taken by the subscriber when they visit your site. This is a very important parameter to take into account when optimizing your site, as well as the navigation mode that corresponds to the services and products you offer.
As for the SEO value of building a breadcrumb trail, it offers two advantages. First, it makes it easier for crawlers to scan your website. Secondly, your breadcrumb trail can be easily found, which automatically makes you a well-built site.
This offers Internet users the possibility of accessing additional content as soon as they are interested in the various results pages of a search engine.
The advantages of the breadcrumb trail
The benefits that you can have through the breadcrumb trail are numerous. Between the possibility of putting order in your contents, attracting traffic or positioning your site well, you will gain a battery of benefits.
The breadcrumb trail as a way to put your web pages in order
Intelligent navigation tool, the breadcrumb trail offers Internet users the possibility to turn around whenever they want, as well as the fact of knowing their position with precision at any time.
They are therefore a valuable navigation aid since they constitute guidelines that improve the optimization of your site. Thus, they make your different web pages more orderly and allow the whole to be accessible and clear for the subscriber.
The breadcrumb trail as a way to make your site attractive and easy to use
Using the breadcrumb trail allows you to have a quick access to the different important pages of your WordPress site in one click. It also allows you to make the other pages of your site, which could be described as deep pages, more lively.
If you have a clothing catalog, the chances are high that your site has a fairly large number of page depths. At this level, the role of the breadcrumb trail will be to allow users to find their way around easily, as is possible in a very well ordered store.
The user can return to the home page in one click. They can also go back to their search history to change a filter, reconsider their choices or compare products. The breadcrumb trail gives the customer total control over what he has access to in relation to his location on the site.
When someone comes to your page through a blog post, they can see everything you have to offer in one click. Better yet, it's a tool that has no harmful impact on visibility because it takes up very little space on the page. Very often, it is displayed as a thin horizontal strip at the bottom of the menu. Thus, it blends in as easily as possible with the graphic charter of the latter.
The breadcrumb trail as a vector to optimize your site for search engines
The breadcrumb trail can also play a central role in the SEO strategy of your site. In addition to offering you a better ranking, you also get the benefit of a higher click-through rate, not to mention perfect ergonomics. Your site enjoys a cleaner design and your content is easier to find. This makes your site much more attractive to subscribers.
Nowadays, and especially in e-commerce, the user experience is fundamental to success. Internet users want to have, in addition to a product, a fluid environment in which they are comfortable and easily find their way around. The breadcrumb trail allows you to arrange your site exactly like a properly laid out store.
With as few clicks as possible, the Internet user must be able to find what he is looking for. This is the gain you can have with the breadcrumb trail. Your clicks will be all useful and no longer errant.
Thus, your conversion rate climbs because the target has faster access to what he wants. This is an important fact because the Internet user does not spend much time paying attention. It is less and less with the number of smartphone users that is constantly increasing.
The longer it takes for the user to get what they want, the more likely they are to abandon you for a competing site. By having a breadcrumb trail that offers presence and assurance, you have a chance to get their attention by directing them to what they are looking for.
Learn all about the process of adding a breadcrumb trail to your WordPress site
Easy to use, adding a plugin on WordPress is a piece of cake. It would therefore be more interesting to use a dedicated WordPress plugin. However, you will need to hire a professional if you want to customize your breadcrumb trail.
How to use a dedicated WordPress plugin?
In the quest for effective SEO on WordPress, there is Yoast SEO among the most popular extensions. Its free version also has the important options and features to have a top SEO.
There are three simple steps to ensure that you can successfully add this to your WordPress site using Yoast SEO. First of all, you need to install and activate Yoast SEO. Secondly, you will need to proceed to add WordPress, Breadcrumbs code. Finally, you need to go to the plugin settings to activate and then proceed to the Breadcrumbs setting.
You will have to go to the WordPress dashboard. Objective, proceed to install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin. Click on plugins then Add New and search for Yoast SEO then click to install and activate it. As for the Breadcrumbs code, you can add it to any file type or theme template.
However, by adding it to either your page.php or header.php file, you will have it on all pages or on the whole site.
As soon as you have proceeded to add the code to WordPress, activate the breadcrumb trail by going to the modules of the Yoast SEO plugin. Go to your WordPress table and search for SEO then Search Appearance. Then click on Breadcrumbs. At the bottom of the Breadcrumbs settings, you need to enable Breadcrumbs. To do this, click on activate.
Should we think about other plugins besides Yoast SEO?
Besides the very popular Yoast plugin, there are other alternatives. One example is Breadcrumb NavXT. In order to access it, go to Appearance. Then you need to go to widgets. The advantage of this plugin lies in its increased customization, as well as a huge flexibility of the widget.
Another possibility is Flexy Breadcrumbs. It's quite interesting because you will be able to act on both the size and the color of the font used for your breadcrumbs. If you are an e-merchant, you could also adopt WooCommerce Breadcrumbs. Simple to control and use, it allows you to put breadcrumbs in your many pages.
WordPress breadcrumb trail: summary
The breadcrumb trail has a lot of advantages. It is therefore a useful feature whose added value can be decisive for your site despite the fact that it is discreet. To adopt this feature, you now know what to do. Use a dedicated plugin or ask for the services of a professional coder who will customize your breadcrumb trail for you.
