Yes! You read it right, BREADCRUMB!
You might be querying why on earth I am writing about a shred of food in a blog that is related to WordPress and SEO. But let me assure you that the whole write up has nothing to do with it.
The breadcrumb which I am talking about is a useful navigation tool that tends to keep track of the users and locate their current location. It is one of the easiest ways to enhance the user experience.
To be honest, any website should be designed in such a way that if somebody ends up on the product page, they should be able to quickly navigate to your home page, the category page and any other related bar. Thus, here is when the breadcrumb become your supreme saviour.
Understanding the essence of the breadcrumb is relatively easy, and the process of adding them to your website takes no less than a minute. Any wordpress plugin developer can use it.
Here is how!
Why Breadcrumbs?
Before we start discussing this amazing navigation tool, let us go through the points that would convince you on why it is essential.
●Breadcrumbs are perfect when it comes to the multi-hierarchy website or even when it comes to e-commerce websites.
●They tend to improve your SEO by extending the dwell time.
●Breadcrumbs tend to increase boost sales.
●It tends to follow the three-click rule in the web design
●Breadcrumbs are one of those tools that are there in Google's 200 ranking factors.
●Implement a compact variant of the page titles in the path.
●Including symbols between links: ">", "»", "-" and "/".
●Breadcrumbs help in improving the internal linking structure of the website.
●They are said to be an additional means of navigation that does not repeat the main menu.
●They do not hyperlink the main page
●They utilize attribute crumb on the e-commerce website
●Placement is required to verify the position. It is in the top left angle of each page, right underneath the menu.
●Breadcrumbs mobile SEO is also provided; they tend to support the mobile-first indexing provisions.
Breadcrumbs and SEO
Breadcrumbs are considered as an essential part of any website. It is that single line of text which tends to mark the path from the current page back home.
This tool not only helps people to know where they are on the hierarchy of the website, but it improves the search engine to comprehend how the site is structured.
This tool tends to improve dwell time and decrease bounce rate by showing the visitors the link they have explored. Which marks a good start towards SEO. Three different types of breadcrumbs are used in SEO. No matter if it is a custom plugin development, wordpress breadcrumbs would help in every aspect.
The three types are:
1. Location Breadcrumb
This is the most prevalent kind of breadcrumb. Breadcrumb like this informs the user where they are in terms of site structure. The location breadcrumb tends to use the homepage at the start of the path. If you are a user or a crawler, then location breadcrumb is the one for you.
2. Path Breadcrumb
Due to the enhancement of database-driven website, path breadcrumb is becoming popular. It tends to show the user an actual path that the user needs to take on the site to relinquish their contemporary page rather than portraying the hierarchy, related homepage and location breadcrumb.
3. Attribute or Keyword Breadcrumb
Attribute or keyword breadcrumbs use keywords and attributes that tend to describe the page instead of utilizing something similar that resembles page title or another unique identifier. WP plugin development can easily be achieved with it. The website that is e-commerce based tends to be the one that uses this breadcrumb a lot.
NOTE: Know that the last two tend to have duplicate breadcrumbs in it. Duplicate breadcrumbs tend to hurt your website in the sheets of Google, Bing and other search engines. This is because your site might appear thin when it comes to the original content. Therefore, to dodge this, the user can use location-based breadcrumb for the SEO strategy.
Advantages of Using SEO in Breadcrumbs
While you are working in WordPress plugin development organization and you use breadcrumbs in your website, then it tends to affect the SEO. The advantages which it then offers would be:
1. Enhances the user experience
When you visit a website as a potential customer, you have certain expectations. Not getting lost in the midway of your browsing is one of them. Thus, the user needs to keep their audience happy. Breadcrumbs are simple website elements that help the user to get faster while they are browsing through your webpage.
2. Decrease Bounce Rate
Kudos to organic search, your audience does not directly enter the homepage. With every single page on your website being a landing page, there needs to be a way that directs your guest to the other side of the site, especially when the main entrance page has them wanting to explore the website.
3. Featuring small size with massive functionalities
Breadcrumb is one of those tools that takes up very little space on any website. This is the advantage that becomes essential and vital if someone visits the site on any mobile handset. With more than 50 per cent of the traffic on the internet that tends to come on internet traffic, the user gains a lot of elements.
4. Luring Google and the search engines
The information is obtained with the guidance of a tool that tends to prove the number of visitors and thus, so does Google. Breadcrumbs help the search engine to decipher the whole hierarchy of the website that tends to let it decide which page is essential. One of the several major benefits of employing breadcrumb is that they can appear Google search results by either adding structured data or setting them up with YOAST SEO.
Some of the Most Popular Breadcrumbs Plugins in WordPress for SEO
Breadcrumbs plugins are considered to be the plugin development for wordpress, they have different benefits and different advantages. Here are some of the most common and useful ones.
1. Breadcrumb Trail
This plugin has unique qualities, and they can detect the permalink structure and use it to construct trails for the pages on the website. Custom post types, taxonomies and many related things can be can easily be detected and provided a solution for them.
The breadcrumb trail plugin is viral in the market and has a good reputation among the developers that offer hook for plugin and theme developers to customize object-oriented programming.
2. Breadcrumb NavXT
This is the plugin that is a successor to extremely popular Breadcrumb NavXT. The plugin can generate locational breadcrumb that is totally based on the user's path. The plugin can be customized easily for those who wish to modify their settings.
OOP actions and filters being customizable actions. The default value would work well with the most cases as well as for the plug and play functionality.
3. RDFa Breadcrumb
This is one of the most sorts after and unique breadcrumb that tends to link back to the user visits in a hierarchical structure. It tends to create customizable breadcrumb trails essentially. The plugin tends to provide the customer with additional and new templates that can be placed anywhere in the template file. This then allows the content markup to get recognized by Google and then get displayed on the SERPs.
4. Yoast SEO
Yoast is well known for SEO plugins. The user had to download a separate plugin for the functionalities of breadcrumbs. Still, now the user can simply download the Yoast SEO Plugin and get everything they need for on-page optimization. This makes the functionality in one convenient place.
How to Enable Breadcrumbs Plugins on WordPress Website
If you wish to add breadcrumbs to your current website for wordpress plugin and theme development, then you can follow these following steps. This would help the user to add they are desirable plugins. The steps involved in the entire process are:
Step 1: Addition of SEO breadcrumb plugin to your website.
Step2: Initializing and activating advanced settings. The breadcrumbs setting aren't displayed, so the user needs to tap on the dashboard settings.
Step3: Adding the breadcrumb codes in the website files. Some of the most common places where the user can add the codes are:
●In your single.php file.
●In your page.php file (above the page's title).
●At the end of the header.php file.
Conclusion
Secure user experience and SEO both are concluded to be the influential factors that are provided by breadcrumbs plugins. This then makes a significant impact on the website. The breadcrumb plugin is one of the most straightforward factors that implement a simple, yet useful feature in the website design. The user can simply install and download the breadcrumbs which they which to enable in their website.
We believe that this piece has given you an idea about the aspects of a Wordpress plugin. It has given you a deep understanding of the things you need. If you have any doubts with the following topic, then you can write your review on the comment section below.
Author Bio
I am working as Sr. WordPress Developer at Wordprax for the past 10 years. I have several years of experience in developing different kinds of customized WordPress websites, WordPress theme customization, PSD to Wordpress Conversion, HTML to wordpress conversion and WordPress plugin development. I am an expert in Core PHP and all areas of WordPress front-end and WordPress back-end development. I also have rich experience in implementing different WordPress features and functionalities by using various WordPress plugins. I have experience in developing many popular and scalable WordPress e-Commerce websites using WooCommerce and other required plugins.
As a hobby, I also write Technical Articles related to WordPress development to share my deep insights into this subject. Many of my articles on WordPress CMS technology have received thousands of visitors and loved by the international WordPress community of which I am an active member for over a decade.
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