Implement Breadcrumb Navigation for SEO, UX & Crawlability Benefits
S
Success Team
Details:
As part of ongoing SEO and usability enhancements, I propose that we implement breadcrumb navigation across our sites. Breadcrumbs improve user experience, support better internal linking, and play a vital role in helping search engines understand site structure.
What SEO team are suggesting?
Introduce breadcrumb navigation across the eCommerce website platform, structured hierarchically (e.g., Home > Category > Subcategory > Product). Each breadcrumb level should be clickable and marked up using BreadcrumbList schema (JSON-LD recommended).
Why is this important?
Implementing breadcrumbs offers significant benefits for both SEO and user experience:
SEO & Crawlability: Helps search engines understand site hierarchy and context, especially when supported with structured data.
Enhanced UX: Breadcrumbs offer users a clear navigational path and an easy way to return to parent categories.
Internal Linking & Authority Flow: Boosts internal link structure and helps pass link equity through key category levels.
Improved SERP appearance: With schema, Google can display breadcrumb paths in listings, increasing CTR.
Mobile Navigation: Breadcrumbs offer a lightweight navigation option ideal for smaller screens.
How should it implement it?
To maximise impact, the following best practices should be followed:
- Reflect actual site hierarchy: Start from the homepage and logically progress to the current page.
Reflect the actual page hierarchy:
Current example:
Home > Mountain-Bike > Bikes > Hardtail-Mountain-Bikes > Adult
Issues: “Mountain-Bike” and “Bikes” are repeated/confusing, and terms like “Adult” lack SEO value as breadcrumb anchor text.
Proposed improved version:
Home > Bikes > Mountain Bikes > Hardtail Mountain Bikes
- Clean, logical, SEO-friendly
- Each level uses keyword-rich anchor text (e.g., "Hardtail Mountain Bikes" instead of “Adult”)
- Consistent with the H1 and target keywords
- Add BreadcrumbList structured data: Use JSON-LD to help Google interpret breadcrumb paths.
- Link each level: Ensure each breadcrumb item links to the appropriate parent page.
- Apply canonical tags: Use correct canonical URLs to avoid duplication.
Adding breadcrumbs will align our platform more closely with SEO best practices and Google's structured content guidelines, making our sites more robust and user-friendly :)
Would love to hear your thoughts or if this can be added to the roadmap soon!
Thanks,
Jura - SEO Team