WordPress: why and how to add a breadcrumb to your website?

A A breadcrumb is a form of navigation Often neglected, yet valuable. It is a navigation aid that works by showing the reader their location within your site's hierarchy. It helps users find their way on your site and can even improve how your content appears in search engines.

Before, theadding a breadcrumb to a site WordPress was long and tedious. But that was before. Today, WordPress has greatly simplified this process. In fact, several options are available to you, depending on the level of customization you want.

In this article, we explain why add a breadcrumb to your website and how to add a breadcrumb to WordPress.

What is a breadcrumb trail?

A breadcrumb refers to the (clickable) hierarchy of a web page.

Example: Home > Clothing > Dress > For special occasion > Evening dress.

In general, it is found at the top of the page, before the title, and it helps search engines contextualize the page's content. Thus, the breadcrumb is an asset both for visitors and for your SEO strategy, since it helps both prospects and Google's indexing bots when crawling your site.

If the goal is still to contextualize the user's location within the site, different breadcrumb behaviors can be distinguished. Breadcrumbs can be based on your site's hierarchical structure.

Another option: breadcrumbs can be based on the different attributes the user is searching for. This is particularly useful for e-commerce sites, whose catalog structure is more 'horizontal' than that of other sites with a more 'logical' structure.

Finally, breadcrumbs can be based on the user's navigation history on your site. Breadcrumbs are therefore an element to include in a broader consideration of your site's usability and the type of navigation required by the products or services you offer.

As for the SEO benefit of building breadcrumbs, it is twofold. First, crawling of your site by indexing robots is easier. Second, your breadcrumbs can be displayed in search results pages, which immediately conveys the image of a well-constructed site and allows users to access additional content at a glance in the SERPs.

What are the benefits of breadcrumbs?

Organize your web pages

Have you ever read or seen "Tom Thumb"? In fact, breadcrumbs work like the bits of bread scattered by the main character. Incidentally, "fil d'Ariane" literally translates as "breadcrumbs" in English. In French, the mythological reference from ancient Greece was preferred: Ariadne, in love with Theseus who went to fight the Minotaur in the heart of the Labyrinth, gives him this unrolling thread so he can find his way out safely. But back to our time... This navigation tool lets users retrace their steps whenever they want and know where they are in real time.

Breadcrumbs are considered a navigation aid useful feature since the mid-90s. They are guidelines elements that improve your site's usability and put your various web pages in order, making that order immediately understandable to the user.

Make your site attractive and easy to use

A breadcrumb offers one-click access to your site's key pages. But it also helps enliven your site's deep pages.

For example, if you have a clothing catalog, there is a good chance your site contains a fairly large layering of different page depth levels (category "Men" or "Women", then "type of clothing", then "brand", then "material", etc.).

In that case, the breadcrumb allows the user to orient themselves very easily, like in a well-organized store. The benefit is twofold: not only can the user return to the homepage in an instant, but they can also "move up" one level in their search history to change a filter, compare a product, or revisit their choices…

The breadcrumb trail also shows the value of being completely "customer-centered," since this ergonomic "GPS" moves according to the customer's location on the site.

This "customer-centered" approach reassures the customer, who is often bombarded when visiting a site by lead magnet pop-ups, discount codes, suggested similar products, shipping offers, etc. With the breadcrumb trail, the customer keeps a sense of control over what they see and where they are on the site.

That's why you take no risk by installing it—in fact, quite the opposite.

Optimize your site for search engines (SEO)

Moreover, a breadcrumb trail can contribute to the good SEO of your site by helping you obtain a better:

And yes: your site's design is clearer and your content is easier to find. As a result, your site is more attractive to the visitor.

User experience has become the key to success during the e-commerce boom. The customer expects not only to find a product, but a coherent environment where they feel comfortable and can easily find their bearings. Thanks to the breadcrumb trail, design your site like a well-kept shop.

The user must find what they need in as few clicks as possible. The breadcrumb trail helps you drastically reduce that number of clicks, and make each one effective rather than "erratic." In this way, your conversion rate increases because the prospect lands faster on what they're looking for.

"Faster": that's a slogan that epitomizes the customer experience you must deliver! Indeed, the average user's attention span does not exceed ten seconds. And it's even shorter for smartphone users, while 50% of searches are now performed on smartphones!

Draw the obvious conclusions: if the user takes too long to find what they're looking for, they'll already be on a competitor's site… Whereas a breadcrumb trail that's always present and reassuring will recapture their attention by redirecting them more efficiently to what they want.

Now that you understand the value of the breadcrumb trail, it's high time to add it to your WordPress site.

How to add a breadcrumb trail to your WordPress site?

WordPress is very easy to use and adding a plugin is child's play. Therefore, using a dedicated WordPress plugin will be the simplest solution.

If you want to customize your breadcrumb down to the smallest detail, hire a professional developer !

Use a dedicated WordPress plugin

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular SEO tools on WordPress, with over one million active users. The free version also contains the essential tools for good SEO, including adding a breadcrumb with WP Breadcrumb. The free version of this plugin will offer a limited number of breadcrumb designs.

To add breadcrumbs to your WordPress site using Yoast SEO, you will need to follow three simple steps:

1. Install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin

To install the Yoast SEO plugin, go to your WordPress dashboard and click Plugins -> Add New. Then search for Yoast SEO, click it to install and activate it.

2. Add the breadcrumbs code to your WordPress theme

Then, add a small piece of code to your WordPress theme.

You can add the code to any theme file/template, but it is generally recommended to add it to your page.php file (so it appears on all pages), or to your header.php file (so it appears across the whole site).

For example, insert the "breadcrumbs" code into the header.php file of your child theme. Once you have copied the parent theme's header.php file, open the file to edit it in a code editor. Then, at the very bottom of header.php, add the following PHP code snippet provided by Yoast to enable the Breadcrumbs feature:

<?php

if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {

yoast_breadcrumb( '<p id="breadcrumbs">', '</p>' );

}

 ?>

A breadcrumb trail will then be displayed directly beneath the header on all pages. Installing it at the top of every page allows it to fully serve as a visual waypoint, regardless of how the user navigates.

3. Configure the breadcrumb trail in the plugin settings

Once the code has been added to your WordPress child theme, all that remains is to activate the breadcrumb in the SEO Yoast settings.

To do this, go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to SEO > Search Appearance then click on the Breadcrumbs tab.

Under the Breadcrumbs settings, make sure to enable Breadcrumbs by selecting the “Enabled” option.

You can then configure the settings for your new breadcrumb!

4. Looking for an alternative to the Yoast SEO plugin?

Aside from the very popular Yoast plugin, there is also Breadcrumb NavXTTo access this extension, go to “Appearance”, then to “Widgets”. The advantage of this Breadcrumb NavXT alternative? Greater customization and a very flexible widget.

Furthermore, Flexy Breadcrumbs is also an interesting alternative, notably allowing you to adjust the font size and color used for your breadcrumbs.

Are you an e-commerce seller? In that case, it may be recommended to use WooCommerce Breadcrumbs, easy to use, for integrating breadcrumbs into your product pages.

Adding a breadcrumb trail to your website: conclusion

To conclude, let's recall the three main objectives of the breadcrumb :

The breadcrumb therefore stands out as a discreet feature, yet one that can bring significant added value to your site—both for its SEO health and your brand image, as well as for the user experience and your conversion rate. It's typically the kind of feature you don't notice at first glance, but it makes the user's life easier and conveys an impression of a well-kept, well-organized site, which fosters trust.

And to install it on your WordPress site, two options are available. If you don't have much time but still want convincing results, use a dedicated plugin, such as Yoast SEO. Otherwise, ask a professional developer to customize your breadcrumb.

Do you have a question about theadding a breadcrumb to its WordPress site? Ask it in the comments section below!