Breadcrumbs Navigation in WordPress

Nadejda Milanova

Nadejda Milanova · 13th January 2022·WordPress

Updated on 30th January 2024

Breadcrumbs Navigation in WordPress

The size of your website will depend on the structure and index of search engines and then whether a user wants to visit this or that resource.

Website owners need to solve a million problems related to the promotion of their resources and equip the portal with all the necessary buttons and cells, plugins, and other systems for the convenient stay of the user on the pages and quickly promote the site at the top. Those who are familiar with the famous tale "Henzel and Gretel" will remember the moment when the children scattered bread crumbs and then returned home.

This is the clearest example of what "breadcrumbs" actually do on your website, but this is too short an explanation for such an important detail. Therefore, its value, feasibility, need to be considered in more detail.

Breadcrumbs Navigation: What is it and how does it work?

If you carefully study the components of the site and take an online store as an example (whether it is clothes or household appliances), the structure of the site necessarily has pages with goods that the visitor goes to. The breadcrumbs here perform the same function: the visitor, due to the presence of the site of this script, can easily navigate the Internet resource, go to different categories and move through the catalog, and at the same time return to the main one-click menu.

Using such a plugin is necessary for sites that are several pages (tens, hundreds or thousands), and if they do not exist, users simply will not be able to navigate it properly. This is the main point to keep in mind when designing a website.

Using the WordPress blog, the breadcrumbs on the site should be placed under the main section. This navigation will be a series of links from the main page to the one where the user of the site is at one time or another.

Do you need breadcrumbs?

Not all sites care about user experience and often forget to insert the breadcrumbs plugin into the structure. What happens if this system does not show up on a multilateral resource? The answer is simple: first, the low flow of users due to the bad navigation of the site and secondly the low level of indexing of the portal in search engines. The second sequence plays an important role - we will see a smaller number of users. Breadcrumbs is an addition to the structure of the site, which is useful both for users and for the resource itself and for its promoting at the top of search engines.

Functions

The above tasks are the main functions of the plugin, but it has a number of other functions that it solves. Navigational breadcrumbs have a number of features:

  • Simplifies site navigation for the user.
  • Gives additional signals to various search engines about the structure of the site.
  • Allows the formation of a competent connection.
  • Creates easy-to-read snippets in search engines.

Breadcrumbs on a website

Breadcrumbs play a vital role in the navigation of websites. They provide users with a hierarchical path of links that indicate their current position within the site’s structure. Although it may seem like a small detail, breadcrumbs play an important role in improving user experience and website usability. Whether you’re creating an informational website or looking to increase revenue through promotion, it’s important to understand the breadcrumb structure.

Basic Structure

The breadcrumbs structure follows a basic pattern across different websites. Three main types of breadcrumbs constructions are tailored to different types of websites:

  • For pages with catalog categories

Web pages with large catalog categories often use breadcrumbs as a way to direct users through the site’s hierarchy. Breadcrumbs typically show the path that leads to a particular category, allowing users to easily navigate back to a higher-level category or main catalog page.

  • For product cards

Most e-commerce websites use a breadcrumb on product cards to direct users to the product they’re looking at. Breadcrumbs help users understand where they are in the product hierarchy by allowing them to navigate between product categories or subcategories without any hiccups easily.

  • For all resource pages

Web pages that include blog posts, articles, and informational pages all benefit from breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs provide users with an easy way to navigate through a website’s content hierarchy, from a blog post to an informational page.

Popular Plugins

WordPress blog is the most popular among the developers of the site. It is easy to use and easy to modify, allows for any changes, but if we talk about popular plugins, it’s best to try out Breadcrumb NavXT and Instant Breadcrumbs. In principle, the operation of these two plugins is the same and does not require additional settings. Their function is to automatically create a navigation menu. They are popular among beginners, as there are no special settings, but for complex and voluminous projects not so much. For those who want to use breadcrumbs in Joomla, you need to know the characteristics of the site and how the new plugins will work. To add them to this site, you need to find the "Navigation Settings" cell and click on it once. Then you need to publish the module on the correct pages of the site, having the information in the correct paragraphs, which leads to the main page of the site.

Basically, this is the only option to install this navigation on the Joomla site, but the difference is from the plugins in WordPress is that they can be customized and so everything happens in different ways. The way this plugin is configured will depend on search engine indexing.

Finding the Suitable Plugin

Not all website owners make an effort to promote their resources to professional IT experts. They often do their own admin work and therefore do not have the arsenal of knowledge of where you can find the necessary plugins. The options on the web are huge and you can find this navigation for almost any workstation.

To summarise

Breadcrumbs are not just a decoration on the site, but a necessary and indispensable design function. Without their presence, the resource will be bent, cease to function properly, and will soon cease to exist. Even before starting the portal, you need to carefully examine the operation of your site’s navigation, choose the right module. After all, if there is a permanent directory extension, you should choose powerful plugins, not standard ones that have automatic settings and are unchanged. It is better to spend an hour or two searching for a quality module before starting the service, than weeks and months to restore the ranking of resources in search engines, supplementing it with new modules. Everything that is built into the structure of the site, in the beginning, is promoted and indexed faster, so the overall work of the resource must be given much more time than normal.

Before you start developing websites, it is worth looking at the largest resources and online stores, where there are over one million products. A well-thought-out system will allow you to understand all the details of navigation and its functions.

Nadejda Milanova
Nadejda Milanova

An experienced Content creator in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and WordPress. A true proffesional with a Master's degree focused on journalism.

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