Breadcrumbs for mobile has been a topic of debate in the SEO community for years now with no clear consensus on whether they have a place on mobile or not. This blog aims to clarify whether your site should use breadcrumbs on mobile and if so, how your site should display them. 

What are breadcrumbs?

I’m sure that most of you reading this know what breadcrumbs are but in case you don’t, here’s a brief description:

Breadcrumbs essentially visualize the page depth that a user has travelled on a site to arrive at a certain page. This visualization is in the form of linked text that the user can click on to return to previous pages in their visit. These generally live right under the main navigation on desktop and mobile. See example below.

How does Google feel about breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs that are optimized for mobile usability can have high value for users visiting your site. But what value do they provide Google? Breadcrumbs can actually come in handy for SEO optimization as a tool to help your site rank better with Google. Advantages for SEO are listed below:

• Breadcrumbs can point relevant keywords to specific pages throughout your site. Normal keyword practices apply to this, so don’t over-optimize due to possible penalties from Google, and don’t under-optimize or else you might be missing out on traffic opportunities. 
• They show Google your site’s hierarchy and how the pages listed in the breadcrumbs relate to each other. 
• They enforce a strong internal linking status, especially if the link text is accurate to where the link is pointing. (All links throughout your site should use relevant link text as a best practice). 
• Schema can be used advantageously to make Google aware that the breadcrumb links and text are in fact breadcrumbs and Google can then read them appropriately.

If breadcrumbs are done with SEO in mind, they can be advantageous to your site’s ranking. This goes for mobile and desktop. 

Google crawls mobile-first, right?

Right, for the past few years now Google has made it increasingly clear that they will be pushing forward mobile-first indexing. This is really nothing new. There has been a lot of talk about the impact that breadcrumbs have on mobile SEO but almost no resources know the direct effects. As an SEO specialist, I can quite confidently say that if you design your breadcrumbs in an SEO-friendly manner, they cannot negatively impact your site’s rank. They will likely improve your site’s ranking if you take all the appropriate steps. 

Benefits of breadcrumbs for the user

Now that SEO has been addressed we can discuss the most important piece of your site: the user. Aside from SEO’s importance in the user’s ability to find your site, the experience a user has on your site will determine whether or not you will be able to close a sale or meet a goal. The main function of breadcrumbs is for enhancing the user’s experience by offering quicker secondary navigation. And on mobile where speed is king, why wouldn’t you want to give the user a faster route for navigation? 

Breadcrumbs have the following benefits:

• Lets users know where they are on your site
• Makes navigation and exploration of content easier and faster
• (Can) take up very little space
• Can easily bring user’s back to higher levels of your site 

Designing your breadcrumbs for mobile usability

Breadcrumbs on mobile and desktop generally take the form of simple linked text. If not optimized for keywords or short-form, they can get long and messy and that can be overwhelming for users, especially on mobile. It would be better for a mobile version of a site to not have breadcrumbs than to have messy and unorganized breadcrumbs. With that said, there are some ways to design your breadcrumbs for mobile that can truly enhance mobile usability. 

• The first and easiest way is to optimize the breadcrumbs for keywords. This will allow for SEO impact and it should naturally decrease the amount of verbiage per link.
• Helpful Tip: Decrease the clutter in your breadcrumbs by removing duplicate words in the breadcrumb chain. 
  • IE: “Home > Plastic Bags > Plastic Reclosable Bags” could be optimized by removing “plastic” and “bags” from the last link. The optimized breadcrumbs would look like this, “Home > Plastic Bags > Reclosable”
  • Amazon uses a much shorter version of breadcrumbs where they don’t show the page that the user is currently on. Rather, they just show the previous parent page that they came from. 

• TFL uses a stylish “button” design to layout their breadcrumbs. In my opinion, this is the cleanest way to layout breadcrumbs. With the design however, you sacrifice the “directness” that plain text offers. 

Breadcrumbs can be very advantageous on mobile sites if you take all of the necessary steps. Most importantly, they need to be optimized for user experience. When optimized for SEO additionally, they can serve as a powerful component to your website. At Ecreative we specialize in SEO, User Experience, and Mobile Responsiveness. Contact Ecreative today for more information! 

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