Using Breadcrumbs Without THIS is an SEO Sin!

Why Breadcrumb Snippets Matter for SEO

If your web shop has breadcrumbs but no breadcrumb snippet, you are leaving rankings and revenue on the table. The first time I noticed that breadcrumbs were present on most websites, I honestly believed they existed because users didn't know how to navigate through a browser. I was not so far off. Many users use them because they are so close to the action and some use them because they're lazy or lost. But when I heard at a conference that breadcrumbs can impact SEO positively, I honestly thought that was bullshit. Why should they matter to SEO? Okay, they're links, but they usually link to items that are already linked. They do not even use a different anchor except sometimes for the homepage where they write their brand name instead of just homepage or shop. I didn't get it. So I tried to forget that topic.

The Conference Revelation

Then at another SEO conference, I heard that it is very important to implement the breadcrumb snippet again. The reason was obvious this time. Google had started to display the breadcrumb path in search results if you had the snippet. Now there was a clear SEO reason. But I kept asking myself why the first speaker had said it was important to SEO even before Google displayed breadcrumbs in the results. I asked other colleagues at the conference, but nobody I asked knew why it would have mattered before. It tickled my mind for a long time. I became even more curious. I didn't remember the guy's name. If I had, I would have asked him about this.

Client Case Study

One day I came home and an enterprise web shop had agreed to become my client. I went to their headquarters, met the team and asked how I could help. Their main problem was that subcategories at all levels did not rank well and they couldn't figure out why. I spent days analyzing them but could not find anything. The only real difference between them and their competitors was that they didn't use nested category URLs. They also used category IDs that were numbers instead of writing the category name into them, but they were not the first to do it that way. Then I saw that their breadcrumbs did not have breadcrumb snippets. Odd. That is usually part of the basic setup of enterprise webshops. I asked why it was missing and they told me they didn't know any SEO benefit of implementing it. So I told them about the change in Google results, that Google displays breadcrumbs instead of URLs if the breadcrumb snippet is implemented. They thanked me and implemented it right away.

The Big Surprise

A few days later, the chief marketing officer called me on my phone. I picked up. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. I could only tell that he was happy. So I asked him to calm down and tell me what happened. The subcategories had jumped in Google rankings by 10, 20, even 30 positions. The day before yesterday, they broke their all time revenue record. I was puzzled. How could implementing breadcrumb snippets bring such results so fast? After hours of thinking, it struck me. Of course, how did I not see it right away. Google had no way to know which subcategory belonged to which category? They didn't have nested category URLs. The menu was not a reliable indicator of the category structure. And now with the snippet, Google could confirm that the entities of categories and subcategories matched and it rewarded that.

Implementation Advice

So please use breadcrumbs with snippets. Add the breadcrumb snippet using Schema.org BreadcrumbList. Set your brand name as the first crumb in the breadcrumbs. Do not just write homepage or shop. It takes little effort to implement them, but not having them can be a mistake. Don't forget to test it with the Rich Results Test in your Google Search Console or the Schema.org validator tool to be sure you have implemented it correctly. If you want another quick SEO tip that can bring you a lot more organic traffic, watch this video next.