Is Removing Breadcrumbs Detrimental for SEO?
-
We have full navigational breadcrumbs on our site for the menu and the brand menu.
i.e. Home > Clothing > Jackets
Brand > Brand Name > Brand Jackets
There's been talk of removing this and having it like Chico's does, where on item pages they just have a link at the top to previous category (i.e. you're on a shirt product page and at the top it says "Back to Tops" instead of listing Home > Clothing > Tops)
Is doing something like this detrimental to SEO? From what I've read Breadcrumbs are for user experience but I just want to be sure.
-
I would probably want to dig a bit deeper on why your team feels there's a need to remove breadcrumbs. From what I can see on the Chico's website, they do indeed use them: https://www.chicos.com/store/category/sweaters/cat8319278/
As well as proper structured markup: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.chicos.com%2Fstore%2Fcategory%2Fsweaters%2Fcat8319278%2F
To address your question more directly:
Properly marked-up breadcrumbs add another layer of meaning and organizational depth to your website, which is parsed by search engines and weighed when organizing SERPs. While I can't assume the direct impact their removal would have on your organic traffic, I would hesitate to "downgrade" your site in terms of semantic markup.
This sounds like to me like the issue could be less to do with the breadcrumbs themselves, but instead a styling (breadcrumbs too distracting/prominent), or an architectural issue (breadcrumbs list too long).
More helpful information on breadcrumbs and proper markup/structured data: https://audisto.com/insights/guides/2/
Hope this helps.
-Brian
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Plugins and SEO
I'd like some expert guidance. I've searched for a theme that does what I want and finally found something I like, but I'm wondering what you all think I should do to increase it's searchability. The plugin has all the listings and styling. All I need to do is past the code into the wordpress site ad voila! I have a page. Using the widget lets me allow upvotes and provide map etc. But it means the content is inside the widget instead of on the page. What would you modify if you wanted to keep the theme & widget to get the best results. http://best-of-sacramento.com/dentists This is my staging site.
Technical SEO | | julie-getonthemap1 -
Youtube SEO Best Practices
Does anyone know where to find a list of SEO best practices for Youtube? Specifically...does anyone have thoughts on the SEO benefits of an @domain.com login vs @gmail.com login? Or is adding my url to the "Associated website" channel setting sufficient for SEO purposes?
Technical SEO | | brianvest0 -
Should we remove category paths for better SEO?
We're looking to build some serious content and capitalise on long-tail keyword traffic for our sub-category pages, example for targeted keyword "designer dining tables". Example of current link: www.website.com/designer-furniture/designer-dining-tables.html Would removing the category paths help? Example result - www.website.com/designer-dining-tables More user friendly URLs and better for SEO would you suggest? The only problem is, if we removed the paths would this have a hit on our traffic? Any advice would be much appreciated. We are using Magento platform.
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Coming soon SEO
Hi, I was wondering what is the best practice to redirect all the links juice by redirecting all the pages of your website to a coming soon page. The coming soon page will point to the domain.com, not to a subfolder. Should I move the entire website to a subfolder and redirect this folder to the coming soon page? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
Mutiple domains with similar SEO
ok we have one main domain about our company which is about renting luxury and exotic cars. (PrestigeLuxuryRentals.com). We own other domains with similar keywords,meta,etc on the URL and SEO For example, we own domains like exoticcarrentalorlando/exoticcarrentaltampa, with same background and design as main site but, we have different content than main site to avoid duplicate. Keep in mind, all the other domain we own, all have same template with our companies name on it but, it doesnt have any content or link that pertains to main site. is this a problem?
Technical SEO | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
SEO friendldy Site structure?
we are in the process or rewriting all the pages on one of our sites and will be changing some urls around. i was just wondering if dashes or underscores are better in the urls SEO wise? www.site.com/word-word-word/ or
Technical SEO | | 858-SEO
www.site.com/word_word_word/ i personally like the underscores better but some colleagues tell me that dashes are better, any tests out there on this issue?? Thanks0 -
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW - Any SEO benefit to these pages?
Hi I could use some advice on a site architecture decision. I am developing something akin to an affiliate scheme for my business. However it is not quite as simple as an affliate setup because the products sold through "affiliates" will be slightly different, as a result I intend to run the site from a subdomain of my main domain. I am intending to NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW the subdomained site because it will contain huge amounts of duplication from my main site (it is really a subset of the main site with some slightly different functionality in places). I don't really want or need this subdomain site indexed, hence my decision to NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW it. However given I will, hopefully, be having lots of people link into the subdomain I am hoping to come up with some sort of arrangement that will mean that my main domain derives some sort of benefit from the linking. They are, after all, votes for my business so they feel like "good links". I am assuming here that a direct link into my NOFOLLOW,NOINDEX subdomain is going to provide ZERO benefit to my main domain. Happy to be corrected! The best I can come up with is to have a "landing page" on my main domain which links into parts of my main domain and then provides a link through to the subdomain site. However this feels like a bad experience from the user's point of view (i.e. land on a page and then have to click to get to the real action) and feels a bit spammy, i.e. I don't really have a good reason for this page other than linking! Equally I could NOINDEX,FOLLOW the homepage of the affiliate site and link back to the main domain from there. However this also feels a bit spammy and would be far less beneficial, I guess, because the subdomain homepage would have many more outgoing links than I envisaged for my "landing page" idea above. Also, it also looks a bit spammy (i.e. why follow the homepage and nofollow everything else?)! The trouble, I guess, is that whatever I do feels a bit spammy. I suppose this is because IT IS spammy! 🙂 Has anyone got any good ideas how I could setup an arrangement like I described above and derive benefit to my main domain without it looking (or being) spammy? I just hate to think of all of those links being wasted (in an SEO sense). Thanks Gary
Technical SEO | | gtrotter6660