Bread Crumb Optimization for websites

Bread Crumbs are the hierarchical display commonly used in site navigation. For example: Home Page> Product Category> Specific Product Page.

Bread Crumbs are a very important part of large websites that have a hierarchal information architecture. They allow you to see what category the page you are looking at is listed under making it easier for you to find other products in that category and remember the page you are on.

Recently Google has decided to publish web sites' Bread Crumb trails under their listings in the form of text links. This is extremely good for well optimised websites because it allows them to have more links on the page than before. Users find it useful as well because it allows them to go straight to the pages that interest them.

So how do you make sure that your web site is optimised for Bread Crumbs?

• Ensure that your website is big enough to support a bread crumb trail.
• Ensure that your site is organised in a hierarchal way.
• Make sure that every page in the hierarchy has the proper bread crumb trail listed at the top of the page.
• Write the URL in a hierarchal way.
• Do not link pages to themselves.

Hope that helps you optimise your site. Leave a comment on this blog with a link to your site for us to see if you have done a good job.