Reader Question: I am confused about breadcrumb links both from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective and a usability perspective. Usability experts often say not to use them, but a lot of SEO experts recommend using them. So who is right? Should I use them or shouldn’t I?

Answer: I understand your confusion. One thing to remember is that usability professionals are often not search experts, and search experts often do not have any usability training, education, certification or experience. Due to the lack of cross-training from both fields of study, you will get conflicting answers.

What are breadcrumb links?

Breadcrumb links, also known as contextual links, are a type of navigation aid for Web pages. They provide a textual representation of a site’s structure, usually a vertical hierarchy of a site. For example, on ecommerce sites, breadcrumb links often have the following format:

Home > Category > Subcategory > Product

On a larger site, the breadcrumb format might be the following:

Home > Channel Page > Category > Subcategory > Product

On a smaller site, breadcrumb links might have a very simple format:

Home > Category > Product

And if a site does not contain many pages, breadcrumb links might not be necessary at all. Some breadcrumb links are locational, as the ones I described above, or dynamic (path). A path breadcrumb trail communicates to users the path they used to find a Web page on a site.

For this article, I am describing locational breadcrumb links.

Web site usability and breadcrumb links

I find that many reputable usability professionals have mixed feelings about the usefulness of breadcrumb links.

Steve Krug, usability expert and author of my favorite usability book Don’t Make Me Think (I bought the book just because I loved the title), believes that breadcrumb links are acceptable as a supplement to a regular navigation scheme, but that they should not be used without additional navigational support. In other words, always have a global navigation scheme with labels/wording that makes sense to your site visitors. And you can supplement the global navigation scheme with breadcrumb links.

However, do not use breadcrumb links as the main means of navigation, Krug recommends. Breadcrumb links do not provide an adequate representation of the full structure of the site. Additionally, site visitors do not always follow the exact breadcrumb trail to the page they are viewing.

Other usability professionals, however, tend to discourage the use of breadcrumb links. Even though breadcrumb links might be helpful, site visitors often do not use them (i.e. click those links). In fact, Dr. Susan Weinschenk of Human Factors International, recently stated that only users/participants who were given instruction to use breadcrumb links used them. Therefore, breadcrumbs are not always critical.

Many other usability professionals have come to the same conclusion. Because breadcrumb links are not crucial to the functionality of a Web site AFTER a person is already on a site, then they should not be added to the site design.

Interestingly, whenever I read or hear a usability professional talk about the usefulness of breadcrumb links, they never mention search.

SEO and breadcrumb links

I am in favor of using breadcrumb links, not only from a usability perspective but also from a search perspective.

Below are four reasons why breadcrumb links are good for both site visitors and search engines?

1. Primary text - All search engines index primary text and use it to determine relevancy. Breadcrumb links are primary text. Therefore, they are used to determine keyword relevancy. If breadcrumb links are formatted using important keyword phrases, these keyword phrases will be indexed and “counted” toward relevancy by the major Web search engines.

2. Keyword focus – Breadcrumb links are an easy way to make a page appear more focused on targeted keyword phrases, particularly on graphics-intensive pages. Web developers, usability professionals, and Web standards advocates can moan and groan and whine all they want about the poor usability of graphics-intensive pages. The reality is that many times, a graphics-intensive page often has a higher ROI than a text-intensive page.

3. Keyword prominence - Breadcrumb links are typically placed high up on a page (i.e. above the fold), which communicates that category pages and targeted keyword phrases must be important.

4. “You are here” cue – Whenever we ask users what page they are visiting in a usability test and/or focus group and they answer correctly, one reason they give for knowing the correct answer is that they are viewing the breadcrumb trail.

When I make the statement “good for search engines,” I am not only referring to the spider-based search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, and Teoma. I am also referring to site search engines. A very easy way to make a page appear more focused to both Google AND a site search engine is to use breadcrumb links.

Conclusion

I understand the reader’s confusion. I read conflicting data about search usability strategies all of the time. What I recommend is a balance: balance the goals of your site visitors with your business goals. If breadcrumb links genuinely help your site visitors and make your search results more relevant? By all means, add breadcrumb links to your site. If they do not help, then don’t use them.

I also look at the big picture. You can have the most user-friendly Web site on the planet. However, if people cannot find your site, then usability isn’t going to matter much, is it? My solution is to make end users happy and to follow all of the guidelines set forth by the Web search engines. From my perspective (as a Web developer, search expert, and usability professional), I give a thumbs-up for breadcrumb links.

Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted from her book, Search Engine Visibility (http://www.searchenginesbook.com) published in January 2003 by New Riders Publishing Co. Shari can be reached at shari@grantasticdesigns.com.

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