Breadcrumbs in Google Gain More Links

Posted on January 22, 2010
Filed Under Link Tactics, Search Engine Optimization, Toronto SEO | Leave a Comment

 Understanding Breadcrumb Links In Google

One important goal of every website owner, no matter what type of site they have, is to attract and keep visitors by making the site easy to navigate. Recently, Google began including the use of breadcrumbs in their search results. The advantage to website owners is they have the ability to not only make site navigation much easier, but they will get their breadcrumbs into Google’s search results with the outcome being a gain of more links and improved search engine visibility.

Breadcrumb navigation is a way of viewing the trail a visitor has taken through a website. They are normally placed above the main page heading and show where visitors are in relation to the site’s homepage. Each page that a user visits is displayed as a text link and there is a separate link for each page in the breadcrumb trail.  Breadcrumbs are normally a horizontal line that advances from the highest level to the lowest, begins with the homepage and finishes with the current page, has a straightforward text link for each level, and has a one character separator between the levels which is normally “>”. For example:

Home Page>About Us Page>Product Page

There are many benefits to using breadcrumb trail. First, it helps visitors understand the structure and hierarchy of the website. As well, they show users where they are, how they got to the current webpage, and how they can backtrack to a previous page in the hierarchy. It also mirrors the correct hierarchy of the website.  Because of these benefits, Google has now changed the way they display search engine results.  To make search result links more user friendly, Google will now list the name of the actual page a user will view. For example, it will show a page as http://www.example.com./about-us/new-products/.  It makes the link easier to read and provides information that is categorized by the search engine. The ‘location’ breadcrumbs are the breadcrumbs that Google uses. The ‘location’ breadcrumbs show where the page is located in the website hierarchy. Basically, what the website breadcrumb navigation actually provides is a row of internal links that are each indexed by Google.

Since Google is now using breadcrumb navigation, it is important for website owners to create a breadcrumb trail in their navigation. It will be a valuable tool used to increasing search engine ranking and is now being implemented in the services of most SEO Companies.

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