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Best way to handle Breadcrumbs for Blog Posts in multiple categories?
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The site in question uses Wordpress. They have a Resources section that is broken into two categories (A or B). Underneath each of these categories is 5 or 6 subcategories. The structure looks like this:
- /p/main-category-a/subcategory/blog-post-name
- /p/main-category-b/subcategory/blog-post-name
All posts have a main category, but other posts often have multiple subcategories while some posts also fall into both main categories.
What would be the easiest or most effective way to auto-populate the breadcrumb based on from where the person reached the blog post? So for example, a way to set Home -> Main Category -> Subcategory 1 as the breadcrumb if they reach it from the Subcategory 1 landing page.
Or is this not possible and we should just set the breadcrumb manually based on where we feel it best lives?
Thanks.
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Set it manually on where it lives best, or programmatically let them pick the one that is most relevant. I would not implement any logic based on where users are coming from. You're likely well of by spending your engineering resources better than doing that for SEO.
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