Are Breadcrumbs Really Necessary?
-
An SEO provider suggested we add breadcrumbs to the top of each page about 3 years ago, which we did.
3 years later we are going thru the site and find it really busy with lots of redundant and distracting elements.
We would like to remove the breadcrumbs from the top of the pages. Is there any real SEO downside to doing so?
All URLs are listed on our site map so I don't see why Google would not index all pages.Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com
I have uploaded a sample page with a breadcrumb.
Thanks,
Alan -
Hi Alan and Jordan,
Firstly, Alan, thanks for raising this question as I am currently in a similar predicament and was wondering if Jordan, you could provide some insight?
For my website, which is the site for a magazine I work for, the current URL structure is www.website.com/article-title
On first glance, I thought it must be that we would have to re-structure the URLs to include the category structure, for example... www.website.com/category/sub-category/article-title
However, upon deeper investigation, I've seen that we do actually have breadcrumbs enabled therefore google is indexing and following the structure from this.
With this in mind, is it actually worth re-structuring the URLs to include these categories as it will take a long time to organise and implement.
Obviously, thinking in terms of UX, it is a must-do, but I'm just trying to weigh up the pro's and cons with this..
Appreciate your help,
Leigh
-
Breadcrumbs help with navigation purposes and are there for the user experience. Personally, I feel as though they provide a greater user experience.
I would do some analysis work and put a heat map on your site. Try using hotjar they have a free subscription model that I think will come in handy. You can also see where users are clicking the most etc. Do you some research and analysis work before removing elements. Also, Google is not going to de-index pages just because you remove bread crumbs so you have no worries there.
Personally after looking at your attachment I would remove the entire far right column and widen all the other elements. You already have the "click here" button and everything else seems a bit redundant.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Do SEOs really need to care about trend in increase of voice search?
Hi all, Just browsing through the articles like "SEO trends in 2108"....I can see everyone mention about increase in voice search and attributing same to the SEO at top. But there is very less information on how to optimise for voice search....May be, they don't know what SEOs have to do exactly with voice search. Basically the input method is going to change on search and else remains same. This must be leading to increase of long tail searches and more search snippets to give an instant voice answer. What else has to be optimised to favoured in voice search? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz2 -
Is it still necessary to have a "home" page button/link in the top nav?
Or is it not necessary to have a "home" tab/link because everybody by this time knows you can get to the home page by clicking on the logo?
Web Design | | FindLaw0 -
Is it necessary to Remove 301 redirects from Wordpress after removing the 404 url from Google Webmaster?
There were many 404 urls in my site found by Google Webmaster. I've redirected these urls to the relevant urls with 301 redirect in wordpress. After that I removed these 404 urls from Google Index through Webmaster. "Should I cleanup these 301 redirects from Wordpress or not? ". Help Needed.
Web Design | | SangeetaC0 -
Is Spritepad really as easy as they make it out to be?
Hi all, Have any of you used http://wearekiss.com/spritepad to combine images into sprites after your site has already been designed? I can see how it would be easy if you were doing this work as you were building and designing a site. But, on a custom coded site (that is not running on any well-know platform or CMS), is it really going to be a piece of cake? Interested to hear about your experiences with this tool. Thanks! Dana
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
Redesigning a really old Website with old-fashioned permalinks
Hey SEO-Pros, I'm currently redesigning a quite old website, with the following URL structure: TLD/category/category.php?interview_id=819 The new Version will be a little more SEO-friendly: TLD/interviews/name-of-interview/ I know I have to do a 301-Redirect for all the old URLs to the new ones in order to keep the (until now pretty good) Google Ranking. If the rankings drop after the redesign has been done, I'll surely get killed 😉 So, Is there any easy way of creating these 301-Redirects (must be thousands of URLs...)? Best Regards guys and thanks for your help!
Web Design | | dominator0 -
What is a really great bounce rate for a product or service site? What does Good look like?
I am really curious about a result I have never seen before. Our bounce rate went down a lot on a new site. So, what is good??? Recently, we took on a project with a company that offers a product they install for consumers and who had been in business for 15 plus years. The company is successful, has good customer base of those who have been made very happy, etc. It is not a repeat sale type of product, etc. One and done. Their site when we began talking was roughly a year old and was not well constructed but not terrible. Most of the issues were around I frames, use of older coding, poor SEO, etc. There was not really a way to "redesign" and we built a new site. This became a true collaboration in a B2B environment as the owner pushed us like crazy. Not the bad kind of push, the one that makes you say to your team, "Let's find a way!" The result, IMO, was a gorgeous site. But, as you know, those are a dime a dozen. But, to get to the point, when we took over the account they had a bounce rate of around 45%. I did not see this as either good or bad, but a fact and for this industry probably not bad at all. In all honesty, I was not looking at that as a first metric I wanted to move, but it was obviously at or near the top for all the reasons we know. So, this site is a local business, not an everyday product and gets about 2500 to 3000 uniques per month. If we compare to May of 2011/2012: 2011 2012 Total Visitors 1852 3,298 Uniques 1609 2,740 Pageviews 5,634 23,203 Pages/visit 3.04 7.04 Avg Duration 2.05 3.20 Yes, I am leaving off what we are getting, yes, I am leaving off the site. Please don't hate me. I am really wanting to see what others see with site changes and bounce rates first and will disclose. So, what's a great bounce rate? How do you know?
Web Design | | RobertFisher0 -
Multidimensional breadcrumbs
Hi everyone, I've been planing to implement breadcrumbs to client's website. However products are under multiple categories, so simple one dimensional breadcrumb isn't quite right for the job. I've been experimenting with several implementations, but sadly I wasn't satisfied with their look and feel. Which multidimensional breadcrumbs would you recommend? Thanks Bojan
Web Design | | Yanbo0 -
Is it necessary to redirect every Error page (404 or 500) found?
If I have Hundreds of pages with 404 and 500 erros should set up 301 redirects for all of them? Some of the pages have external links, some don't.
Web Design | | jmansd0