Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are the trail of links that shows where a page sits on your site, such as Home › Guides › SEO Guides › This post. They help visitors move up a level, and they give search engines a readable path to show in place of a raw URL. Hydrogen SEO builds the trail for you, prints it wherever you place a shortcode or PHP function, and outputs the same trail as BreadcrumbList schema.

Visible breadcrumbs are off by default.

Turn them on

1. Open Hydrogen SEO → Breadcrumbs in wp-admin.
2. Switch on Enable breadcrumbs.
3. Place the breadcrumbs on your pages (next section). Hydrogen SEO does not insert them into your theme by itself.
4. Use the Breadcrumb preview to check the trail on a post, a page, a category and other page types before you save.

Place them on the page

Breadcrumbs appear only where you put them. There are two ways.

Shortcode. Paste it into a post, a page, a widget, a shortcode block in a block theme template, or a page builder's shortcode element:

[hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs]

The shortcode accepts attributes that override the settings for that one placement: separator, show_home, home_label, prefix, show_current, link_current and class.

[hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs separator="/" show_home="1" class="my-crumbs"]

PHP function. For themes and child themes, place it in a template, typically in the header or just above the post title:

<?php if ( function_exists( 'hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs' ) ) { hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs(); } ?>

The function_exists check keeps your theme working if the plugin is ever deactivated.

Coming from another SEO plugin

If your theme or content already uses another plugin's breadcrumb shortcode, such as [rank_math_breadcrumb], [wpseo_breadcrumb] or [aioseo_breadcrumbs], it keeps working after you switch: while that plugin is inactive, Hydrogen SEO answers the shortcode and renders its own trail with your Hydrogen SEO settings. You can replace the old shortcodes with [hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs] at your own pace.

Settings

Separator, home link and current page

Trail

These decide which pages appear between the home link and the current page.

Labels

Text for pages that have no title of their own: author and date archives, search results, the 404 page and the page number. A label can include %s for the dynamic part, as in Results for %s; a label without %s is used as a prefix.

Per-post fields

Two fields in each post's SEO settings sheet change that post's trail:

• Breadcrumb Title: a shorter name for the post in breadcrumbs only. It does not change the SEO title or the post title. Categories and other terms have the same field.
• Primary category: a post in several categories goes through its primary category, or the most specific one when none is set. For WooCommerce products this is the primary product category.

If a post's trail goes through the wrong category, set its primary category rather than changing the site-wide settings.

BreadcrumbList schema

The BreadcrumbList structured data uses the same trail as the visible breadcrumbs, so what search engines read always matches what visitors see. It is printed whether or not you place the visible breadcrumbs, and it follows your schema settings, not the Enable breadcrumbs switch.

Hiding the home link or the current page title changes only the visible trail. The schema keeps both, which is what search engines expect.

Change them with Hydrogen AI

Hydrogen AI can read your breadcrumb settings, change them and preview the trail of a real page before and after, so you can ask for things like "use › as the separator and show parent categories" or "why does this post's breadcrumb go through Uncategorized?". It cannot edit your theme files, so for placement it gives you the shortcode and PHP snippet to add.

Migrating from another SEO plugin

Tools → Import SEO Data brings breadcrumb settings across from supported plugins, along with each post's breadcrumb title where the old plugin had one. See Switch from another SEO plugin for the full import.

FAQ

Why are my breadcrumbs not showing?

Check two things: Enable breadcrumbs is on, and the [hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs] shortcode or the hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs() function is actually placed in your theme or content. Turning the setting on does not add breadcrumbs to a theme by itself.

My theme has its own breadcrumb option. Should I use it?

Use one trail, not two. If your theme's breadcrumbs already look right, you can keep them; the BreadcrumbList schema from Hydrogen SEO is printed either way. If you want the trail controlled by the settings on this page, turn the theme's breadcrumbs off and place Hydrogen SEO's instead.

Do breadcrumbs help SEO?

Indirectly. The BreadcrumbList schema lets Google show a readable path in the search result, and the visible links give crawlers and visitors a clear route up your site structure. They do not raise rankings on their own.

Can I shorten a long title in the breadcrumb only?

Yes. Set the Breadcrumb Title field in the post's SEO settings sheet. The page title and SEO title stay as they are.

Related reading

• Schema types reference
• Schema markup overview
• The SEO settings sheet
• Switch from another SEO plugin
• Hydrogen AI recipes