What are breadcrumbs in SEO?
Breadcrumbs are a short trail of links, usually near the top of a page, that shows where the page sits within the site: Home › Guides › Brewing › Pour-over guide. Each step links to the level above, so a visitor who landed deep in the site from search can move up to a broader page in one click.
For search engines, breadcrumbs do two things. They add contextual internal links that describe the site's structure, and, when marked up with BreadcrumbList structured data, they can be shown in search results as a readable path.
How it works
The most useful kind is the hierarchy-based trail, built from the page's position in the site (category, parent page) rather than the visitor's click history. The trail should reflect the real structure, and each crumb except the last should link to a page that exists.
BreadcrumbList schema expresses the same trail as an ordered list in JSON-LD. Google uses it to understand the page's position in the site and may display the path in results. Google's rendering has changed over time; since early 2025 its mobile results show only the domain rather than the full breadcrumb path, while desktop can still show it. The markup is still supported.
Example
Visible HTML:
<nav aria-label="Breadcrumb">
<a href="/">Home</a> › <a href="/guides/">Guides</a> › <span>Pour-over guide</span>
</nav>
Matching markup:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "BreadcrumbList",
"itemListElement": [
{ "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://example.com/" },
{ "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Guides", "item": "https://example.com/guides/" },
{ "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Pour-over guide" }
]
}
In WordPress
WordPress core has no breadcrumbs; some themes include them. Hydrogen SEO builds the trail from categories and page parents, prints it wherever you place the [hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs] shortcode or hydrogen_seo_breadcrumbs() PHP function, and outputs matching BreadcrumbList schema. Visible breadcrumbs are off by default, and it answers other plugins' breadcrumb shortcodes after a switch. See breadcrumbs and the BreadcrumbList schema page.
Common mistakes
- Schema that does not match the visible trail, or schema with no visible trail at all.
- Two sets of breadcrumbs from a theme and a plugin.
- Linking every crumb to the same page, or to category URLs that are noindexed or empty.
Common questions
Do breadcrumbs help SEO?
They help indirectly by adding descriptive internal links and making structure clear, and they improve navigation. They are not a direct ranking factor.
Do I need both visible breadcrumbs and BreadcrumbList schema?
It is best to have both and keep them identical. The schema should describe a trail visitors can actually see.