Breadcrumbs on Mobile How important are they for SEO?
-
Due to Poor unsightly look of breadcrumbs and the space it takes up above the fold we only employ breadcrumbs on our desktop version. Breadcrumbs are hidden from view on mobile version. However as mobile first indexing is now in play what technical SEO impacts will this have? one thing that comes to mind is crawling deeper pages where breadcrumbs made them accessible in less than 3 link clicks? But i am unsure now of the impacts of not having breadcrumbs visible for mobile version of our site.
-
From my understanding of mobile-first indexing, your mobile site will become the primary version Google crawlers see when they are looking at your website. So in terms of the impact of hiding the breadcrumbs on your mobile site, Google will see that you've hidden them and may or may not see them on the desktop version because they may or may not bother to crawl the desktop version.
My question to you would be - what value are you seeing from the breadcrumbs on desktop? Can you check your analytics data to see whether users are using these breadcrumbs for navigation? Do you mark up your breadcrumbs with schema to allow them to show up in rich snippets? If the breadcrumbs do not currently add much value to your users and if they don't serve an SEO purpose, you may not need to bother including them on mobile. On the other hand, if you know that they add to a better UX, you may see a benefit from adding them to the mobile version of the site. This is because Google likes to reward sites with a better UX for mobile users. If you are using them more for search engines to have easier crawl access, I would suggest revisiting your site structure more broadly to ensure that no important page is further than 3-4 clicks from the homepage; and/or ensure that you keep your sitemaps up to date with all important pages and submit in GSC and BWT.
-
Breadcrumbs are more for UX purposes, allowing users to go through a website more efficiently. I personally can't see any benefits of them on a mobile view as they're more of a hindrance, maybe try making them visible in the sites footer; on mobile.
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
-
Subdomains or Subdirectory for multisite SEO structure?
Hey Mozzers, I work for a startup releasing several apps all within their own niches: hiking, mountain biking, skiing, running etc.. We've decided to go for the Wordpress Multisite route and I was wondering what the best site structure was. For example: Would hike.myapp.com or myapp.com/hike be more beneficial to our growth plans? My thinking follows that of geotargeting strategies for franchises (uk.travel.com etc) and to go for the subdomain option in order to build each individual 'sites' authority because each sport has niche audiences. Or am I talking nonsense? I've read varying advice and thought I'd ask you guys. Cheers, A
Technical SEO | | AdamRob011 -
Homepage 301 and SEO Help
Hi All, Does redirecting alternate versions of my homepage with a 301 only improve reporting, or are there SEO benefits as well. We recently changed over our servers and this wasn't set-up as before and I've noticed a drop in our organic search traffic. i.e. there was no 301 sending mywebsite.com traffic to www.mywebsite.com Thanks in advance for any comments or help.
Technical SEO | | b4cab0 -
Is dash problem for seo?
My web site http://www.green-lotus-trekking.com is this problem for google search engine optimization? Some little percentage problem or totally I am in Confusion?
Technical SEO | | agsln0 -
How To SEO Mobile Pages?
hello, I have finally put my first foot on the path of trying to learn and understand mobile SEO. I have a few questions regarding mobile SEO and how it works, so please help me out. I use wordpress for my site, and there is a nifty plugin called WP touch http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/ What it basically does is, it converts your desktop version into a mobile friendly version. I wanted to know that if it does that, does this mean whatever SEO i do for my regular web site gets accomplished for my moible version as well? Another simple question is, if i search for the same term on my mobile phone then on my desktop how different will the SERs be? thanks moz peeps
Technical SEO | | david3050 -
Subdomains & SEO
Exact match domains are great for ranking but what about domains which contain just half of the full phrase being targeted? eg. If you owned the domain rentals.co.uk but wanted to target the search term "car rentals" Regarding backlinks, would it be best to link back to your rentals.co.uk homepage (using anchor text "car rentals") or to one of the following: a) www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals b) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk c) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals
Technical SEO | | martyc1 -
Image Size for SEO
Hi there I have a website which has some png images on pages, around 300kb - is this too much? How many kbs a page, to what extent do you know does Google care about page load speed? is every kb important, is there a limit? Any advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
What are your best tips for SEO on a shopping cart?
So, I am working on a shopping cart platform (X-Cart) and so far don't like it. Also, the web designer is not someone I've worked with before and he is understandably conservative about access--which limits what I can and cannot do from the back end. One of the things I like to do is include text for the search engines. However, based on conversion, etc., I think the product images on a landing page (main brand info with specific products that show up) should show up first to move toward conversion first. I am thinking of adding the text below the product images on the brand pages so the viewer sees the products first while still keeping the content seo. My practice is to use between 300-350 words minimum on a page. Just wondering what best practices you have for a shopping cart. Care to share? Any tips or hints? Thoughts on what I might do that would be most effective? As always, thanks in advance for your sage advice!
Technical SEO | | TheARKlady0 -
Mobile site - allow robot traffic
Hi, If a user comes to our site from a mobile device, we redirect to our mobile site. That is www.mysite/mypage redirects to m.mysite/mypage. Right now we are blocking robots from crawling our m. site. Previously there were concerns the m. site could rank for normal browser searches. To make sure this isn't a problem we are planning on rel canonical our m. site pages and reference the www pages (mobile is just a different version of our www site). From my understanding having a mobile version of a page is a ranking factor for mobile searches so allowing robots is a good thing. Before doing so, I wanted to see if anyone had any other suggestions/feedback (looking for potential pitfalls, issues etc)
Technical SEO | | NicB10