How to Display Breadcrumb Navigation Links in WordPress

Do you want to display breadcrumb navigation links on your WordPress site?

Breadcrumb navigation is a secondary navigation system that tells users where they are on a website relative to the homepage.

In this article, we’ll show you how to display breadcrumb navigation links in WordPress.

What is Breadcrumb Navigation and Why Do You Need it?

Breadcrumb navigation is a term used to describe a hierarchical navigation menu presented as a trail of links. It’s often used as a secondary navigation that allows users to go up in the website’s hierarchy of pages.

Breadcrumb navigation links are different than the default navigation menu system in WordPress.

The purpose of breadcrumb navigation is to help users navigate around your website. It also helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of links on a web page.

Search engines like Google have started displaying breadcrumbs along with the page title in search results. This gives your website more visibility in the search results and increases your click-through rate.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how to add breadcrumb navigation links in WordPress.

Add Breadcrumb Navigation with Breadcrumb NavXT Plugin

This is by far the easiest way to add breadcrumb navigation to your WordPress site. It’s flexible, easy to use, and has more options than you can imagine. See why we use Breadcrumb NavXT on WPBeginner.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Settings » Breadcrumb NavXT page to configure the plugin settings.

The default settings should work for most websites. However, you can customize the settings as needed.

The settings page is divided into different sections. On the general settings tab, you can define how the plugin behaves globally on your site.

It allows you to modify the breadcrumb navigation links template. You will also notice that these link templates use Schema.org parameters in the link tag.

The post types tab under plugin settings allows you to set up breadcrumb links for posts, pages, and any custom post types.

You can choose how you want to display your post hierarchy. By default the plugin will use Site Title > Category > Post Title. You can replace categories with tags, dates, or post parent.

The taxonomies and authors tabs have the similar templates for your breadcrumb navigation links.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your changes.

Showing Breadcrumb NavXT on Your Website

To display your breadcrumbs on your site, you first need to go to Appearance » Customize. From there, you’ll choose where you want your breadcrumbs to be displayed in the Position dropdown.

In the Breadcrumb Source, you’ll need to choose ‘Breadcrumb NavXT’.

That’s all for this step. You can now visit your website and see the breadcrumb navigation links by visiting any post or page.

Adding Breadcrumb Navigation Links Using Yoast SEO Plugin

If you’re already using Yoast SEO plugin, then you can use their built-in Breadcrumb navigation feature, although it’s limited in features compared to BreadcrumbNavXT plugin.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin. We have a complete step-by-step guide on how to install and set up Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress.

Upon activation, you need to go to the SEO » Search Appearance » Breadcrumbs page and check the ‘Enable Breadcrumbs’ option.

Once checked, you will find several options to change how breadcrumbs would display on your site. Default settings should work for most, however, feel free to change anything you like.

Once you are done, click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Showing Yoast’s Breadcrumb Navigation on Your Site

To display your breadcrumbs on your site, you first go to Appearance » Customize. From there, you’ll choose where you want your breadcrumbs to be displayed in the Position dropdown.

In the Breadcrumb Source, you’ll choose ‘Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs’.

That’s all. You can now visit your website to see your breadcrumb navigation in action.

We hope this article helped you learn how to display breadcrumb navigation links in WordPress. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide to improve rankings, and our step by step guide on how to create an email newsletter to grow your traffic.

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