WordPress Breadcrumb Plugins are created to improve the accessibility of the user to the website.
Along with the content, user experience matters a lot in the present days. In order to enhance the user experience, the navigation structure of your website should be simple and clear. This makes it easy for users to navigate your WordPress website. Breadcrumbs play a vital role in making it easy for users to navigate websites so you should make use of appropriate WordPress breadcrumb plugins to build an easy navigation structure.
What is Breadcrumb?
A breadcrumb can be defined as a small text path that is generally located at the top of the page specifying where the user is on the website. In other words, a breadcrumb also called a breadcrumb trail is a type of secondary navigation scheme that reveals the location of the user on a website or a web application. There are three types of breadcrumbs namely; location-based, path-based, and attribute-based.
From the definition of Wikipedia, a breadcrumb or breadcrumb trail is a geographical control element frequently used as a navigation aid in user interfaces and on web pages. It allows users to keep track and maintain awareness of their locations within programs, documents, or websites.
Even while visiting any website, you might have noticed a path specifying a navigation section. This path design is known as Breadcrumb. There are several WordPress breadcrumb plugins developed for letting users have a feature of breadcrumb on their website.
Why is Breadcrumb important?
Breadcrumbs make it easier for users to navigate a website. It also stimulates users to peruse various other sections of the website. Breadcrumbs provide direction for visitors to locate diverse pages on a whole site. People will know at which section, page, or sub-page they are by just looking at the breadcrumb.
Breadcrumb will help your users and search engines to easily understand your website navigation structure. They motivate users to visit more pages of a website before they exit and thus bounce rate is reduced. It contributes to making a positive impact on the SEO of your WordPress sites. This navigation marks helps Google determine how a page is structured along with making it easy for users to visualize where they are on a certain web page.
Best and Free WordPress Breadcrumb Plugins 2020
Now, let’s get to know different breadcrumb plugins that are available on WordPress.
Breadcrumb
Breadcrumb is an easy and light-weight plugin that can be used to display breadcrumb navigation to your WordPress website. It is one of the best WordPress breadcrumb plugins that you can use to enhance your website. Moreover, it is the finest plugin that is widely used by WordPress site owners. This plugin works on almost all WordPress pages like category, tags, archive, custom taxonomies, custom post types, default posts, date, year, month, author, and search pages to display breadcrumb dynamically. With this plugin, you can easily customize and change the style for breadcrumb.
Plugin Features:
- Use via short-codes
- Hide “Home” text
- Custom front text
- Custom separator text
- Display anywhere
- Limit word link text
- Container padding margin
- Set custom color
Breadcrumb NavXT
Breadcrumb NavXT is the descendant of a popular WordPress plugin Breadcrumb Navigation XT. It is built from scratch to make it better than its ancestor. It is one of the simplest yet user-friendly WordPress breadcrumb plugins that let users have a breadcrumb feature on their website. You will see a captivating breadcrumb design on your website soon after the installation of this plugin. Moreover, you can modify the look and design it in your own way. Breadcrumb NavXT generates locational breadcrumb trails for your WordPress powered blogs or websites.
Plugin Features:
- Built-in WordPress Widget
- Network admin settings page
- Extensive breadcrumb customization
- Compatible with other plugins such as WPML, Polylang, bbPress, and BuddyPress
- Extensible via OOP with actions & filters
WooCommerce Breadcrumbs
WooCommerce Breadcrumbs is a simple plugin in WordPress that lets you restyle the WooCommerce breadcrumbs. You are also given the privilege to disable them completely so that they no longer show. This plugin gives you permission to customize the functionalities of breadcrumb. Furthermore, you are allowed to design and modify the dashboard according to your preference and need. Also, you can have complete control over all the settings and get the desired look of the dashboard. Using WooCommerce Breadcrumbs, you can change links with a separate character to display as an unsorted list of links. With 8000+ active installations, it is one of the most widely-used WordPress breadcrumb plugins.
Plugin Features:
- Breadcrumb separator
- Home URL and Home Text
- ‘Enable breadcrumbs’ checkbox
Flexy Breadcrumb
Flexy Breadcrumb is a simple yet powerful breadcrumb menu system that is available for WordPress websites. Using this plugin, you can exhibit breadcrumb navigation anywhere on your website via [flexy_breadcrumb] shortcode. It is stuffed with everything that a user wants for the breadcrumb feature. You can get a modern look for your dashboard easily by just installing this plugin. Besides that, you can style and format the text, links, and separators of breadcrumbs according to your choice using Flexy Breadcrumb.
Plugin Features:
- SEO Friendly
- Use via [flexy_breadcrumb] shortcode
- Allow users to change breadcrumb separator.
- Color options for text, link, separator, and background through global settings
- Font Awesome icon picker for Home
- Set the font size of the breadcrumb trail
- Set Word/Character limit for the navigation menu
SEO Breadcrumbs
SEO Breadcrumbs is an easy-to-use and robust WordPress plugin that can add five different breadcrumbs navigation to your WordPress website. It is one of the finest WordPress breadcrumb plugins that is built to upgrade breadcrumbs on a website. You are given full control to update the design of every section of the admin dashboard such as login, register, forgot password, and many more. This plugin is highly responsive and can be customized with ease. Besides that, you can use SEO Breadcrumbs to show breadcrumbs on posts, pages, custom taxonomies, archives, attachments, error 404, search results, and more. You are allowed to modify the overall appearance of the templates as you want and experiment with the looks using colors and fonts.
Plugin Features:
- Suitable for all kinds of WordPress sites
- 100% SEO navigation markup
- Responsive to mobile/touch devices support.
- Google Rich Snippets compatible breadcrumbs
- Automatic layout template
- Customize colors directly by color picker
- Faster generation time
- Full styling control over colors, effects
- The default style for smaller screens
breadcrumb Simple
Breadcrumb Simple is one of the simplest WordPress breadcrumb plugins that allows you to display breadcrumbs on your website using shortcodes. With more than 1000 active installation, this plugin makes it very easy for you to display breadcrumbs on WordPress website or blog. You can use its shortcode as [breadcrumb_simple]. This plugin is compatible with PHP Version 5 or above. It is a completely free breadcrumb WordPress plugin.
Plugin Features:
- Easy to install
- Easy to use with shortcodes
- Compatible with PHP version 5 or above
Catch Breadcrumb
Catch Breadcrumb is a simple yet feature-rich breadcrumb WordPress plugin that adds seamless breadcrumbs navigation to your website. The prominent feature of this plugin is that it will hide automatically when the page is fully loaded. The plugin offers customization features, with which you can tweak the settings according to your website. You are also allowed to update new fonts in the admin panel. Not only that but you are also allowed to enqueue your own Google Web Fonts.
Catch Breadcrumb is extremely lightweight and provides a responsive design. It comes with features such as shortcode options, breadcrumb selectors, separators, and a lot more. You can present the breadcrumb trail wherever you wish using the features available in Catch Breadcrumb. Add sophisticated breadcrumb trails with Catch Breadcrumb and make your website look elegant and user-friendly. It is one of the most powerful WordPress breadcrumb plugins.
Plugin Features:
- User-friendly
- Highly responsive
- Add sophisticated breadcrumb trails
- Extremely lightweight
- Use shortcodes
Hot Breadcrumbs
Hot Breadcrumbs is a plugin in WordPress that can be used by WordPress users to navigate the website from start to end and also can return back by using a chain. Hot Breadcrumbs widget creates a roadmap with the link chain of your website. It uses structured data to show the hierarchy link. This gives a better idea to the visitors how did they get to this page and what’s the way back. Showing a link hierarchy has a positive impact on SEO and allows better crawling of your site at the same time. Hot Breadcrumbs is one of the WordPress breadcrumb plugins that works seamlessly on the WordPress site contents such as posts, pages, categories, tags, and author pages.
Plugin Features:
- Uses structured data to show the hierarchy link
- Users can navigate the website from start to end and it’s way back using a chain
- Works perfectly on WordPress website contents
Schema Breadcrumbs Markup | WPSSO Add-on
If you want to improve your SEO performance to rank higher in search engines, Schema Breadcrumbs Markup is used. There are no templates available to customize. All you have you do is either activate or deactivate this plugin for schema breadcrumbList markup. This plugin is open-source software and is free of cost. WPSSO Schema Breadcrumbs Markup is an addition to the WPSSO core plugin. It is the most comprehensive Schema BreadcrumbList markup of any plugin.
Plugin Features:
- Add Schema BreadcrumbList markup in JSON-LD format to posts, pages, custom post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, search results, and date archive pages.
- Select between using ancestors (aka parents) or categories for the breadcrumbs markup of posts, pages, and custom post types.
The WordPress Breadcrumbs Plugins allows you to easily display breadcrumbs in your blog posts & product pages without writing any code. Breadcrumbs have a positive effect on SEO rankings. If both user and search engines understand the structure of your website then it leads to a better user experience which results in getting better ranks on SERPs.
So I recommend you to use WordPress breadcrumb plugins on your website. Install any of the above-mentioned plugins and you will see the difference.