Many WordPress themes do not have breadcrumbs enabled by default. So you may need to manually enable breadcrumbs. In this post, you will learn how to enable breadcrumbs in any WordPress theme using WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.
Having breadcrumbs navigation system enabled in your website is not a guarantee of a better search engine rank. However, it will provide an easy navigation path for your visitors, and not just that, it will also help Google and other search engines understand your website structure.
Webmaster always try not to leave out even the slightest of details whenever they are working on a website SEO (search engine optimization).
Page Contents
What is a Breadcrumb in Google?
It is a trail of links displayed in Google search results that indicate the location, in the website hierarchy, of an indexed page.
If you are conversant with Google Search Console, which is a must use tool for every webmaster, under structured data, you can check to see if Google has discovered any breadcrumbs in your website.
What is a Breadcrumb in WordPress?
Breadcrumbs is a trail or path (containing links) found in a webpage that indicates a visitors location in your site hierarchy. Adding breadcrumbs to your WordPress website will enable your users navigate your site hierarchy with ease.
It should be found just below your post title. If that’s not the case for your site, then breadcrumbs is not enabled.
Enabling breadcrumb in Yoast
WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin in WordPress. If you haven’t setup Yoast, follow my Yoast setup guide to do that.
After setting up Yoast SEO, hover your mouse cursor on the Yoast icon and click on Search Appearance.
Next, click on Breadcrumbs. Under Breadcrumbs settings, make sure it is set at enabled.
Taxonomy to show in breadcrumbs for content types for most website is usually set at category. It can also be set at tag, depending on what you want.
After configuring breadcrumbs in Yoast, hit the save button.
Enabling breadcrumbs support in a WordPress theme
If your theme has breadcrumbs support, after enabling in Yoast, it will immediately appear in your blog pages. If that’s not the case, then you need to add the code snippet below to your theme file.
[php]<?php if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {
yoast_breadcrumb('<p id="breadcrumbs">','</p>');
} ?>[/php]
For most themes, you can add this code directly to your header.php, below every other code.
Note: I advise you add this code to your child theme to avoid getting your configurations rolled back whenever you perform a theme update.
After pasting that code snippet, hit the ‘update file’ button.
Visit any of your blog posts to confirm breadcrumbs navigation features have been added.
Alternatively, you can add that same code snippet to your single.php. Especially if you don’t want it displaying in your homepage, or you don’t like the look of it on your site.
Like in the case of the default twenty seventeen WordPress theme, if you enable breadcrumbs using the first method, the look of it is, somehow, not so appealing.
to add breadcrumbs to your blog pages only, you have to look for the opening get header tag within your single.php.
Paste your code under the opening php of your blog posts; ensuring to remove the opening <?php and the closing ?> in the code snippet you copied. There’s no need for that, since it already contained in the code that started the loop.
I hope, with this guide, you were able to enable breadcrumbs in your site.
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