SEO
Are Breadcrumbs A Google Ranking Factor?
Google defines “breadcrumbs” as navigation that indicates the page’s position in the site hierarchy.
When you hear the term “breadcrumbs,” Hansel and Gretel might come to mind. In the old fairy tale, the main characters leave behind a trail of breadcrumbs to avoid getting lost in the forest.
Similarly, breadcrumbs are helpful for users as they drill down into your site hierarchy.
A website can display a “breadcrumb” trail of internal site navigation so that a user can easily find their way back through the website’s structure.
So, we know that breadcrumbs are helpful for users and that Google always tells us to focus on the user experience. Does that mean breadcrumbs are a ranking factor?
[Deep Dive:] The Complete Guide To Google Ranking Factors
The Claim: Breadcrumbs As A Ranking Factor
In 2009 Google announced that search results would begin displaying site hierarchies.
This was an effort to show users the location (thus providing context) of a page on the website.
Below is an example of what Google search results looked like in 2009 before and after this monumental change.
Given that Google is tight-lipped on what exactly ranking factors are (for a good reason), the search community relies on what is accessible to better understand how search works.
This includes a medley of what we can see in the search engine result pages, patents, official documentation, and what Google representatives say.
Google changed how search results were displayed and wrote, “By analyzing site breadcrumbs, we’ve been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future.”
Search marketers listened and asked the question: Are breadcrumbs a ranking factor?
The Evidence: Breadcrumbs As A Ranking Factor
Search engines try to make sense of your website by analyzing how the text is organized into main topics and subtopics.
Breadcrumbs reinforce the hierarchical arrangement of pages on a website and how those pages are related.
Google developer docs explain that using breadcrumb markup in a webpage’s body helps categorize the information from the page in search results.
Because a webpage ranks for more than just one keyword, users often will arrive at a page from multiple different types of search queries.
Each of these unique search queries returns the same webpage. But, thanks to breadcrumb markup, the content can be categorized within the search query context.
In January 2009, Google filed a U.S. Patent Application titled Visualizing Site Structure and Enabling Site Navigation for a Search Result or Linked Page.
The patent may suggest that Google could include breadcrumbs in search results even if a website doesn’t use them.
However, the patent also explains how this could make it easier for Google to understand a website’s structure and include that information in search results.
The patent has since been listed as “abandoned.” Could that be a clue that Google has abandoned using breadcrumbs in this fashion?
[Recommended Read:] Google Ranking Factors: Fact or Fiction
Breadcrumbs Pass Pagerank
In reply to a question on Twitter about breadcrumbs, Gary Illyes, Google webmaster trend analyst, said, “We like them. We treat them as normal links in, e.g., PageRank computation.”
PageRank (PR) is a link analysis algorithm used by Google to rank webpages in their search engine results.
While it doesn’t have as much impact as it used to, Google still uses PageRank, among many other factors, to rank results.
Google Search Console Warning
There is a Warning in GSC featured guides under breadcrumbs for manual actions against websites that misuse structured data guidelines.
Most manual actions address attempts to manipulate Google’s search index.
If breadcrumb markup were not part of Google’s search index, it would not likely be at risk of manual actions for spammers abusing it.
Not only is Google serious about not wanting people to manipulate breadcrumbs, but they are also invested in website owners implementing breadcrumbs properly.
Check out Google Search Console’s tweet below, from September 2019.
GSC updated its interface to show users where there were errors in search enhancements, including breadcrumbs.
That same weekend GSC started emailing accounts with breadcrumb structured data errors on their sites – and they’re still doing this three years later.
If breadcrumbs were not important to Google, why would they spend time and resources to educate website owners on proper implementation and send notices when there were errors?
[Discover:] More Google Ranking Factor Insights
Our Verdict: Breadcrumbs Are Kind Of A Ranking Factor
Breadcrumbs are inadvertently a ranking factor.
A ranking factor is a set of criteria that search engines use to evaluate web pages and put them in the order you see in search results.
Does Google use breadcrumbs to evaluate web pages?
Yes, Google documentation supports the theory that breadcrumbs are used to evaluate webpages.
And a representative confirmed that breadcrumbs are considered normal links in Google’s link analysis algorithm, PageRank.
The weight given to those links is unknown.
Does that mean that adding breadcrumb markup will propel your page to the top of search results or that you’re doomed to never reach page one by not having them?
Of course not; the Google algorithm is far too complex for that.
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
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SEO
Google On Spammy Backlinks & Negative Impact On Rankings
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about what to do about an increase in spammy backlinks that are perceived as having a negative impact on rankings. Mueller’s answer showed what publishers should focus on.
Noticing Spammy Backlinks
The person asking the question said that they had noticed an increase in spammy backlinks and that they associated it with a negative impact on their rankings. They also said that it was affecting their “overall credibility.”
They didn’t elaborate what they meant by “overall credibility” but perhaps they were talking about a third party site metric like Domain Authority.
This is what the person asked:
“I’ve noticed a significant increase in spammy backlinks pointing to my website, and it’s negatively impacting my site’s search engine rankings and overall credibility. Despite my efforts, I’m struggling to effectively remove these spammy backlinks.
Can anyone provide guidance or suggestions on the best practices and tools for removing spammy backlinks and restoring the integrity of my website’s link profile? Any tips or suggestions will be helpful.”
John Mueller Answers Question About Spammy Backlinks
Mueller answered that it’s not necessary to do anything about “spammy backlinks” because Google ignores them. He didn’t even suggest using the Disavow Tool, a tool that tells Google to ignore specific links that a publisher is responsible for.
Mueller responded:
“I’d strongly recommend focusing on other things – Google’s systems are really good at dealing with random spammy links, but – like users – they do get hung up on websites that aren’t awesome. Make your site awesome instead of chasing those links.”
About “Overall Credibility”
Third party metrics don’t offer insights into how Google sees a website. They’re just the opinion of a third party that can be used to measure one site against another.
My background in SEO goes back 25 years to a time when Google used to show a representation of PageRank on Google’s toolbar. I was an authoritative source of information that related data about the quantity of links and whether or not a site was indexed or not indexed. Yet even Google’s own PageRank tool didn’t accurately reflect the ability of a site to rank well.
Majestic’s Topical Trust Flow scores are useful because they communicate the kinds of links flowing to a website and gives an idea of what the backlinks say about a site.
But other than that, a third party “authority” metric is not anything I have ever used and will never use. Many SEOs with longtime experience don’t use those metrics.
Read the Reddit discussion:
Can anyone help me on how to remove spammy backlinks?
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com
SEO
Time To Replace the Content Marketing Funnel (3 Alternatives)
You won’t read anything good about the content marketing funnel in this article. Only bad things. Like, it’s too linear and simplistic to address the complexities of customer journeys.
If you need a framework to build your content strategy on, it should probably be a no-funnel framework instead. And there are very good reasons for it.
A funnel in marketing is a multi-stage process that guides potential customers from first learning about a product to making a purchase.
Depending on the version, it has 3 – 6 stages, and it looks something like this:
Traditionally, all content types have their designated place in each stage:
- Top: product landing pages, ebooks, guides, most social media posts, etc.
- Middle: webinars, case studies, lead nurturing programs, etc.
- Bottom: success stories, white papers, sales enablement materials, etc.
Makes sense, right? Not entirely.
It oversimplifies literally everything important for a content marketer. And because of that, the model gets some things completely wrong and ignores others.
This isn’t just theoretical. I’ve applied the funnel approach at various companies. Initially, it was reassuring, providing a sense of structure and control. However, the deeper I got, the more confusing it became. It started to seem like the sense of order was purely imaginary, as there was no reliable method to verify if people were truly following the funnel.
1. Misunderstands consumer behavior
The funnel model assumes a perfectly linear path from awareness to purchase and tries to rush people through it. Or, actually, it makes you think you should rush people through it with your content.
However, consumer behavior is more complex and non-linear. People often jump between stages, revisit them, or take unique paths to purchase.
So, the journey is not a funnel; it’s more like a maze.
B2C customer journeys are even more peculiar. Remember that time when you saw an ad and bought that product immediately? Or conversely, how the journey from see to buy lasted for years. I know I can:
But content marketers shouldn’t try to solve that maze, or cut a straight line through it just for their convenience. They should rather adapt to it.
2. Tries to fit round pegs in square holes
Not all content types can be, nor should be, fit into rigid stages of the funnel, as the model wants it.
Here’s an example based on one of our articles. Which stage(s) of the marketing funnel does our blog post about “How to find low competition keywords” serve?
As you can see, the model can’t handle one of the basic forms of content marketing – a blog post. But take any type of educational content, and you’ll find the same problem. Many content types can serve multiple stages of the funnel or work across them. They can both attract and reengage a visitor or even bring them all the way from discovery to purchase.
Because of that, the content marketing funnel simply isn’t helpful for creating content that’s enjoyable for the user and effective for the business.
3. Neglects customer retention
Customer retention is how good you are at keeping your customers. It’s important because you don’t want customers to buy just once from you; you want to keep coming back so that you don’t need to attract a total stranger each time to make a sale — that’s both hard and expensive.
Here’s another way to look at it. According to the study by Bain and Company, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. And it makes total sense if you think about it — if someone asked you to generate an extra $1000 in sales in 24 hours, would you go to existing customers or try to find new ones?
But if you’re practicing the old ways of the funnel, catering to your existing customers is very limited because the funnel ends at the purchase stage. There’s nothing a content marketer can do nor should do after a prospect becomes a customer.
It’s having a party where you’re so focused on inviting new guests that you forget to entertain the ones already inside.
4. Ignores customer expansion
If you only chase new customers and forget about the ones you already have, you miss the chance to make more sales to them or get them to recommend your business to others. Happy customers can really boost your business by buying more and telling their friends about you.
How can content help with that? One good way is to create product-led content. This type of content is designed to show how your product can solve the customer’s problem.
The mechanism is simple: showing product features in action turns a regular user into a power user. They start to use more features and get better value from them, which builds loyalty and gives you a good ground for upselling.
And if that content is really good, people will share it with others, amplifying your brand’s reach.
The best thing: good content will be recommended not only by your customers. People don’t really need to be your customers or know a lot about your brand to give your content a shout-out on social media.
The best solution to the shortcomings of the funnel is to have no funnel at all. Here’s why:
- Adapting to consumer behavior, not forcing it. Focus on how consumers naturally interact with content rather than trying to dictate their journey. Make your content easily accessible without imposing how it should be consumed.
- A more efficient use of content marketing. Content can work both pre-sales and post-sales. It doesn’t have to be useful in one moment in time. It can be designed to stay useful and relevant over time.
- A more helpful way to create content. No time wasted on deciding whether that guide you’re about to write belongs to the top or middle of the funnel. You can simply focus on delivering value and delighting your audience.
Here are three different no-funnel models that share those advantages.
This approach is about using your content to directly boost demand for your product, whether before or after a sale.
Instead of sorting content by stages of a sales funnel, you rate it based on how closely it relates to your product.
So for example, for a content marketing tool, topics with high business potential would include content marketing metrics, “B2B content marketing”, “content ideation”, “content optimization”, and “content distribution” (and not an interview with content marketers or “history of content marketing”, etc.).
This scoring system makes planning your content strategy really easy. You can quickly decide how much of each type of content to make. Also, you can use it with other important metrics (we use it with organic traffic potential) to further prioritize content.
Ahrefs has been using this model for years, especially for SEO content, which is most of what we publish. It’s great for understanding which search terms are most valuable.
Take these two keywords below as an example. The first one has a lot more traffic potential but is too broad to easily include our product — it would get a “1.” Conversely, the keyword with less traffic but more focused on SEO would get a “3” because it’s more relevant to our customers and our product.
The Business Potential Framework might be a good fit for you if you’re working in an established industry, where there’s already considerable demand for content directly linked to products like yours. This will make it easier to find topics with a score of 2 and 3. You can gauge that demand by looking at search volume in our free keywords generator.
The Content Playground, devised by Ashley Faus, reimagines the buyer’s journey as an open, interactive space, akin to a playground, moving away from the traditional funnel’s linear path.
It aims to cater to varied audience interests and learning styles by offering a mix of deep dives, strategic frameworks, and practical tips. To achieve this, it covers topics in three levels:
- Conceptual: covering big ideas and their significance.
- Strategic: outlining frameworks and processes.
- Tactical: providing specific, actionable steps.
Staying with the content marketing tool example, topics you would create content about could look like this: “what is content marketing” (conceptual), “developing a content marketing strategy” (strategic), “how to promote content” (tactical).
To illustrate, this content hub on Agile from Atlassian is designed to be a content playground. There is a mix of all three types of content, and the user can start at any point, go as deep as they like, and jump to another topic at any time.
Naturally, the content needs to be interlinked and ungated so consumers may access it however they want and navigate through it freely. The bonus of that is getting organic traffic from related keywords. According to Ahrefs, this one hub attracts over 591k organic visits every month, and it looks like it’s about to get more.
But a playground doesn’t need to be confined to one site. As long as you tackle a topic with these three types and allow people to access them freely, you can have it scattered across a limitless number of sites and platforms: microsites, blog posts, social media, email, ebooks, etc.
I had a brief chat with Ashley, the mind behind this framework, to understand where this framework fits best. I learned that the framework was developed and tested with B2B marketers in mind, and that’s where it’s most relevant. B2C marketers simply don’t have as big of a problem with customers “coming and going” and re-engaging them on different channels.
There is a way to cover all customer intents, topics, journey stages, and key marketing channels naturally by simply focusing on what matters to your audience and where they are willing to consume content. I call it the Cluster-Channel Network (CCN).
Two core elements of the framework are:
- Clusters: thematic groupings of content around a central topic, supported by a network of related subtopics. They represent things people care about.
- Channels: platforms and mediums through which your message reaches your audience. They represent meeting places that bring you and your audience together to talk about things they care about. Think advertising, email, social media, Google, etc.
CCN ensures a multi-channel presence with content that both attracts your audience and makes your brand an authority in a carefully picked selection of topics.
What’s more, this is an efficient framework because it allows you to “squeeze out” the most of any topic. That’s an important benefit because there are only so many topics a brand can comfortably cover, without creating turning into a content farm spinning irrelevant content just for the sake of traffic.
The framework consists of five steps.
- Identify relevant clusters: choose clusters aligned with your brand’s expertise and audience interests.
- Define subtopics: within each cluster, pinpoint subtopics for comprehensive coverage.
- Produce core content: select a primary channel and format for in-depth content, making this your centerpiece to attract traffic from other platforms.
- Distribute across channels: repurpose the core content into smaller, channel-specific formats.
- Interlink clusters and subtopics: connect related clusters and subtopics. Chances are, people interested in more than one cluster (e.g. SEO and content marketing).
If we were to visualize this framework consisting of four clusters, it would look something like this:
So if we used content marketing as a cluster, one of the subtopics could be AI content. For that subtopic, you could create a blog post about ethics in content marketing in the AI era and distribute it as a thread on X, offer that topic to podcast hosts, etc.
This framework will work best if you have the resources to be present on multiple channels and you’re committed to long-term goals (building trust and authority takes time).
Tip
You can find clusters and subtopics very fast using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Just plug a broad term related to your product (your cluster), and let AI do the brainstorming.
From a bit over 10 keywords the AI found for me for the word “SEO”, Keywords Explorer found over 32k keywords which then organized into 3466 ready-to-target topics in a matter of seconds. All with traffic potential and keyword difficulty metrics to help with prioritization.
Final thoughts
On a final note, the topics you choose to cover are as important as these frameworks. Check out our guide to content ideation to never run out of ideas.
SEO
How to Avoid Ruining SEO During a Website Redesign
It’s too easy to break your SEO during a website redesign. Here’s a foretaste of what can go wrong:
- Loss of rankings and traffic.
- Loses of link equity.
- Broken pages.
- Sluggish page loading.
- Bad mobile experience.
- Broken internal links.
- Duplicate content.
For example, this site deleted about 15% of organic pages (yellow line) during the redesign, which resulted in an almost 50% organic traffic loss (orange line). Interestingly, even the growth of referring domains (blue line) afterward didn’t help it recover the traffic.
Fortunately, it’s not that hard to avoid these and other common issues – just six simple rules to follow.
Easily overlooked but could save the day. A backup ensures you can restore the original site if anything goes wrong.
Ask the site’s developer to be prepared for this fallback strategy. All they will need to do then is redirect the domain to the folder with the old site, and the changes will take effect almost instantly. Make sure they don’t overwrite any current databases, too.
It won’t hurt to make a backup yourself, too. See if your hosting provider has a backup tool or use a plugin like Updraft if you’re using WordPress or a similar CMS.
Testing your site for Core Web Vitals (CWV) and mobile friendliness before it goes live is the best way to ensure that your new site will comply with Google’s page experience guidelines.
The thing is, a website redesign can seriously affect site speed, stability, responsiveness, and mobile experience. Some design flaws will be quite easy to spot, such as excessive use of animations or layout not scaling properly on mobile devices, but not others, like unoptimized code.
Ask your site developer to run mobile friendliness and CWV tests on template pages as soon as they are ready (no need to test every single page) and ask for the report. For example, they should be able to run Google Lighthouse on a password-protected website.
An SEO audit uncovers SEO issues on your site. And if you do it pre-and post-launch, you will easily spot any potential new problems caused by the redesign, especially those that really matter, such as:
- Unwanted noindex pages.
- Sites accessible both as http and https.
- Broken pages.
So before the new site goes, click on New crawl in Site Audit and then again right after it goes live.
Then after the crawl, go to the All issues report and look at the Change column – new errors found between crawls will be colored red (fixed errors will be green) .
You might want to give some issues higher priority than others. See our take on the most impactful technical SEO issues.
Tip
You can access the history of site audits by clicking on the project’s name in Site Audit.
By URL structure, I mean the way web addresses are organized and formatted. For example, these would be considered URL structure changes:
- ahrefs.com/blog to ahrefs.com/blog/
- ahrefs.com/blog to ahrefs.com/resources/blog
- ahrefs.com/blog to blog.ahrefs.com
- ahrefs.com/site-audit to ahrefs.com/site-audit-tool
Altering that structure in an uncontrolled process can lead to:
- Broken redirects: redirects leading to non-existing or inaccessible pages.
- Broken backlinks: external links pointing to deleted or moved pages on your site.
- Broken internal links: internal site links that don’t work, hindering site navigation and content discoverability.
- Orphan pages: pages not linked from your site, making them hard for users and search engines to find.
Naturally, you should keep the old URL structure unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. In this case, you will need to put some redirects in place. On top of that, make sure to submit a sitemap via Google Search Console to help Google reflect changes on your site faster.
Tip
Google also advises submitting a new sitemap if you’re adding many pages in one go. You may want to do that if that’s the case in your redesign project.
Redesigns often include some kind of content pruning or simply arbitrary deleting of older content. But whatever you do, it’s crucial that you keep the pages that are already ranking high.
Traffic is one reason, but since these pages are already ranking, chances are they’ve got some backlinks you risk losing.
To make sure you’re not cutting out the good stuff, use two reports in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer: Top pages and Best by links.
Top pages report is a list of all the pages on your site ranking in the top 100, appended with SEO data and sorted by traffic by default. So, just one click on your left-hand side, and you’ll see a list of your best “traffic generators”.
The Best by links report follows the same logic, but the focus is on links (both external and internal) and it shows all crawled pages on your site (not only the ones ranking in top 100).
You can also plug in any page in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and see whether it can be cut without any damage to the site’s organic performance.
Recommendation
If part of the redesign is an inventory cleanup, you can still get traffic to products you don’t offer anymore if you create an “archive” page and link to a place where visitors can find more similar products. E-commerce sites and hardware brands do that regularly.
This way, you can still rank for related terms, and the user experience is better than simply redirecting old products to new products.
Lastly, if you find yourself in a situation where the new design imposes significant changes to your top-ranking pages, take extra caution when altering these elements:
- Keywords in text, title and H1s: changing keywords can alter the page’s relevance for corresponding queries. For instance, if a product page ranks for “kick scooter for kids”, you might lose that if you start scratching the phrase out from the crucial parts of the content.
- Depth of content: expanding or reducing content should be done with the intent to serve user needs better, provide more value, or clarify existing information (i.e., search intent). Keep in mind that Google rewards helpful, people-first content, and not necessarily creative, persuasive copywriting.
- Internal links: changing/cutting a few internal links shouldn’t do any harm, but you need to be tactical about it – ask yourself if any particular change could hurt the ranking. Keep in mind that internal links aid the flow of link equity and help Google understand the context of pages.
- Distance of that page from the homepage: keep high-value pages close to the homepage to signal their importance to search engines.
- Schema markup: any changes should aim to accurately describe the content and take advantage of eligible schema properties.
- Page speed: don’t overuse heavy graphics, animations, and video. Again, make sure to pre-test the staging site for CWV and run a site audit right after the launch.
Final thoughts
While an overall site redesign might sound like a good moment to introduce some SEO, you need to think about the traffic and backlink equity the site has already earned. If you change too much in one go, you won’t know what worked and why, and maybe more importantly, what didn’t work and how to fix it.
Truth is, SEO is always about experimentation. You can have a well-educated guess, but you can never really know what will happen.
Want to share your SEO story here? Let me know on X or LinkedIn.
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