How to configure the Yoast SEO Search Appearance settings: Breadcrumbs tab | Yoast SEO for WordPress

Hi! We're on the Breadcrumbs tab of theSearch Appearance settings of Yoast SEO.

In this screencast, I'll explain what breadcrumbs are, how you can enable them on your site andhow you can customize them to your liking.

First of all, let me explain why breadcrumbsare under Search Appearance on Yoast SEO and why we would we botheringourselves with breadcrumbs.

You are probably familiarwith how they look, as they show upon every well-structured site.

This is an example.

Breadcrumbs show visitors how one pagefits into the structure of your site.

You can click the larger categoriesthis page belongs to – like SEO training – and you can always find the homepageat the beginning of the path.

This is very convenient for your visitors, as breadcrumbs help themnavigate your site more easily.

So, your visitors like breadcrumbs, but Google does too.

Breadcrumbs give Google another wayof figuring out how your website is structured.

And Google may also use your breadcrumbsin the actual search results, which makes your resultmore enticing to users.

For example, you can see herethat for the page I just showed you, you see “SEO training” here, instead of seeing the entire URL of the page.

Every site that has breadcrumbs like that, will have results like this, instead of showing the entire URL.

Now, then tell me, how can I get thesesuper convenient breadcrumbs? Well, to work with our Yoast SEObreadcrumbs, you have to do two things: you have to make sure thatyour theme supports our breadcrumbs and you have to enable themin the Search Appearance settings right here.

Most themes support our breadcrumbs, but if yours doesn't, you can ask your theme authoror your developer to implement them.

If you click this link, you'll finda complete guide on how to do this.

You can also do it yourself, but thereforeyou need to know how to implement code.

When you enable them here, you candetermine a lot of different settings.

You can choose a separator; you can saywhat the homepage should be called; you can say: “Hey, I want this textto show up before all my breadcrumbs”, for example: “You are here”.

And of course, you can also changethe other prefixes over here.

And, with this option, you can determine whether the last page in the breadcrumbsshould be bold or regular.

These settings are allfairly easy to grasp and manage.

The last section of this pageis a little more advanced.

If you click this dropdown menu here, you can select “Category”, “Tag” or “Format”.

These are all taxonomies.

And taxonomies group content.

For example, if you write posts aboutpoodles, chihuahuas, and labradors, you could group themin a category called 'dogs'.

Now, if you want that category to show upin the breadcrumbs as well, you can take care of thatwith this setting.

Just select “Category” and thenyou'll see both the category (dogs) and the name of the post(for example, “how to trim poodles”) in the breadcrumb path.

If you have more (custom) content typesthat allow for breadcrumbs, they will show up below “Posts”.

If you have more (custom) taxonomies, they will show up in the dropdown menu.

And they will also show up belowthe heading of the next setting, over here.

The next heading is a little more abstract.

Here you can select which contenttype archive you want to show in your breadcrumbs for taxonomies.

Now, let's explore what that means.

If you don't have custom content types and you don't have a static pagefor your blog posts, you can skip this part, because your drop-down menuswill be empty – there's nothing to choose.

If you don't have custom content types, but you do have a static pagefor your blog posts, you can select the “Blog” optionin the menu.

Let's quickly create a static page, to show you what I mean.

Now, if we go backto the breadcrumbs settings, you'll see that we now can select “Blog”in the drop-down menu.

If you select “Blog” for your “Categories”, the static page with all your blog posts, will be visible in your breadcrumbs when you're on a category page.

Your breadcrumbs path could be somethinglike “Homepage > Blog > Dogs” for example.

By the way, as soon as you createa static page for your blog posts, another switch will appearin the breadcrumbs settings as well.

You will find it over here.

You can toggle between”show” and “hide”.

If you choose to show your blog page, it will be visible in your breadcrumbs.

OK, back to the previous settingwe were talking about.

If you have custom content types, like movies, books, or courses, these will appearin the drop-down menu.

Now, you can selectwhich content type *archive* – so all your movies or all your posts – you want to show in your breadcrumbsfor your taxonomy pages.

Theoretically speaking, every match is possible.

If you want to show your post archivewhen you're on a movie category page, you could.

Think about what makes sensefor your site.

Good luck!.