Kristie T’s Home Business Blog Fun, mom-geared work-at-home tips and advice on making money on the net.

Are you leaving a breadcrumb trail for search engines? Maybe you should!

I was checking out this month’s issue of Practical Ecommerce in which Stephan Spencer was talking about how a breadcrumb trail boosts SEO rankings. And I was intrigued. “What is a breadcrumb trail?” The article in Practical Ecommerce goes on to explain that it’s a type of navigation that shows the visual path of a website’s structure and the page hierachy of your site.

For example: A breadcrumb navigation at the top of your page might look like this:

Home > Category > Subcategory > Product

And the product of course would be the product name and a “hot link” for the current page you are on.

Search engine optimization experts are “pro breadcrumb trail”. And usability experts on the other hand are against them.

I say that the breadcrumb trail provides keyword rich links that will boost rankings (SEO benefit) AND visually shows a visitor where they are at in the same way that a “you are here” sign at a mall does (usability benefit).

I may think about playing with this on some of my website sections and seeing how that improves my rankings. Has anyone seen a site that uses breadcrumb trail navigation? What are your thoughts about the SEO benefits and the Usuability benefits? Share your thoughts about breadcrumb trail navigation here.