Your breadcrumbs are doing nothing for rankings. We fixed the anchors and proved it.

Your breadcrumbs are doing nothing for rankings. We fixed the anchors and proved it.

A store's breadcrumbs read 'Home > Category 4 > Product'. Generic. The middle crumb literally said the internal label, not the keyword.

We rewrote breadcrumb anchors to match how people search: 'Home > Men's Running Shoes > Product' instead of 'Home > Footwear-Cat-4 > Product.' Sitewide template change, applied to 6,000 products.

Over 10 weeks the category pages — which are the breadcrumb targets — gained an average of 1.9 positions. Modest per page, massive at 6,000-URL scale.

Breadcrumbs are sitewide internal links with consistent, structured anchor text pointing at your category pages. That's a free, scalable anchor-text campaign you're wasting on internal jargon.

Go read your breadcrumb anchors right now. Bet at least one says 'Products' or a category ID.