In the web 2.0 scenario, its almost impossible to make an impact with a plain looking website. Worse, if your website is good looking, it may have some basic features missing which makes the website stiff in terms of navigation which, in turn, confuses your visitors. For Example, you may have the best website (according to you) designed for you at some astronomical cost, but when you are in month 4, you see your website analysis and you are left disappointed. You see that although your hit rates are okay, people leave once they go into inner pages. Now, you are wondering about what happened? what did you do wrong?
Well, then you plan to hire someone who is an expert on user interaction and he points you out one of the simplest things: Navigation.
Your website needs to have a sound navigation system and this is where “the breadcrumb approach” comes in handy.
Especially websites that have categories, sub-categories and some pages under those sub-categories need such an approach.
A typical breadcrumb can look like this:
Home>Category>subcategory>page name
Apart from the more obvious user interaction angle, another one is its importance SEO wise.
Now, I have been telling programmers and website owners to have a website layout so that the URLs can be SEO friendly, but in most cases, people come to us after a design has been made. So, there are lesser chances of getting a hold of the programmers to do an overhaul. The breadcrumb approach can make your life a bit better. The breadcrumb approach not only makes sure that your users can go to the top category from where they are or can even go to the subcategory you specified.
Another powerful benefit of the breadcrumb approach is the keyword presence. The breadcrumb approach can hold some of the most valuable keywords for your web page. Keywords that you might fear are too dense maybe accommodated in the breadcrumb to make things a bit easier.
Also, the breadcrumb approach improves crawling. Better crawling ensures that your website has a better chance to getting a good visibility on searches and thus…its a blessing.
Most breadcrumb approaches don’t require a lot of real estate on a website. They can be stuffed just anywhere people can see. But, it gives a lot of SEO mileage. Are you in for such a goodie?
Scalability or the ability of a website to load in a short amount of time is one of the prime factors in a website’s user intreactivity. Your website maybe one of the best websites around, but if you have large image files that make for your website looks, you better be saving them right. Yeah, thats true. Images take the most time to load on any website. The larger the file is, the longer it takes. Taking into account the fickle minded nature of an average web user, you may find that your bounce rate is enormous and despite all efforts, you can’t seem to pull it down.