Is Removing Breadcrumbs Detrimental for SEO?

[AliMac26]

We have full navigational breadcrumbs on our site for the menu and the brand menu.

i.e. Home > Clothing > Jackets

Brand > Brand Name > Brand Jackets

There's been talk of removing this and having it like Chico's does, where on item pages they just have a link at the top to previous category (i.e. you're on a shirt product page and at the top it says "Back to Tops" instead of listing Home > Clothing > Tops)

Is doing something like this detrimental to SEO? From what I've read Breadcrumbs are for user experience but I just want to be sure.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

No, this is not detrimental, but consider your users and what would be most beneficial to them. Just make sure from a site structure aspect, the site architecture makes sense and is easy to understand for crawlers.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
Patrick

[AliMac26]

Thanks for your reply. In my research this morning I read on a couple of forums that breadcrumbs actually help the search engine crawl the site. Is that still true? The info might have been outdated.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Yes it does help, definitely, I was just answering the "is it detrimental" question. You can also take advantage of breadcrumb Schema which helps also!

Hope this helps!
Patrick

[AliMac26]

Gotcha, so it helps but it won't hurt your rankings. Thanks again

[EGOL]

If this was my site, I would be fighting to keep the breadcrumbs.