Site Navigation and Breadcrumbs: Build a Menu Google Can Crawl

Site navigation is how people and crawlers move around your site: the main menu, the footer, the sidebar and the breadcrumbs, the small trail (“Home > Shoes > Running”) that shows where a page sits. Good navigation gets visitors to the right page in a few clicks and gives Googlebot a clear path to every page that matters.

What counts as site navigation?

• Main menu: 5 to 8 links to your main sections, on every page.
• Footer: links to contact, legal pages and a few popular pages.
• Breadcrumbs: a trail from the home page to the current page.
• Contextual links: related links inside the content (see internal linking).
• Pagination and filters on lists of products or posts.

The number 5 to 8 is a design habit, not a Google rule. Google’s SEO Starter Guide gives no specific advice on menus, so the rules below come from its link documentation and common sense about crawling.

Why does navigation matter for SEO?

Googlebot finds pages by following links. A menu that links to your main sections makes every one of them a few clicks from the home page, so they are found and crawled. Google’s link guide says it generally follows only <a> elements with an href attribute, so a fancy menu built with JavaScript click handlers can hide whole sections from Google.

Navigation also shapes behaviour. A clear menu helps visitors find the next page, and breadcrumbs let them step up one level instead of leaving.

What do breadcrumbs do in Google Search?

Breadcrumbs show a page’s position in the site and let users move up the hierarchy one level at a time. Google’s documentation says breadcrumbs can appear in search results, and that it generates them from the page and from BreadcrumbList structured data you add.

One change to know: on 23 January 2025 Google removed breadcrumbs from the visible URL in mobile search results, which now show only the domain. Google’s post says they remain in desktop results, and Google’s breadcrumb documentation lists the feature as available on desktop. You do not need to change your markup. It still describes your site structure to Google, and visitors still see the trail on your pages.

How do you build crawlable navigation, step by step?

1. Draw your site tree on paper. Home, 4 to 8 main sections, then pages under each. Group by what the visitor wants, not by your org chart.
2. Use real links. Every menu item is <a href="/shoes/">Shoes</a>. Test the menu with JavaScript off (see JavaScript SEO).
3. Keep main pages within three clicks of the home page. Google gives no click-depth rule. Crawlers show a crawl depth column, so sort by it and look at what sits deep.
4. Name items in plain words. “Pricing”, “Running shoes”. Google says anchor text tells it what the target page is about, so avoid “Solutions” and “Resources” as the only label for a section with a clear topic.
5. Add breadcrumbs to deep pages. Make the trail follow a typical user path rather than copy the URL, which Google’s guideline states (see URL structure). Link every step except the current page.
6. Add BreadcrumbList markup. Use JSON-LD with at least two ListItem entries. Each has position, name and item, and item is optional on the last one:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
  "itemListElement": [
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Shoes", "item": "https://example.com/shoes/" },
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Running", "item": "https://example.com/shoes/running/" },
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Trail runners" }
  ]
}
</script>

7. Validate it. Paste a page into Google’s Rich Results Test, then watch the Breadcrumbs report in Search Console.
8. Handle mobile. Make menus tappable, with targets large enough for a thumb, and keep the breadcrumb on one line or let it wrap. A hidden menu is fine if the links are in the HTML.
9. Link from the footer sparingly. A footer with 80 links is clutter.

How do you measure the result?

• Crawl depth: after a crawl, check that every important page sits within three clicks.
• Search Console: the Breadcrumbs report under Enhancements shows valid items and errors.
• Indexing: pages that used to be “Discovered, currently not indexed” should move to indexed after better links (see XML sitemaps for the complementary signal).
• Analytics: watch exits and pages per session on the sections you reorganized.

What mistakes should you avoid?

• Menus built only with JavaScript events. Googlebot may not see the links.
• Mega-menus with hundreds of links on every page. Visitors give up before they read them.
• Breadcrumbs that do not match the page. Google’s guidelines say markup outside its structured data policies can lead to a manual action, so mark up only what visitors see.
• Reorganizing a working site for fun. Google’s starter guide advises against restructuring right away unless you have a real problem. If you change URLs, set up redirects.
• Vague labels like “More” or “Stuff” that hide what a section holds.
• Using only the menu for discovery. Pair it with in-text links and a sitemap.

Where can you learn more?

The free landing page module of the Fe/male Switch startup school covers page layout and navigation for conversion. Next steps on SEO100: strengthen the paths between pages with internal linking, then mark up breadcrumbs as part of your structured data.