What are some common mistakes to avoid when implementing breadcrumbs for SEO?

When it comes to adding breadcrumbs to your website pages, there are a few potential pitfalls you'll want to avoid to ensure they provide optimal SEO value and usability:

One mistake is not following a logical hierarchy that matches your site's architecture and navigation flow. Breadcrumbs should represent the categories and subcategories a user would navigate through to reach that specific page.

You'll also want to avoid linking the homepage in the breadcrumb trail. That's redundant since users expect your logo or site name to represent the homepage anyway.

Using non-descriptive link text is another mistake. The breadcrumb links need to clearly and accurately describe the category or content they lead to for both users and search engines.

Be careful about linking to pages that shouldn't be indexed, like checkout or login areas. Breadcrumbs should focus on your public, indexable site content.

Proper markup implementation is important too. Make sure to use the right schema.org structured data and HTML elements like <nav>, <a>, and <span> so search engines can fully understand the breadcrumb trail.

Consistency is key as well - the structure, format, and styling of breadcrumbs should be uniform across all pages of your site.

Visually, they should stand out from the main site navigation and content using different colours, font sizes, spacing, etc. This separation avoids breadcrumb confusion.

And of course, placement matters - breadcrumbs need to go in a prominent, easily accessible spot, typically near the top of page content.

Following these best practices around hierarchy, markup, styling, and usability allows breadcrumbs to efficiently signal a page's context to search engines while also boosting overall navigation for users.