What benefits do breadcrumbs have for the SEO of a website or blog site?

Breadcrumbs can actually provide several valuable SEO benefits for websites and blogs. Let me walk through some of the key advantages:

First off, they really help with site navigation and improving the user experience. Breadcrumbs act as a trail to show visitors their location within the site hierarchy, making it much easier to navigate themselves. This improved UX can lower bounce rates and increase dwell time - both positive signals for SEO.

Breadcrumbs also create an additional internal linking structure across your site pages. All the links in the breadcrumb trail point back toward important pages like the homepage, categories, etc. This helps search engines better discover, crawl and understand the overall architecture.

The actual text used in breadcrumbs allows you to reinforce the target keywords for each page or section too. This clarifies the topical relevance and context of the content for search engines.

Along those lines, breadcrumbs can really help organize and connect the topical themes and content clusters on your site. Search engine crawlers use breadcrumb links to better identify and associate related subject matter.

The clear linking paths that breadcrumbs provide also boost crawlability overall. Search bots can more efficiently crawl and index all pages, even those that are several clicks away from the homepage.

And finally, breadcrumbs just contribute to an overall better user experience by lending a sense of orientation and hierarchy. That engagement and lower abandonment can compound the SEO benefits.

So while they may seem simple, breadcrumbs pack in quite a few advantages for improving SEO when implemented properly across a website or blog.