Breadcrumb schema: how to add BreadcrumbList markup

A breadcrumb trail is a list of levels.

Use @context https://schema.org and @type BreadcrumbList, with an itemListElement array. Each element is a ListItem with position starting at 1, name as shown to users, and item as the absolute URL of that level. The final element can omit item. If a page belongs to more than one path, you can include several BreadcrumbList blocks, though one clear trail is usually better.

Every URL in a breadcrumb trail should be a real page that returns 200 and is indexable. A common error is inventing a parent level from the URL structure, for example /solutions/ when no solutions hub exists, which sends users and search engines to a 404. On serionflow.com the rule is that visible breadcrumbs and BreadcrumbList markup list only pages in the sitemap, and the build fails if any breadcrumb URL is not one; when no real parent exists, the level is omitted.

Show a visible breadcrumb near the top of the page with the same levels and names as the markup. Visible breadcrumbs help users move up the hierarchy and give crawlers extra internal links to hub pages. Keep names short and consistent with the hub page titles. On mobile, Google shows the site name rather than the full trail in results, so the visible breadcrumb on the page itself does most of the work for users there.

Test pages in the Rich Results Test, which reports BreadcrumbList validity, and check Search Console's Breadcrumbs enhancement report for errors across the site. Common errors are missing positions, relative URLs, and positions out of order. Our free schema builder and validator generates a BreadcrumbList from a list of levels and checks existing markup. SerionFlow is the wrong tool for adding breadcrumbs to your existing templates; it adds them only to the pages it publishes.