Breadcrumbs and internal links

[seoanalytics]

Hello,

I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough.

Thank you,

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Thanks for your comment Paul

[TheKatzMeow]

Glad to help

[seoanalytics]

Thank both for your answers. There are very helpful and all is clear. I know now that it is best to have both.

[TheKatzMeow]

I think Roman's response is thorough and well reasoned. I'm a content strategist (not a designer or developer), so I like the way his answer puts the user front and center. Bottom line: do in-text links and bread crumb links both help users? Yes, depending where you are on the page and how deep the page is. My instinct on bread crumbs is that their especially helpful once you get a couple pages deep in a site and a user might start to get a bit disoriented. My in-text links are often more driven by the content itself, what will provide added value to the user (or potentially SEO value to another page on the site). Hope that's helpful.

[Roman-Delcarmen]

As I see you have question about duplicated links and the answer depends on your needs let me explain my point.

Why Redundant Links on the Same Page Are a Good Idea. There are many reasons why you might want to show duplicate links on the same page. Here are some common motivations

• Provide safety nets: If people don’t notice the link the first time, maybe they will notice the second occurrence as they scroll the page. The redundancy may minimize individual differences: one person might notice the link at the top, while another person might notice it at the bottom. Showing links in multiple places is thus hypothesized to capture a broader audience.
• Deal with long pages: Having to scroll all the way up to the top of an overly long page is time-consuming. Offering users alternative ways to access links will help alleviate the pain.
• Create visual balance: Empty space is common on top-level (wayfinding) pages, where content might be sparse or nonexistent. Filling in awkward white space with extra copies of links will make the page look more balanced
• **Follow the evidence: **Analytics show that traffic to desired destination pages increase when links to them are duplicated.

Why Redundant Links Are a Bad Idea (Most of the Time)
Redundancy can be good or bad depending on when it’s applied. Each of the explanations above may sound reasonable. However, relying on redundancy too frequently or without careful consideration can turn your site into a navigation quagmire.

What’s the big deal about having a few duplicate links on the page?

• Each additional link increases the interaction cost required to process the link because it rises the number of choices people must process. The fewer the choices, the faster the processing time.
• Each additional link depletes users’ attention because it competes with all others. Users only have so much attention to give and often don’t see stuff that’s right on the screen. So when you grab more attention for one link, you lose it for the others: there’s substantial opportunity cost to extra linking.
• Each additional link places an extra load on users’ working memory because it causes people to have to remember whether they have seen the link before or it is a new link. Are the two links the same or different? Users often wonder if there is a difference that they missed. In usability studies, we often observe participants pause and ponder which they should click. The more courageous users click on both links only to be disappointed when they discover that the links lead to the same page. Repetitive links often set user up to fail.
• Extra links waste users’ time whenever users don’t realize that two links lead to the same place: if they click both links, then the second click is wasteful at best. At worst, users also don’t recognize that they’ve already visited the destination page, causing them to waste even more time on a second visit to that page. (Remember that to you, the distinctions between the different pages on your site are obvious. Not so for users: we often see people visit the same page a second time without realizing that they’ve already been there.)

**CONCLUSION **

Sometimes navigation is improved when you have more room to explain it. If this is the case, duplicating important navigational choices in the content area can give you more flexibility to supplement the links with more detailed descriptions to help users better understand the choices.

Providing redundancy on webpages can sometimes help people find their way. However, redundancy increases the interaction cost. Duplicating links is one of the four major dangerous navigation techniquesthat cause cognitive strain. Even if you increase traffic to a specific page by adding redundant links to it, you may lose return traffic to the site from users who are confused and can’t find what they want.