How to Add Breadcrumbs to Google Search in Gatsby

Breadcrumbs are a form of Structured data which tell search engines the exact content, structure, and organization of a webpage. Breadcrumbs in search results give users an easy-to-understand overview of where the page lives on your site.

When you use structured data on your site, Google uses it to show rich search results, which are always displayed at the top of results, putting your website in the best position for that click-through.

Using React Helmet

React Helmet is the best way to add structured data with Gatsby. Start by installing it via npm

npm install gatsby-plugin-react-helmet react-helmet

and add it to your plugin array inside of gatsby-config.js

plugins: ['gatsby-plugin-react-helmet']

We'll create a separate component called Breadcrumb.js where we initialize react-helmet. It should look like this:

Breadcrumb.js

import React from "react" import { Helmet } from "react-helmet" const Breadcrumb = () => { return ( <Helmet title="Structured Data Example"> <script type="application/ld+json"> {JSON.stringify({ "@context": "https://schema.org/", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", itemListElement: [ { "@type": "ListItem", position: 1, name: "Blog", item: "https://snappywebdesign.net/blog" }, { "@type": "ListItem", position: 2, name: `How to Add Breadcrumbs to Google Search in Gatsby`, item: `https://snappywebdesign.net/blog/how-to-add-breadcrumbs-to-google-search-in-gatsby` } ] })} </script> </Helmet> ) } export default Breadcrumb

Then we import the component from the page we want to add a breadcrumb to. In our case, we want to add breadcrumbs to our blog posts, so BlogPost.js looks like this:

BlogPost.js

import React from "react" import Breadcrumb from "../Breadcrumb" const BlogPost = () => ( <> <Breadcrumb /> <h1>This is my blog post</h1> <p>Welcome to my blog post with a breadcrumb</p> <p>To the top of the google search results we come!</p> </> ) export default BlogPost

That's it - You're done!

Before deploying your site, check the Rich Results Test provided by Google to ensure everything is working correctly and your data appears as expected.

The final product? A snazzy search result (that Google will give priority) that looks like this:

If it builds with no errors, you're done! Adding breadcrumbs to your gatsby site with react-helmet really is that easy! You can check out the final code here

Make sure to press the follow button below to be notified when new posts go live! 🔔

Wondering how to add more structured data to your website? Check out our article How to Add Structured Data to Blog Posts in Gatsby