Add breadcrumb trail using microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD

[thomaszbz]

Using breadcrumbs, Google shows them in SERP like this:

Home › Books › Authors › Stephen King

This is much nicer than showing some cryptic URL.

Using structured data (via microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD), there is no need to alter the visible page content and there also is no need to display the breadcrumb navigation.

References: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/breadcrumbs

Example:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
  "itemListElement": [{
    "@type": "ListItem",
    "position": 1,
    "item": {
      "@id": "https://example.com/arts",
      "name": "Arts"
    }
  },{
    "@type": "ListItem",
    "position": 2,
    "item": {
      "@id": "https://example.com/arts/books",
      "name": "Books"
    }
  },{
    "@type": "ListItem",
    "position": 3,
    "item": {
      "@id": "https://example.com/arts/books/poetry",
      "name": "Poetry"
    }
  }]
}
</script>