A solid website can be a highly effective tool in a landscape as competitive as recruitment. Playing a key role in helping you stand out in the crowd whilst growing your recruitment business. With search engines like Google becoming an increasingly prominent part of a candidate’s job search, your website is a valuable touchpoint for your business.
SEO for Recruitment Websites
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – a term that seems to be growing in popularity across industries yet sounds like a complicated mystery to most. It’s a well-known fact that most search engine users don’t go past the first search engine results page (SERP). Put simply, an SEO-friendly website is more likely to be found by Google and rank higher on the SERP, increasing the chances of your business capturing your candidates' attention.
Google Job Search
Another Google feature that can become a powerful tool for recruiters is their Google job search platform, which allows you to meet candidates active in their job search.
Google’s jobs search feature simplifies the candidates search process by collating relevant jobs from a number of job sites in one place. So, it is useful to ask your developers to properly integrate your website for Google’s job search feature and take advantage of this valuable channel of free candidate sourcing. Notably, you’re more likely to meet quality candidates in the right stage of their job search to be of benefit to you.
But what does SEO mean for a recruitment business’ website?
Setting up a recruitment business is an exciting venture, establishing a well optimised website that performs as a 24/7 salesperson can help you scale up your recruitment business faster. Your website can play a significant role in attracting quality candidates, so ensuring your website is performing the best it can on Google is essential.
Taking an SEO friendly approach to all aspects of your website helps it to become a key conversion point for your recruitment business. From the website layout and content to the user experience, all facets of the website should aim to attract and capture your ideal candidates and clients.
However, it’s important to understand that SEO is not an overnight solution. It takes time to efficiently optimise your website layout and content, and then build upon it overtime using an effective content strategy that caters to the needs and pain point of your target market.
So, whether you’re familiar with SEO or want to get to know it a bit more, we’ve compiled a list of 7 key areas of focus, from beginner to some advanced tips that can help you create an effective SEO plan.
1. Start with Keyword Management
Any good SEO plan should begin with keyword research. A large part of building an effective SEO strategy for your website is about finding the appropriate keywords that match the search terms of your target audience. As a recruiter, your keyword research and planning should centre around the candidates and clients you’re aiming to attract.
Getting into the headspace of your audience is fundamental. Thinking of words and phrases that your audience would be searching for is a good place to start your keyword planning. Essentially, by selecting the right keywords, you increase the possibility of your website appearing in the relevant search terms of your candidates and clients and meeting them at a place where they are seeking your services.
There are various keyword researching tools that can help you analyse the value of a keyword, for instance its monthly search volume, as well as suggesting related keywords. Tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs, can make the task of finding and analysing keywords a lot easier to manage, however, keep in mind these are paid solutions there are free alternatives, but they come with limitations.
Once you have a reasonable list of potential keywords, categorising them into topics and sub-topics can help you start building a content strategy for your website. Each page of content should focus on 1 or 2 keywords that are well incorporated into the text without sacrificing the readability of the content.
Job adverts are a great place to target your keywords and create a free channel of sourcing quality candidates, especially when the keywords are for niche skills. Whereas keywords in other content such as blogs and insight articles can help you build expertise and trustworthiness with your audience and portrays you as an authority in the field to Google, which boosts your ranking in the search.
2. Easy On-Page SEO changes
When it comes to appealing to Google, on-page elements can be quick and easy tweaks to your content and website layout that you can make to boost the visibility of your pages in the SERP. Title and header tags, internal links, meta-descriptions, image alt-attributes, and keyword management are all elements of on-page SEO that can help you improve user experience and drive traffic to your website.
All these factors act as indicators for Google to recognise what the content of a webpage is about so it can be ranked for the relevant search queries. However, keep in mind that despite the aim of SEO being to appeal to Google, any changes you make should be made with your audience in mind. What would be the most useful and relevant content for your candidates and clients?
Here is a small on-page SEO Checklist to help you get started:
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H1 Title tags - This is the title that will appear in the Google results page so a simple rule to keep in mind is that each page on your website should only have H1 title tag that is kept within 70 characters and cleverly includes your primary keywords.
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Meta-description - The meta-description of a page is a brief summary (155 characters max) that informs and advertises to your visitors what the page offers. With the aim to capture your audience’s interest by appealing to the reason behind their search, the meta description is another place your primary keywords can pay a part.
- Internal Linking – As well as keywords, the first and last 200 words of text are also an ideal place to include links to the other useful pages on the website. Internal linking can be a simple yet effective method of boosting the ranking of various pages on your website by indicating to Google their importance. Once again, this is another opportunity to use your keywords wisely by including them in the hyperlink text but make sure to keep them relevant to the page you’re linking to. However, keeping the links to a maximum of 2-3 helps keep their value.
- Images – Optimising your website can come from things as simple as the file name, alt-text, and description of the images you include on a page. Adding keywords to these attributes indicates to Google the importance of the image and its relevance to the text.
- Keywords – As mentioned above, keywords play a key role in improving the SEO of your website. There are various places where you can strategically include them – the first 200 words of text, meta-descriptions, titles and headings, image alt-text, etc. To google these attributes are all indicators of what a page is about so keywords hold more power here.
3. Build a network of valuable links
Link building, also known as off-page SEO, is the process of building a network of hyperlinks on other websites that link to your own website. The link itself is called a ‘backlink’. This type of SEO indicates to Google the level of popularity, authority, and trustworthiness of your website, which then boosts your ranks on the SERP and drives more traffic to your site.
For a recruitment website, backlinks can be created from a variety of sources:
- By being featured on your clients’ websites as a partner
- Creating guest blogs on other prominent industry websites
- News and PR activities that direct buzz towards your website
- Links on job sites that you have partnered with
- Creating interesting, informative, and insightful content that organically gets shared on social media
The goals of these activities and content should be to drive traffic from their websites to your website, whilst building a network of connections that shows Google you are an influential member in the field.
4. Analyse your Competitor's SEO
Get to know your industry and the common practices that others in the space have been using. You can quickly understand what type of website content and layout works in your market and what you would not benefit from.
Analysing your competitors’ websites is a great place to get inspiration for what is working, content ideas, and untapped opportunities. Gathering this level of market data can benefit with the planning and development of your own website content strategy that can help you steal traffic away from your competitors, which is crucial in a time-sensitive and competitive industry like recruitment.
Whilst researching your competitors, using SEO auditing tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SpyFu can give you access to detailed insights and data on specific URLs. Begin with identifying your key competitors and even indirect competitors that may not be in the exact same market as you but are competing for the same keywords, e.g., recruitment news providers.
This is where it is important to have a keen understanding of your target keywords as it will play a key role in your research to identify who is ranking for them, where they are on the SERP, and how. Identify the keywords that your competitors are organically ranking for (as opposed to paid keywords) and find the untapped opportunities for your own content.
5. Create a SEO content strategy
Now that you have a clear understanding of your primary target keywords and industry topics that you can create content about, it is time to start developing a content strategy to build trust and expertise. Make a plan of the different types of content you intend on creating and then work on what you need to begin making that content – will you write it yourself or hire a copywriter? How will you start building your network of backlinks?
A simple process to follow when creating a content strategy for your website is to think of content in topic clusters. First, think of over-arching topics that you can create long form content about (2000-3000 words), which can be considered a ‘pillar’ page. Then, focus on mind-mapping different sub-topic content (1500-1700 words) that cleverly links to the pillar page and with each other.
The key is to create content that resonates with your audience. For candidates, you can build a library of resources that help them understand different aspects of the recruitment process, how to manage it effectively, and how you can assist them. Whereas for the client, you can showcase compelling stories of your other clients and how-to guides that can help them better manage their candidates.
Producing content that engages with your audience will encourage them to share the content and boost conversation around your brand. Lastly, to ensure that your hard work is rewarded, make sure to keep a consistent schedule of content to build your influence on the Google SERP.
6. Keep up with local SEO
Candidates often search for jobs within a specific area as they have their location preferences, whilst clients might look for recruiters within a certain area. This is a behaviour that Google recognised amongst consumers of many different types of businesses and so they enhanced their algorithms to take location of the searcher in account when delivering the search results.
Essentially, you can boost your presence in location-based search results, such as “Management Accountant Southampton” or “Finance Recruiters Southampton”, using local SEO. With this in mind, local SEO can be a useful tool for recruiters to capture quality leads from valuable locations.
A great place to start is setting up a “Google my Business” profile with all the accurate details about your company, its location, and the important contact information that a visitor would need. You can also include Google Reviews on this profile, so encouraging your candidates and clients to leave reviews for you is a useful step towards building this aspect of your Google my business profile.
Another method of boosting your local SEO is to create location specific content, whether that be blogs, news, or local PR events. The location-based keywords used in these resources will increase the chances of those website pages ranking for location specific searches.
7. Always monitor your website's performance
The performance of your website not only impacts the way your website ranks in the SERP, but the way a visitor experiences your website. For instance, if candidates have trouble navigating through job listings or applying for a job, then they may disregard your services and look elsewhere.
In fact, Google’s algorithm, although mysterious and ever-changing, does put emphasis on website usability and user experience. Two factors that Google considers important in ensuring usability and creating a useful experience is how well optimised your website is for mobile and the loading speed.
For instance, with over 50% of internet traffic coming through mobile, having a website that isn’t properly optimised to accommodate mobile traffic creates room for missed opportunities and business. Whereas sluggish loading speeds can quickly become cause for visitors to abandon the website giving you less opportunity to make a conversion.
Users no longer have time for websites with performance issues. Within a competitive industry such as recruitment, having these issues can lead to you falling behind your competition and losing your ranking in the search.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, you want to be where the candidates are. With Google being one of the most prominent first steps for many candidates in their job search, having a website that reaches them and is visible to them is key. Additionally, building an expert reputation through your content benefits you not only through the higher ranking in the SERP but also by being seen as a more trustworthy partner for clients.
Having a website that can capture these individuals through cleverly placed CTAs and relevant resource downloads, gives you the opportunity to establish relationships with them. You can then integrate them into your other marketing activities that nurture your relationship, e.g., email marketing campaigns.
The SEO tips in this blog are a great place to start enhancing your website. Over time you will start to see the rewards of your efforts as direct traffic increases with higher conversions, creating a free channel for sourcing candidates.
Marketing is one aspect of setting up a successful recruitment business, for more information on the other recruitment start-up support services, check out our checklist:
