Whether it’s targeting candidates or targeting businesses, the search engines represent a key route to market for the majority of recruitment companies.
The key thing to remember throughout the development of any SEO strategy is that all Google wants to do is rank the best content from the most trusted recruitment brands, so those should be your priority focus throughout. The more technical components of SEO, whilst crucial, are relatively straightforward to implement, but on their own will do little in such a competitive space.
Our SEO strategies always begins with the brand. After all, that is what Google is trying to do – rank the most trusted brands.
Most recruitment firms will have a clearly defined brand identity and architecture (if not, that’s something that needs fixing!) so the question is then how is that brand communicated to our audience, both in terms of candidates and prospective clients? The answer will come down to one word – content.
We work with recruitment firms to develop complete content strategies for their audience, from content pillars and influencer integration to content calendars and media plans.
Technical optimisation is important for any website as it ensures the pages load quickly and offer a great experience for users across all devices and browsers. However, for recruitment companies there is an additional component that needs to be considered. This is the fact that the one thing candidates want more than anything when they search for recruitment terms is live job information. Not only does this need to exist on the website and be presented in a really user friendly way, but the relevant job ads needs to be pulled through to the appropriate landing pages.
By taking this approach, when someone searches for “cyber security jobs in London”, for example, your page with those jobs in that location will rank, offering the ideal experience for the user. From a technical perspective, this presents something of a challenge as it means the various filtering options on the website need to produce static URL’s, otherwise the search engines can’t index those results.
In addition to this, we also review and optimise:
- Site-loading speed
- Browser optimisation
- Mobile compatibility
- Image compression
- Site security
All of this goes towards demonstrating to Google and the other search engines that this is a well constructed website that offers a safe and secure experience.
On-page optimisation is the process of editing the content of a page to ensure Google can understand the key search terms it relates to.
This includes the optimisation of title tags (the first thing Google reads on your web page!), image alt tags and headers. It also includes reviewing the keyword (and synonym) density of priority terms throughout the page.
On-page optimisation goes far beyond that, however. We also need to put ourselves in the shoes of the user, whether it be candidates or businesses, and ask “What is it they might be hoping to find when they make a given search query?”. For example, if I’m a candidate searching for “Jobs in Reading”, I’m likely to be hoping to find a number of things:
- Specific job ads for opportunities in Reading
- The option to categorise/filter by industry and pay bracket
- Testimonials from people just like me who have gone through the process
- Links to guidance and advice on how to best prepare for the interview process
- Address and contact information for the recruitment firm (and ideally the specific individual responsible for this area) so that I can consider meeting them in person
The more of these expectations the page is able to fulfil, the better the experience for the user, and the more prominence Google is likely to give it in the search engines.
Links play as significant role as ever within SEO, but the means by which we seek to attract links has evolved hugely.
The most important thing is that any link solicitation is done in a legitimate and ethical way, which typically means it needs to be spearheaded by one of the following:
- An ambitious content strategy that resonates with the candidates and companies your recruitment firm is seeking to engage with (you may require distinct strategies for each)
- Influencer engagement (who are the most prolific names within the industry you’re targeting?)
- PR strategies
- Other brand activities
By adopting these ambitious campaigns, you will naturally attract the attention of other websites. The benefits will be far and wide, but not least of all will be the links attached from relevant and trusted domains.
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