Optimum Approach to Recruitment website SEO

International job searches conducted by candidates, via the internet, number in the billions each month. In the UK and elsewhere the trend is of continued growth as online recruiters are seeing a consistent rise in volume of site hits and referrals from search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

“Switched on” recruiters with an online marketing budget are finding the quality of CVs is often higher when submitted via a search engine than through conventional means. Cost per acquisition of a new candidate also tends to be far lower, with some companies able to secure a £5/candidate cost through the web, compared to an average £150 through conventional means. The gene pool of talent is also broadened, giving UK recruiters access to the international talent market.

Search Strategy

Because cost per acquisition is reduced, search engine optimisation can really level the playing field among recruitment agencies. There are comparatively small agencies that are generating higher levels of search engine traffic than more established, higher turnover companies because they are engaged in an “organic” search marketing plan, which enables them to consistently appear at the top of searches. This approach also reduces their traditional marketing spend, making the process mores effective and more efficient.
Search Engine Optimisation, in this context, means getting relevant and useful content to a potential candidate through search engine results. Search engines, especially Google, have the ability to assess a site’s “usefulness” in a similar way to a human. Google’s approach has earned it the reputation of being the most consistent in returning the most relevant, useful results by getting it right most often. If a search engine thinks that the page you’ve written and designed is an authoritative and useful source of information, then it’s very likely to rank you on its first few pages of search results.

For a human to judge a jobs webpage useful, there would need to be some relevant and informative text discussing the subject of your chosen profession. Perhaps there would be some links taking you to more specific aspects of a profession, for example particular roles and job types. Finally, thinking about the usability of the page, and the likelihood of a visitor being converted to a candidate, there might be some jobs displayed right there on the page, to encourage them to apply or submit a CV.

Advanced Approach

It’s a common misconception that dynamically generated websites, typical of the kind of database driven sites that recruiters use, are difficult to optimise. This is far from the truth, a dynamically generated website can host technology that can improve your search results, get search traffic directly to your vacancies and literally optimise itself.

Ethical application of technology can actually help to improve your search results and then protect them. One problem is that “Session ID” based urls can often duplicate themselves in a search engines index, each time a search engine visits your website. The use of user agent detection (being able to identify and differentiate between a normal visitor and a search engine) to cloak a session id at a dynamic url is an excellent way to protect yourself against “multiple Indexing” – making thousands of copies of the same page in a search engines index, by accident. Multiple copies of the same webpage in a search index is frowned upon by the search engines and quite often results in a ban, but it’s a typical issue faced by owners of content management based websites.

If each SEO formula is slightly different then it’s important to pick a marketing agency that has the experience for your relevant industry. Find an agency that has proven capabilities in the recruitment industry and can demonstrate their industry knowledge with thousands of ranking key phrases, relevant to that sector. The agency must be able to prove that people are actually searching for those phrases and that a campaign of organic search marketing will really generate you traffic!

Technologically speaking, look for an agency that has built their content management system from scratch with search engine optimisation as a primary concern. Site design is a key factor to the search engine crawlers ability to index your site, as is the ethical and practical application of technology.

For more information contact SEO@4MAT.com