SEO for Recruiters: Advantages and Benefits

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plays a major role in how we all communicate and produce content online. However, it also contributes to how and when people see the content we produce.

When it comes to recruitment, in order to be seen in the market, online plays a key role. However, to be seen online by the market, you need to ensure you have a good understanding as well as execution of SEO, so what is SEO?

What is SEO for recruiting?

Known as Search Engine Optimisation, SEO is just that, optimising your content to ensure it is featured high up on search engine sites. It is the process of generating quality and quantity of website traffic and increase the appearance of your website to users. It is organic or a natural form of getting seen online.

To ensure your website is optimised to search engines, it needs to feature keywords on the webpages, which will be searched using search engines such as Google. So for example, if “Recruiters in Sydney” was a highly searched keyword – which you can find out on Google Trends – and you are a recruiter in Sydney, your page should have those keywords embedded into your content.

Featuring keywords in your webpage allows you to be seen amongst all the millions of websites online.

Why is SEO important for recruiters and recruitment agencies?

Recent Google studies show around 88% of those looking for jobs, start on Google. Then once they receive the results, they will look at the websites that appear on the first page and usually the first page only.

In the competitive world of recruiting, an online strategy is a key to getting ahead of the game, especially with an SEO strategy involved. Getting to page 1 on Google is the ultimate goal to be recognised by job searchers.

Your website will come up when you search the name of it into Google, however, unless someone knows your brand, they won’t be typing it into the search bar. This is why specific keywords within your niche of recruiting are critical to securing clicks onto your webpage.

In order to generate leads and clients for your recruiting agency, SEO can help bring people to your website to potentially secure as clients.

To stand ahead of the rest, SEO fo recruiters is the key.

How does SEO help?

Not only does SEO put you ahead of the game with competitors but it also has many other benefits, which should convince you to start optimising your website.

It’s free

SEO is a free way to generate traffic to your website, without paid ads online or on social media. As we know, most searchers don’t get to the second page of Google, so SEO is the best way to get your page ranking on page one so potential clients will see you.

When it comes to paid advertising, yes it will get you on page one but it will cost you and there is a possibility people won’t go for your post because they know it is an ad.

At the end of the day, you want people on your site, applying for the jobs you are offering, so in order to get these actions happening, you need to invest time in SEO.

Helps fill those tough jobs

When it comes to recruiting, the struggles can be hiring for a niche skillset. So in order to reach these small groups of people, you cannot miss out on the opportunity to be seen online.

The win-win with using SEO to target niche skills is the search is small so you have more chance of ranking high and as not many recruiters invest time in SEO, you will have an edge over the rest. SEO will help you fill those difficult jobs.

Building brand awareness

Appearing on page one of Google screams trust and credibility, when we see results on page one, we all click them and are more likely to use that content over all the other pages featured on Google.

So aiming to get to page one of Google, or any search engine, requires you to work on your SEO, but the benefits to your brand image outweigh the work needed, plus it helps with retention and new leads.

The challenges of SEO

Yes, SEO sounds great and is key in establishing your recruiting brand and the services you have to offer.

However, there are some limitations and challenges all recruiters will have to overcome when implementing SEO.

When it comes to building to editing a website, most provide great SEO tools to help optimise your site, however, some may not resonate with career pages, but there are some key aspects that contribute to great SEO.

- The page for the job must be optimised for “Google For Jobs Search”

- The page speed needs to be quick

- The page must be adaptable for all devices

Keep in mind, some recruiting software or tracking systems won’t be optimised to generate SEO content, contact your tracking system vendor and ask if they use SEO guidelines.

SEO isn’t easy and it requires a lot of work and patience. In order to get to the level where you start to see success from SEO, you need to consistently produce quality content regularly. The more you do it, the better your results will be.

If you forget about SEO in the beginning and don’t put the work in, it will fail to work. So make sure you are consistent with your content production.

How to develop an SEO (search engine optimization)?

- Ensure you use keywords in your URL’s, so for example, instead of talentwolf.co/sydney use talentwolf.co.au/recruiter-sydney to ensure you get the most out of the keywords. With this, you are more likely to target people searching “Recruiters in Sydney”.

- Add text to your title tags and meta descriptions and ensure they are the same throughout the site related to the specific job.

- Remember “recruitment agency” isn’t something people normally search, think of keywords that would be searched in Google, like “content marketing jobs in Sydney”.

SEO is critical to ensuring the audience you want to generate reaches your site. Online businesses really can’t afford to not optimise their pages to generate leads.

To enhance your SEO, sign up to Talentwolf. As part of Talentwolf, your profile is added to our portfolio of recruiters to help connect you with the right candidates, plus it is another platform to promote your services.

SEO for Recruiting: Advantages and Benefits