Top 4 SEO Strategies for Recruitment Websites
If you own a recruitment company, you will need to engage both clients and candidates with instructive and reliable information. To accomplish this goal, you should consider using industry-specific SEO strategies to help people discover your content via search engines such as Google.
You probably think that your engaging and informative content will be enough to bring people to your website. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. There is fierce competition in the recruitment industry and the majority of firms use SEO and create content with the same topics. This makes it difficult for you to stand out from the crowd.
So how can you convince Google that your website’s content is the best in the industry?
There are many crucial factors involved in implementing an effective SEO recruitment strategy. However, you can begin with on-page SEO. This generally deals with your website’s structure and page content.
Improving on-page SEO is critical as your site will then rank higher on the search engine results pages, boosting your online traffic.
Here are four top tips that will help you improve your on-page SEO ranking.
1. Start with your title tag
In Google’s search results, the title tag is the link users see. So how can you make this stand out from your competitors?
- Ensure that it is the correct length. Search engines such as Google only show the first 50–60 characters. However, if your title tag has fewer than 60 characters, it is more likely to be displayed correctly. There are also tools you can use that will enable you to see how your title will appear in the search engine results.
- Your title will also stand out if it has these three elements – Benefit, Curiosity, and Emotion.
Curiosity – There are several techniques that you can use to make your readers curious enough to click on your content:
- Surprise your readers – e.g., How to secure the HSE manager’s job using Epsom salts.
- Form the title as a question – e.g., Why is ignoring health and safety bad for business?
- Generate conflict – e.g., You can go to a recruiter or apply directly.
- Use a negative form – e.g., Posting on job boards SHOULDN’T be your entire strategy.
Benefit – If you provide value, this will be a powerful incentive for people to click on your title. Example titles include, ‘7 ways to…’ or ‘Find out how to…’. Nevertheless, take great care not to overuse numbers in your title tags as they can lose their appeal very quickly.
Emotion – Stirring the feelings of your clients or candidates can boost the appeal of your content. For example, which of these two titles do you think works best?:
‘Top 3 Ways to Hire a C-Suite Executive’
‘3 Unexpected Ways to Hire a C-Suite Executive’
In fact, the second title is more appealing due to the additional ‘unexpected’ word. There are a variety of other words you could use in your titles. One of the best places to look for good words is a thesaurus or a dictionary.
2. Provide an accurate meta description
According to Moz, a meta description should briefly summarise a web page. It should help search engines understand more about your website or web pages. However, many recruitment firms ignore the meta descriptions even though they are extremely important to SEO because they can strongly influence users to click on/visit your site.
To create a suitable meta description, consider the following tips:
- Keep it to within 150–160 characters as Google only displays up to 160 characters.
- You can write one or two sentences to explain your blog post. Ensure that you arouse curiosity, offer benefits and stir emotions.
3. Avoid using boring images
Many websites use stock photos because they are free. However, if all recruitment sites used them, how would users be able to tell them apart? How can you stand out if you are using the same images as your competitors?
Here are some strategies for using images wisely:
- You can contact freelancers to create customized images.
- Include diagrams. As some concepts are difficult to explain, a simple diagram can be extremely informative.
- Ensure that your image file names include essential keywords for your blogs or articles. For example, if your content deals with finance professionals, you can rename an image in this format – finance_professionals.jpg. Also, the alt text must contain similar keywords.
4. Research the keywords that will be suitable for you
In the recruitment industry, there are specific words or phrases that are often used by your target audience. A simple but effective tool you can use is Google Keyword Planner (GKP).
According to this recruitment guide, you should begin by listing all the possible terms and phrases people use when searching for recruitment websites. Use GKP to gain an insight into the keywords; for example, the monthly searches. In addition, GKP can also provide suggestions for possible keywords. Once you have created your list, consider narrowing it down to a select few that will attract most of your target audience. However, ensure that the keywords you use are niche-specific and not ‘generic’.
Conclusion
Most recruitment agencies find it difficult to rank highly on search engines such as Google. They try to rank for multiple unrelated keywords. Fortunately, there is a way to rank at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Start increasing your online traffic by making sure your website and content titles stand out. To achieve this, ensure you include the keywords used by your audience in your page titles and meta descriptions. Once they have visited your site, encourage them to stay longer by engaging them with attention-grabbing images. It is also a good idea to seek advice from SEO experts to make sure you are using the most up-to-date strategies.
Author’s bio
Chris Anderson is a search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) expert with over 15 years’ experience in online marketing.