Daniel Kidd (who I met on Twitter) is a SEO/Link Builder for Organic Development.
He offered to write a bit of a SEO overview blog post for me. So here it is:
Have you ever wondered why Monster and Totaljobs (Jobs boards) rank so highly on Google?
Unemployment is over 2.5 million in Britain. Half of the British population are connected to the internet, so it’s no surprise that millions of people are using search engines to look for jobs. It’s vital that recruitment companies are using search engine optimisation (SEO).
Because jobs boards rank so highly, it costs recruitment companies a fortune to advertise on them. Using good SEO, it’s possible to outrank these sites, save money and find someone their dream job. Like killing 3 birds with 1 stone!
300000 Hits a Month
Using the Google Keyword Tool, I have searched for the key phrase ‘Jobs in Manchester’. This image shows that in 1 month, there are over 300000 searches for this key phrase. When you search for something on Google, you’ll almost always click on the site ranked first. That’s 300000 hits a month!
Five Benefits of SEO
– Rank higher on search engines, therefore increasing traffic.
– Save money by not having to advertise on expensive jobs boards.
– Find work for more people, increasing your reputation as a recruiter.
– Gain an advantage over your competitors.
– Get paid to advertise other websites on yours.
Start Optimising Today
If you haven’t been using SEO, don’t worry. There are plenty of SEO Agencies (like Daniel’s!) that can help you climb up the search engines. If you’d like to learn the basics, there are plenty of free articles, forums and ebooks designed to help you. This is a helpful article describing the basics of SEO.
With high unemployment and the power of the internet, SEO is a great opportunity for recruiters to maximise traffic. With more online recruiters emerging, and more jobs being advertised online, it’s essential that you don’t get left behind.
If you’d like to write a guest blog post for me just get in touch.
All I will say, is once you’ve got yourself up the SEO ladder, the overall message contained within your advertising still has to be interesting, relevant, and have some allure. SEO that utilises creative copywriting rather than simply tries to ram as many mentions of a few key words as it can without any thought about selling the job into the front end of an ad will still get poor response, as will cut and paste job descriptions. When you think of job advertising, think first of other forms like cars, holidays, products. They attract people by giving out the right messages, not by bombarding them with hundreds of bullet points and poor grammar.
That reminds me of a client who has just submitted a few articles for us to distribute. They wanted to optimise for the term self catering, but in one of the articles, they used the term around 80 times.
Unless you list 1000s of jobs on your site, I don’t think it is possible to compete with the major job boards on SEO.
However, you are right, Google is a very important source of candidates.
For recruiters or employers with (say) less than 500 jobs on the site, I would advise them to develop PPC (Google Adwords) campaigns.
This will ensure that recruiter and/or employer sites are listed on the first page of Google, but only when people are conducting relevant searches to their business.
Also at the risk of sounding pedantic, I have a couple of issues with the article. If there are 300,000 searches a month on Google for a certain keyword, this will not result in 300,000 click thrus, even if you are no.1.
Finally the term “hits” shouldn’t be used in an article like this. It’s the wrong metric.
I agree with Al…SEO only works for companies with masses of vacancies (and even then they need to be written with the ‘web’ in mind). I’d always suggest that companies target the long tail…Location + job title + industry. This also help towards conversions and quality.
Well said Al.
The reason Monster, Jobsite, 1Job et al get very high rankings is that they have mountains of continually changing content, which is relevant to the searched for phrases. This means that Google and other search engines re-index their content every few hours. 1Job isn’t a job board, but a secondary vertical search engine.
Whilst I would never say don’t bother with SEO (it should be a no-brainer) the chances of appearing above the industry giants in search results remain slim.
I also agree with Al on the use of Google Adwords, but it can be very expensive, whereas Job aggregators, and there are a few, can offer much better and more cost effective results.
Declaration – I work with 1Job.co.uk
@Alan, I totally agree with what you are saying about “hits”. I don’t agree with what you are saying about number of jobs though. A job page is just another page of content. Google will rank your site based on the number of pages of content and relevance of content.
It is possible to rank without a massive number of jobs on the site as long as there is enough alternative content optimized for similar key phrases.
One of the metrics that should be discussed in this article is conversions. What are people doing when they find your site? How many candidates are sending in their CV? How many people are you placing through your website? That is the only metric to measure success from… not hits.
Hi Alex,
I know it is possible to rank highly on Google if you don’t have a huge number of jobs on the site. But I think as a general rule setting up PPC campaigns is probably more effective.
I would also advocate the use of both PPC + SEO, they are definitely complimentary. Successful SEO for smaller sites is often based on how well the site was in built in the first place. Site/page structure etc.
It’s hard to get any decent ROI on SEO work if you have to employ a SEO specialist after a site has been built.
To any recruiter, I’d advise to write a blog so the content is constantly changing.
Although they wont rank above them for generic terms like the one I used in the article (I was just using it as an example to show how popular job searching online was), good optimisation will make it possible to compete on the long tailed keywords.
This will ensure that the recruiter and / or employer sites listed on the first page of Google, but only when people do research relevant to your business.
SEO uses creative writing instead of trying to go through many mentions of a few keywords as possible without any concern about the sale of employment in front of an ad will always get a bad response, even to cut and paste job descriptions. When you think of the publicity work, think about other ways, such as cars, vacations, products.
Well, it’s amazing. The miracle has been done. Hat’s off. Well done, as we know that “hard work always pays off”, after a long struggle with sincere effort it’s done.
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vernon
SEO that utilises artistic copywriting rather than artlessly tries to ram as abounding mentions of a few key words as it can after any anticipation about affairs the job into the foreground end of an ad will still get poor response, as will cut and adhesive job descriptions.
Nothing irks readers more than reading an article that’s written for the purpose of pleasing the search engines. If SEO content writers would just take the time to please the users rather than the search engine, the quality of online search will increase, and thus rankings will follow suit.
I’d have to agree with Annie. Optimizing is easily done when you have the users in mind. Considering factors that will make users frequently visit your site, like site speed, unique and quality content, and user-friendly navigation, should be the priorities, and not trying to game the search engines.
Nice post !! Seo services have a great importance for any website because if your providing some of the best services in your field online and nobody knows about it that will be a sheer waste of your resources and time.
Content writing is really a big plus in SEO. Having a great article means having many readers so that translates to an increase in traffic. Anyway I like reading quality articles especially if its about the SEO UK scene. I run this site: Affordable SEO Hampshire
check it out.
Well anyway are there any other quality articles you have for me to read. Please give me a link. thanks
SEO is one of the most important promotion jobs a product, service, company or organization can obtain. Most of us don’t open yellow pages when we’re looking for a plumber or a dog walker, we just type it down in our preferable search engine and check the first 2, 3 maybe 5 first results.