10 SEO Tips to Get Your Recruitment Website Noticed on Google
It’s one of the questions we hear most from recruitment website owners: with millions of recruitment websites out there, how do I make sure mine gets found on Google?
Answer: Good search engine optimisation (SEO) is a huge advantage. The good news is that the basics are not quite the arcane art that they seem. Here are 10 quick tips to help you improve your website’s visibility on Google:
1. Plan your keywords
Before you write a page for your website, choose one or two keywords or phrases that you think potential clients or candidates are likely to use to find you – then work them into your page title, description, and content. Stick to one or two keywords per page and try to use a selection across your website to capture a wider variety of searches.
2. Localise
Google knows where you live (or at least it thinks it does). If you look on the left-hand side of your searches, you’ll see that by default it now tries to detect your location - and the search results it returns take this into account. Capitalise on this by including locations in some of your keywords and URLs.
3. Write good page titles and descriptions
Your content management system (CMS) will ask you to give each page of your website a title and a description (or “meta title” and “meta description”). They don’t seem to appear anywhere obvious on your website, but they’re really important to Google. Here’s where they appear:
Google considers your page titles as a summary of the content on your page, and it uses them to help figure out whether or not your website is relevant to someone’s search. That’s why it’s vital to use your keyword in a descriptive title that will help the search engines to understand what your page is all about.
4. Don’t repeat yourself – or anyone else
Make sure every page on your website is unique; never be tempted to use stock copy. Google is some of the world’s most powerful plagiarism software and it will send you right to the bottom of the pile if your content is frequently repeated word-for-word elsewhere, on or off your site.
5. Encourage people to link back to your recruitment website
Google factors links from other websites, and the prestige of those other websites, into how highly it ranks your site. The best place to begin with link building is your clients. Got a particularly happy client? Ask them to link back to your website. Not only will you reap the benefit of referrals from their site, but your SEO should also improve.
6. Update regularly
Updating your website regularly isn’t just a good way of getting candidates to come back; it’s also a good way of getting Google to come back. Fresh, relevant content is proven to give your website a helping hand up the search results page. You can keep things current even if you don’t have lots of fresh jobs to post: a news page or a recruitment blog can help.
7. Steer clear of anyone who offers you a quick, cheap fix
You’ve seen them: the emails in your inbox from companies claiming to be able to get your website on the first page of a Google search overnight, at an outrageously low price. Ignore them. Search engines will actually penalise you for low-quality SEO efforts. If you do want to enlist external help, choose a trusted agency and remember that a price tag that’s too good to be true often is too good to be true.
8. Get social
Social media won’t directly impact your SEO but it will encourage more people to see – and link back to – your website. We’ve written a lot about Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook where you can find out more about how best to leverage these networks for recruitment.
9. Keep up-to-date
SEO is constantly changing. Every day Google makes changes – sometimes tiny, sometimes huge – to try to return fairer, more relevant results to every search. Although they’re not written specifically for recruiters, SEO industry blogs Search Engine Watch, SEOmoz, and Search Engine Land are all good places to check in for news on changes to the way search engines read your website.
10. Forget Google
Well, don’t forget it – but don’t become obsessed with it. The message to take away from all these tips is that if you write high-quality, relevant content for your website then you will see your website begin to climb up the search results page naturally.