5 Ways to Boost Your SEO and Attract Top Talent
You’ve probably heard about search engine optimization (SEO), but you may have assumed it wasn’t relevant to you as a recruiter. However, SEO is critical for the success of any business — and that includes recruiting firms. By creating website content with SEO in mind, you can attract more visitors to your job postings and build a stronger reputation with candidates and clients.
SEO essentially increases your website’s visibility in search engines like Google and Bing, thereby boosting traffic to your site. Want to be on the first page of Google whenever someone searches “recruiter”? Time to start focusing on SEO.
If SEO is completely new to you, don’t worry. You’re not alone. By understanding a few basic concepts, you can start deploying SEO to bring more candidates and clients to your firm.
Understanding SEO
One of the main goals of having a website is to attract and engage with users who are interested in your products or services. That’s where SEO comes into play. SEO is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
Search engines like Google have bots, called “crawlers,” that work behind the scenes to gather information on all of the content on the internet. Once that information is indexed, Google’s algorithm tries to match it with relevant search terms people enter into the site.
Google’s algorithm is quite smart, and it judges the quality of your content. Low-quality content ranks lower down in search results than high-quality content does. This means you can’t just throw popular search terms into your website content and hope it works. Instead, you have to create quality content that provides real value to readers. Pick a keyword or phrase that your candidates and clients are likely to search for on Google and build content around it, rather than plugging keywords into existing content as an afterthought.
Why Does SEO Matter for Recruiters?
Businesses in every industry can and should optimize their websites for search engine results. When people turn to the internet to find information, they are more likely to see and click on the websites that’ve been optimized because those websites will rank higher in the search results.
As a recruiter, you want to attract as many quality candidates to your job postings as possible. To do that, you need to write search engine optimized job posts that contain keywords, phrases, and metadata candidates are likely to search for. This increases the chances of your job posting being found by a candidate who might be interested and qualified.
Of course, there’s more to recruitment SEO than just adding keywords to job ads. Here are five different ways to boost your SEO and start seeing more top talent in your pipeline:
1. Create an Impressive Careers Page
An easy-to-navigate careers page is essential for any recruiting firm’s website, as a strong user experience will help your rankings. Think of this page as a central hub for all your jobs and candidates. It should be rich with valuable information that candidates want to know. Job postings and job categories should be organized and easy to browse through. Add videos and images to showcase the office environment and the team.
2. Write Effective Meta Titles and Descriptions
Always make an effort to write specific meta titles and descriptions for your webpages. These are the title and description of a page as it appears in search engine results.
Let’s say you want to create a landing page that describes the responsibilities and skills of web developers. This page also leads readers to currently open opportunities for web developers. You might structure your meta title and description for this specific page like so:
Meta title: “Web developer jobs in [your location] from [company name]”
Meta description: “Find and apply to web developer jobs in [your location] now. New job opportunities are posted daily.”
The meta title and description are important to both search engines and people. This information tells search engines about the content on your page, and it gives people a reason to click on your page by showing them it is relevant to their search.
3. Make Your Posts Shareable
When your content is shared on social media, that helps improve your overall SEO. Make sure it’s easy for people to share your job postings and content to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Integrate buttons directly onto your webpages that give people the option to share them to their networks without having to copy and past the links. When it’s easier for people to spread the word about your job openings and content, your overall SEO will improve.
4. Optimize Your Website for Mobile Users
According to Pew Research Center, 53 percent of US adults between the ages of 18 and 29 have used their smartphones to search for job opportunities. On top of that, search engines reward mobile-friendly websites with higher search rankings. Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly so candidates can find and apply to your job postings on their phones without a hitch.
5. Create a Recruitment Video
Video content plays a huge role in influencing your SEO. Engaging recruitment videos increase the amount of time people spend on your website. The longer people stay on your website, the higher your pages will appear in search engine results. Plus, great videos are also likely to be shared on social media, boosting your SEO even further.
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These are just some of the ways you can optimize your recruiting firm’s website for search engine results. It’ll take time to see significant improvement in your content rankings. Changes don’t happen overnight. Think of SEO as a marathon instead of a sprint. As long as you update your website consistently with fresh and valuable content, you’ll be sure to climb those search engine rankings in no time.
Java Nguyen is a content marketing specialist at Mindscope.