Is your recruitment marketing website out of shape!? I bet it is! How do I know? It’s all in the SEO! Don’t worry though; I’ll have you back in fighting form by the end of this blog. Just follow these simple tips and you’ll be well on your way to being found online.
First of all, what exactly is SEO? Well, it stands for Search Engine Optimization, but it is SO much more than that. Hubspot says that it is the process of improving a website so that it attracts more website traffic from search engines.
SEO is made up of the following elements: Infrastructure, Platform/CMS, Information Architecture, and Content. These items hold your website up and are supported by social media efforts, links and search engine marketing.
Search Engine Watch does a great job of illustrating this theory with something tasty…cake!
So why is search engine optimization important? It’s just digital cake, right? Wrong. It's important because it’s what search engines are looking for and those engines drive the majority of web traffic. If your website doesn’t have stellar score, it will not show up for potential candidates. With that in mind, here are some optimization tips for you to try out with your recruitment marketing website.
Be Content Conscious
Search engines send out digital spiders to crawl the internet and they are looking for themes, text (including something called alt text behind an image), descriptions (like meta data and the actual write-ups) and even the title. All items should be optimized around keywords and keyword phrases.
Be the Quickest Gun in the West
If your site isn’t fast or isn’t mobile optimized both real people and the spiders are going to scuttle away as fast as their eight (or two) legs can carry them. No one wants to wait for a website to load to check out content that may or may not be what they’re looking for. Job seekers don’t have all the time in the world, so make sure the experience is seamless.
Be Authoritative
You can gain web authority in the following ways: link to other sites that the spiders have deemed authoritative (but make sure the site is relevant and useful to potential candidates), link to other internal pages you have created (give the applicants more information about you and your services), and gain new links from others (one great way to do this is to increase your reach via guest blogging or by asking another industry super hero to write part of your content so that you access their audience too).
Be Attractive
This part is semi-self-explanatory. If the site you have created is confusing and is providing a less than amazing experience for an applicant than they will stop checking it out. Sites should be easily navigable and should inspire a sense of security. The site should also deliver content that a candidate would find valuable…remember, the content is not for you; it’s for your potential applicant. If you’ve made a site that looks like a spam bot with a million links and pictures that are not applicable to your company’s bottom line, then you are not going to get results.
Avoid Overcrowding
I know it might be tempting to smoosh a ton of duplicate key words into your blogs and webpage in order to up your SEO score, but if you overuse keywords you will find that your long-term score will suffer. The spiders are smart, keyword stuffing will not up your web authority.
Use Key Words / Key Word Phrases In
- Your page title
- Your URL
- The body
- Your headers
- The image alt text
- Your Social Networks such as: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email and even traditional marketing like radio, TV and print advertising
Use Different Stages of Key Words
People surf the Internet during all sorts of idea phases. They might have a problem that needs solving that they have no idea how to deal with…they might have a few solutions in mind for a problem, but need help deciding and they might just be searching for brands. Try to come up with long-tail keywords for brands, problem solving, and solutions. That sort of strategy will help your ideal candidate find you no matter where they are in their thought process.
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