The urban myth of careersite and job search engine optimisation (SEO)

Optimise your jobs and all will be well. Yet another fields of dreams but this time, it is a lot less likely they will come. There are simple facts that debunk the job SEO sales pitch and plenty of evidence to back this one up!

First off, it IS important to get your jobs indexed by search engines as they will in certain scenarios get found on page one of Google et al. 

• Jobs - job boards and aggregators will win.
• Sector jobs e.g. engineering jobs - same again, you won't win.
• Something more specific otherwise known as long tail e.g. Graduate Trainee Merchandising Programme (a Bing search for a change).

So as you can see from the above, it is worth making sure your jobs are optimised but please don't be fooled into thinking that you will be on page one for every search.

You also need to think about your longer term strategy and build landing pages that are optimised for the long term as a job is here today gone tomorrow whereas your hiring needs in certain areas are ongoing. Two examples.

• Group food sourcing is an industry specific term so easier to win on this one. Not the prettiest page in the world but it works!
• Accuracy checking technicians do who knows what but if you are one, Boots make it really easy to find a job at Boots.

The approach to landing pages is to make then quite niche so you get quality rather than quantity which means that even smaller organisations have a chance of doing well.

Take a look at your career site stats and see the exact keyword phrases being used although in most cases it will not reveal too much as you won't get that much generic traffic. So the back-up option is to spend a little bit of money on Google Adwords. Not just to drive clicks (although they will be good quality) but to get an idea of the kind of search queries that get used in your niche and then think about building landing pages with those keyword phrases in mind. This is why a well optimised site, with optimised jobs start to really work in your favour but you have to work at it as it takes a bit of time. Alternatively, just carry on using job boards and getting the same results that you get today. If that works and it is proving to be cost effective then why change? If of course it is not working.....

I hope that all makes sense but if not let me know.

Comments

[Dave Bancroft]

Wise advice. If I had a £1 for everyone who expects to be number 1 in Google...!

If clients don't have a CMS that supports the basics of SEO then they should be looking to replace it. I think digital marketers today should be focused on copywriting and marketing (email, social, PPC - the whole mix). Google's algorthm is constantly changing, eradicating more and more 'spam'. The signals used are changing and include social media, feedback from browsers etc. Content is still king and as you quite rightly say, you can't beat the aggregators or niche job boards - they will have more content (jobs) than your average career site.

We make sure our (recruitment agency) clients websites are indexed by Google (all the SEO tricks are included) and also we feed jobs to the main free-to-post aggregators (which can contribute 25% of site traffic), to social networks channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and we also have the ability to create targeted landing pages for any search filters and keywords. Mobile websites are also available and this complements social media (which is mainly consumed on the mobile). In short, we try to get the jobs to the candidates wherever they are and through whatever medium they prefer.

Dave Bancroft
Reverse Delta

[Jobs in the East Midlands]

I've been trying SEO for about a month now and I've moved up two pages in the Google search. It works! Great Post. Thanks.