If you run a successful website, then you’re already somewhat of a search engine optimization expert. If you’re not, you’ve hired someone who is. SEO seeks to please the Google gurus by developing content and structure designed to attract the attention of the search engine. Without it, your site will never be seen. But what about your job postings? Have you submitted your career page to the rigors of SEO? If not, perhaps you should.
Why SEO for Hiring?
If you could guarantee that 3 million or more potential job candidates would see your job listings, what would that mean for your hiring process? That’s what a high SEO ranking can do for you. Organic search represents a largely untapped resource for the hiring process, and with millions of searches performed for keywords like “jobs” and “careers,” it’s one you can’t afford to ignore.
What Google Looks For
Google’s algorithms remain a well-kept secret, but below we’ve listed four elements you must optimize if you want to boost your organic search rankings.
- Quality Content
Google’s primary concern is for customers, not businesses. They’re looking to provide the most relevant information possible on any given search. That means your page should be chock full of quality, helpful information. To determine quality, Google looks not just at the primary search keyword, but also at closely related keywords and user behavior on the page.
- Keywords
Keywords should be as specific as possible to describe the content of your page. A keyword like “jobs” may receive a lot of hits, but it will also result in a high bounce rate as most of the traffic probably won’t be looking for the specific jobs you’re offering (unless you’re a job search website). You can use your keywords to target traffic based on location, industry, and whatever niche your company is seeking to fill.
- Links
So much has been written about link-building that I won’t go into detail here. Back-links are essential to your SEO efforts, so take the time to develop and implement a strong link-building strategy.
- Social Media
Google recently updated their algorithms to include social media references as part of their ranking process. That means all those “likes” and “shares” can impact where your site shows up in a Google search, especially when quality raters promote your site. Real-time social sharing and the addition of the +1 button to the search results also mean that social media just got a lot more important for your business.
It’s true that your best contacts for potential employees may not come from a Google search. But just about everyone uses Google (or another search engine) to find information, including information about potential employers. That means that up-and-coming talent in the field as well as contacts from your networking efforts will be Googling you to find out just who you are as a company. Implementing a sound SEO strategy can help solidify you as a leader in the field, simply by making sure your website is one of the first people see when they want to find out more.
