How to Use SEO to Improve Your Job Postings?
The times when agencies and HR departments limited their activities to posting job offers only on a few platforms are long gone. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to do much more. Fortunately, properly planned SEO and SEM activities enable increasing the site’s visibility in the search results and reaching potential job candidates before your market rivals do it.
HR – what is it?
Apart from the fact that the market abounds in recruitment agencies that specialize in finding and delegating employees to relevant companies, nowadays, almost every enterprise has its own HR department. People working in the HR industry are supposed not only to recruit new employees but also to conduct training for the current workers and take care of staff development.
Every month users type into Google thousands of queries containing the word “job”, related to a specific job offer or location. It’s also worth noting that during the pandemic more and more users started to search for remote work job offers.
More than 80% of job seekers take advantage of the Internet which is perceived as an affordable and time-efficient source of attractive and relevant job postings. At the same time, users looking for a job still encounter difficulties in finding suitable offers, whereas employers complain about the lack of appropriate candidates for the positions they advertise.
SEO, standing for Search Engine Optimization, is a crucial element that can help you make your company stand out from its market rivals. Properly conducted activities guarantee that your company website will be ranked higher on Google, your brand will become more recognizable, it’ll start to inspire trust and consequently, users will be more willing to send their CVs and apply for the jobs you offer. So what should you pay attention to when doing SEO for your HR department or agency?
SEO for the HR industry
The SEO strategy for the HR industry needs to be transparent and well-thought-out. As the process of searching for a job starts with typing a given job title into Google, we should begin with this aspect.
Keyword analysis and research
Every SEO strategy begins with finding appropriate keywords. When preparing the list of key phrases, make sure that it includes words that can be potentially entered into the search engine by your target group. These phrases should express specific needs and expectations of the user (your potential employee).
Job posting optimization
From the SEO perspective, there’s a close link between what your job posting looks like and what users see in the search results. So what should you take care of?
Apart from the abovementioned keywords that should be employed naturally and efficiently, there are four crucial elements of every job offer that affect its reception.
Title
This is the first element displayed in the search results. Don’t complicate it, your title should be concise, it also needs to contain a keyword. It’s one of the main Google ranking factors that determine the position of your ad in the search results. On the other hand, users decide to click on a specific search result only if they find it attractive, therefore, a professionally formulated title will increase your chances of encouraging people to visit your site.
Lead
It means a few introductory sentences, which contain the most important information about the advertisement – this element should attract the attention of recipients, briefly outline the job offer and elaborate on the title.
H1 and H2 headers
Properly applied headers should include appropriate keywords (e.g. concerning job position, requirements) on which you want your website to be displayed in the search results.
Content
Your ad content should be specific and unique. Mention the name of the advertised job position a few times, in a natural way. Moreover, it’s worth writing about the job location or including information about remote work because candidates tend to provide specific city names when searching for job postings.
As you may guess, most advertising services are optimized so well that your job posting (published on one of such platforms) is still more likely to be displayed in the search results higher than the same job offer published on your company website. Unfortunately, many recruiters mistakenly give up promoting their websites, instead of providing links to their Career subpages in the content of the offers published on advertising services. It’s important as this step helps to effectively reinforce website positions on Google.
Friendly URLs
Links to job postings should be approachable and simple so that users can easily memorize them or determine what the offer is about. Avoid using special characters and numbers (if possible).
Optimized company description
A potential employee shouldn’t be confused about the scope of activities of the company s/he is applying to. A transparent and understandable description of the Career subpage, clearly determined values as well as specific key phrases describing the profile of the company and wanted candidates are elements that will attract the right recipients.
Backlinks
Backlinks are the key to effective SEO for HR specialists. Reliable and quality websites linking to your page will help you improve your positions in the search results. Properly, naturally, and accurately implemented backlinks redirecting to your website or optimized job postings will be helpful in promoting your offers and outdoing your market rivals.
Google Analytics
To constantly keep your fingers on the pulse, you need to monitor how visitors find your website, what actions they take, and what’s the average web session length. Taking advantage of tools for analyzing page visibility such as Google Analytics is a great way to facilitate the process of publishing new job offers and recruiting employees.
Social media
Platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or even Instagram offer an additional opportunity not only to increase your website visibility on social media but also to promote and advertise job postings. Thanks to it, HR specialists can effortlessly reach young users who spend most of their free time scrolling social media platforms. Facebook enables publishing job offers that can be accessed via tablets, smartphones, and laptops. Consequently, work gets more efficient, job interviews are organized more smoothly and the distance between the employer and the potential employee who can contact the company via Messenger is effectively reduced. As you can see, social media SEO is approachable, modern, direct, and fast. Today, using social media platforms to support a company’s recruitment processes is a must.
Additional factor – visible ratings and reviews
Last but not least, it’s worth remembering that your job postings should include a clear evaluation of the company by its current or former employees. Although it may seem to you that this is only a detail, almost ¾ of Internet users admit that they search for information about their potential employers online. Positive reviews significantly affect the position of the company in the search results which translates into a greater number of potential job candidates willing to work at the enterprise. Remember that many users automatically dismiss companies that are rated badly. Therefore, it’s worth spending some time to ensure that negative comments don’t affect your website position on Google.
The take-home message
If you want to properly perform SEO activities for the HR industry, start with analyzing phrases and creating a list of keywords most frequently used by potential clients. The design of the offer is equally important. Remember that the published job posting is a kind of your company’s business card that has a crucial impact on the candidates’ interest in the advertised job position.
