With the market heavily saturated by recruitment agencies, SMEs, and multinationals alike, it’s crucial to maximise your visibility and reach… and one underrated method for recruiters is search engine optimisation, more commonly known as leveraging an SEO recruitment strategy.
It’s a low-cost online marketing method that most businesses don’t necessarily understand in its entire complexity, but investing in a successful SEO strategy can help your recruitment agency stand out against the competition.
Some apparent benefits for recruiting agencies are higher website traffic, an influx of visitors most likely to be interested in your services, and media coverage that translates to potential clients, contract opportunities, and more.
SEO techniques differ in every industry and position but the consensus is that unique content is crucial for promoting your brand as it allows you to attract an audience relevant to your business if done correctly.
The majority of website users are highly targeted, and if your content isn’t for them, it’s likely you won’t leave a mark. So, an SEO strategy that educates and appeals to a specific group of people is essential and it’s the most innovative way to get your business out there.
Recruitment agencies can use SEO to attract website visitors searching for similar services or businesses in the same industries.
So, what is SEO?
Essentially, SEO is a method of effectively marketing and reaching new audiences on the web. It’s difficult to put it into just one specific term, as it comes with many sub-steps, but here are a few elements that make up SEO in its most basic form.
What are the benefits of leveraging SEO in recruitment?
The benefits of SEO in recruitment are limitless, provided you leverage an effective strategy. They include but are not limited to:
Increased website traffic
Websites with engaging websites can generally achieve higher rankings and significantly higher traffic.
Beat Out Competitors
You’ll find competition in any industry; there’s just no way around it. The first thing you should do is make sure you’re the go-to person – this is why it’s essential to have high-quality content on your site.
You aim to position yourself as a resource other businesses can benefit from and link back to but remember that if your content isn’t attractive to people, you won’t be able to convert them into customers.
Higher conversion rates
Websites that are well designed can have much higher conversion rates – such as lead nurturing – which are at the heart of the recruitment industry.
Brand awareness
Brands that invest in creating and maintaining attractive and engaging websites will benefit from increased brand awareness which will help them to achieve higher visibility.
Putting Your Content Out There
Whenever you put your content online (or print), you’re essentially taking the first steps to ‘search engine optimisation’ by doing just that. Most people use search engines regularly, so you can expect that those who find your content organically are more likely to visit your website and browse your services.
Organic traffic – audience gained traction that was acquired organically and not paid for – works best and as a recruiter, you can use these visitors to guide your strategy moving forward. They’ll be more willing to provide input in the future and more likely to work with your business if you follow up with them; especially as they came to you and not the other way around.
Breaking down the Volume of Traffic
SEO works in conjunction with but isn’t necessarily a replacement for, building traffic directly to your website. The good news is that the more traffic your website receives, the better the chances of it getting noticed by recruiters.
Search engine optimisation works by placing keywords in your content to increase its search rankings and increase your site’s visibility in the search engines. The downside is that if you have smaller traffic, you’re less likely to receive the results you’re looking for, and even if you do, you’re less likely to achieve your goals.
Gaining Conversions
The next significant aspect of SEO is gaining conversions. By putting your content out there for potential recruiters to see, you’re essentially giving them the option to take a closer look at you. Here’s where you get into more in-depth conversion and get your visitors to move further down your sales funnel.
Once they take that step forward, they’ll want to know a bit more about you and see if you could be a good fit for them – this can range from your ability to meet deadlines, and communication skills, to a specific skill that you have and would be excellent for a company.
By adding some searchable keywords to your site and creating content that’s a bit more related to your potential client’s industry, you’ll have a much better chance of getting them to click on your site. And because you’re actively searching for them, more people are finding you.
Having High-Quality Content
High-quality content is an essential component of SEO, but this doesn’t mean simply uploading the best-written content available; it’s also creating content that’s relevant to what your audience needs but also provides additional value.
For example, many people are interested in IT, so content involving ‘AI and Machine Learning’ would be more likely to be relevant than content detailing your work routine.
Plus, If you include links back to your services, you’ll be adding even more interest and expanding the scope of your target demographic to include potential candidates who might actively seek out your recruitment agency after seeing you mentioned.
Optimised Site Infrastructure
Many factors make a site design effective in improving the way your website ranks for a keyword. In fact, it can significantly impact the number of people who find your website through search engines and the number of people who end up connecting with you.
Optimising Your Content Strategy
Whether you use an agency or handle it in-house, search engine optimisation is the best way to generate a healthy influx of organic traffic and cultivate a reputable digital presence.
If Google algorithms deem your site as both relevant and useful for the industry you’re operating in, it’s more than likely they’ll push your content out to more people – after all, Google’s aim is to provide the best user experience and optimised content is the best method for it.
So what’re you waiting for? Kickstart your SEO journey.
TL;DR Key Takeaways
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can be an effective low-cost method for recruitment agencies to stand out against competitors and maximise their visibility and reach online.
- An effective SEO strategy can attract a highly targeted audience to your website, increase website traffic, and boost conversion rates, ultimately leading to potential clients and contract opportunities.
- Organic traffic (audience gained traction that was acquired organically and not paid for) is an essential component of SEO and works best for guiding your strategy moving forward.
- Placing keywords in your content to increase its search rankings and creating high-quality content that provides additional value and relevance to the audience is crucial for a successful SEO strategy.
- The site design is another essential factor that significantly impacts the number of visitors and ultimately leads to achieving higher visibility in search engines.
