SEO for Recruiters: Help Top Talent Find You

April 22, 2013


Job seekers interact with employers online. They check out company websites, career pages, social sites, blogs, etc.  Usually, marketing is the department that puts a heavy focus on SEO, but if you want to make it easier for all those potential top candidates to discover your company, then isn’t it time to think about SEO in terms of your talent acquisition strategy?

How can you drive more quality traffic and top candidates to your careers site? SEO isn’t just for marketers, it’s for recruiters, too.

Think about it. Any piece of content that your talent acquisition function creates — whether is it is a careers page, a job description, or a blog — is used to market your company with the goal of reaching quality job candidates, whether they are passive or active seekers.
But is your talent acquisition team thinking about SEO when they create that content? Unless they are contributing to a blog or article, probably not. For career pages and job postings, we, as recruiters, are typically focusing on describing the company, position, responsibilities, and core skills required.
Encouraging your recruiters to develop a working knowledge of SEO can allow your careers page or job descriptions to stand out from the crowd in terms of organic search. Not only will it drive more targeted traffic to you site, it’s also free.
Below are a few simple tips to get started on your recruitment SEO strategy:

  1. First, research SEO keywords and phrases specific to your industry, market, and target job seekers. It’s important to know what keywords and phrases will yield the best results. Put yourself in the mind of your target audience — the job seeker — when researching and writing content for the strongest results.
  2. Incorporate the language you found in your research into your content. This should be your content on the careers page, job descriptions, and any other recruitment content. Please keep in mind that you need to strike a balance with SEO — don’t overwhelm the job description with high-yield SEO or buzzwords, because your recruitment content will be marked as spam and/or the content will sound unnatural to your audience. You also do not want a standard job description with buzzwords that won’t stand out to job seekers. Use SEO keywords in the description, while staying true to what exactly the job description should be. Check out these tips for developing high impact job descriptions.
  3. Make use of the job title. If the internal title is funky — because, let’s be honest, some are — then be sure to list what the “normal” title for this type of position is, as well. More often than not, job seekers are searching via job title when they actively seek out new opportunities, so this is definitely important.
  4. Add links to other pages. A job description or career page can link to a number of different pages while still being relevant. Use links that will give the job seeker a glimpse into who you are as a company — this can include links to awards, company news, industry news, company videos, etc.

It’s time to think about SEO in terms of your talent acquisition strategy. Want to learn more about SEO for recruiters? Check out these three expert blogs.

What other SEO tips do you have for recruiters?

Director of Talent

<strong>Carlie Smith</strong> was the Senior Talent Manager, Sales & Marketing at OpenView. She worked directly with hiring managers and key stakeholders within OpenView and its portfolio to lead vital searches and provided process guidance on recruitment strategy, including talent identification, strategic sourcing, relationship building, and competitive intelligence. Currently, Carlie is the Director of <a href="https://www.circle.com/en">Circle</a>.