Recruitment SEO Step 1: A Recruiter's Guide to SEO
The four pillars of SEO
Please note this post was written by Darren Revell, our founder, who has severe dyslexia. While he has used Grammarly, Word and Chrome spellchecks, they don't all agree, so please respect our intent in providing this advice, if not the grammatical accuracy. Advice which has stood the test of the past 20 years and counting.
Pillar 1
Pillar one On-Page SEO: On-page SEO refers to mainly optimising the text content (though images and URL structures all are part of On-Page SEO) of your website and the myriad of places that text can be used in the settings of a website to trigger a ranking response from search engines. This content in SEO speak is made up of "Head terms", "Shoulder terms", and "Long-tail" terms (some SEOs refer to "Shoulder terms" as Mid-tail terms").
"Head terms" in SEO refer to broad, high-volume keywords that are typically shorter and more generic. People use these general, often one- or two-word, terms when searching for information online. Head terms are characterised by high search volume and broad search intent. Examples of "Head terms" for recruiters would be jobs, sales jobs, finance jobs, and part-time jobs.
"Shoulder terms" in SEO refer to broad terms with additional broad filtering added to them, or they can be a term in their own right. Examples of "Shoulder terms" for recruiters would be "sales jobs near me", "finance jobs London", and "part-time jobs Edinburgh".
"Long-tail terms" tend to be very precise search terms where the user intends to gain some specific result. Examples of "Long-tail" for recruiters would be "SaaS sales jobs in Dartford", "Financial control jobs near Cannon Street London", and "part-time childminding jobs in Edinburgh".
Pillar 2
Pillar 2 Off-Page SEO: Off-page SEO involves activities and strategies outside your website to improve its authority, credibility, and relevance. Key elements of elements of off-page SEO include:
- Building high-quality backlinks from reputable and relevant websites.
- Social media engagement and sharing of content.
- Influencer outreach and relationship building.
- Online reviews and positive mentions of your brand.
- Guest blogging and contributing content to authoritative sites.
Pillar 3
Pillar 3 Technical SEO: Technical SEO focuses on optimising the technical aspects of your website to ensure that search engines can crawl, index, and understand its content. Key elements of technical SEO include:
- XML sitemaps to assist search engines in understanding the structure of your site.
- Proper use of robots.txt to control which parts of your site are crawled.
- Implementation of SSL certificates for secure and encrypted connections (HTTPS).
- Mobile-friendliness to ensure a positive user experience on mobile devices.
- Page speed optimisation for faster loading times.
Pillar 4
Pillar 4 Social Media & SEO: Key elements of Social Media & SEO include:
- Driving users back to your jobs.
- Driving users back to your blogs.
- Driving users back to your pay advice.
- Driving users back to your case studies.
- Driving users back to your testimonials.
- Driving users back to your information/advice content.
- Spreading your brand messaging.
- Building follower/engagement to pass to yoru website.
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