I am an ex-recruiter/recruitment company owner who embarked, and now I run a recruitment website development company since 2004.

Disclaimer I am severely Dyslexic, and so this post will have spelling and grammar errors, partly because I am severely Dyslexic but mostly because Word, Chrome & Grammarly can't agree on what is correct and what is not, so WTF chance have I got? Either way, the advice here has been validated by some others who know a little bit about websites, recruitment marketing and SEO.

Here is some free advice on the subject based on 18 years and counting of delivering recruitment websites to the most prominent and smallest recruitment firms in all continents of the world, in multiple languages across hundreds of niches or niches of niches.

Lesson 5 - SEO Search Engine Optimisation

Lie 1 - Our website has SEO, and our website is SEO friendly

Websites don’t have SEO. So there is the ugly truth, websites don’t have SEO. In the same way that a rugby player does not have sports, and a truck driver does not have logistics…

In short, what I am saying is that SEO is not one thing, so by the very nature of linguistics, a website cannot have SEO. Now just let that sink in for a bit and then consider a salesperson visiting your office or talking to you on the phone and telling you their website has SEO or is SEO friendly without explaining what friendly exactly means.

SEO is, at its heart, about finding the right words to achieve a result, and these other salespeople cannot even get the basic terms to describe SEO right. Well, that is unless they are using the ‘snake oil’ salesperson bible, and then their claims are perfect! 

So if a website does not have SEO, what does it have?

A website is obviously needed for SEO to occur, as you cannot rank a site that does not exist.

However, genuine SEO experts will tell you that of the 200 to 400+ strategies published for what makes up SEO, about 10–20 of them are strictly related to your website and how it is made. But most all websites since 2008 have all these needs met in their basic build.

The rest is about using on-page and off-page SEO methods to rank your site. However, it suits some companies to sell you ‘snake oil’ and to brush over with a quick yes to all your questions on SEO. Then they will introduce on-page and off-page SEO in 6–12 months when your site fails to rank. 

Lie 2 - A websites vendors tech will rank you for money-making terms.

Vendors rely on miss direction and naivety on your part like they say their website is SEO friendly, and you hear you are going to get ranked for accounting jobs or teaching jobs or IT jobs, Data Science jobs (or whatever your niche is) because you are in the honeymoon period of your buying cycle. Hell, the salesperson is probably outstanding.

But have a reality check, do some basic searches for your recruitment niche and see if any of the vendor's websites come up and not Google for Jobs, Indeed, Reed, CV-Library, Total Jobs etc, etc.

You see, the hard truth is SEO is hard work if it were easy, I'd own 2000 recruitment firms and put 2000 websites online for 2000 niches and buy Necar Island from Branson.

So what can you expect to be found for because of your website tech?

Your job posts should be indexable and so you can be found for specific searches job seekers make; these are called longtail searches in SEO geek speak, in recruitment speak in means candidates search for things like the following.

"key stage 2 teaching jobs Durham."

"Vat accounting jobs banking, Canary Wharf."

But here is the rub, if you give these jobs to other websites like the job boards, you are growing their SEO as well as your own.

Same if you give your job data to indeed, Google for Jobs, etc. Ultimately how your site will rank for searches made by employers and job seekers is dictated by your content + your website trust/authority status.

Every time you send a job to your website, you increase your website's chances of growing your website's trust/authority status. Every time you send the same job somewhere else online, you increase your website trust/authority status of where you send the job.

If you send 50 jobs to your site, Reed is getting 50000. Who do you think Google with gives the best rankings to?

With SEO, you need to focus on what you need to hear, not what you want to hear ;).

Now before you put your head in your hands, there is hope for your jobs and ways to get them found and your website your trust/authority status up, but the only bearing your website has in this process is does it have your content, is the website up and running more with one vendor than another, does the vendor have super fast code/servers etc. This being some of the 10-20 SEO signals your website CAN provide.

 

Got any questions or need any more advice on how your recruitment website can help? Then connect with me here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/recruitmentwebsitedesign/

 

Darren Revell

Director

Please note I am Dyslexic, and in my form, I am blind to grammar, and sometimes I get my fors and fours, etc. backwards.  I am not stupid – in fact, my IQ and EQ are both quite high. Please keep that in mind when you read my posts.  Thanks.