Yesterday I was fortunate to participate in a webinar presented by Nicole Clarke from Shazamme about successfully building a recruitment brand online. Some of the items covered included:
- Hiring an SEO/web marketing agency – Nicole’s recommendation is to look for a specialized recruitment marketing firm. Recruitment agencies have some unique needs, including multiple audience needs, that are sometimes not well-understood by traditional marketing companies. I can attest to the fact that multiple audiences can be tricky to address on a single website – we try to connect with prospective members (recruitment firms), job seekers, and the employers who hire third-party recruiters.
- Post your jobs natively on your website – This is important, since your jobs are likely part of your ATS, which is separate from your website. To really maximize the SEO value that jobs (fresh content!) can bring to your site, you need a feed or another avenue to post the jobs natively on your site – NOT via an iframe. Along with that, the apply process needs to be hosted on your site as well – don’t drive job seekers to a third-party site. And speaking of jobs, make sure the URLs for your job are written in plain wording, using the job title – avoid weird strings of numbers and miscellaneous characters. Google and other search engines use the URL to help determine if the content matches a user’s search query.
- Make sure your website architecture supports current SEO best practices – Before you do anything else, get your website in order. If your site doesn’t allow you to follow current best practices for structure, content creation, meta data, navigation and other functionality, your branding efforts will suffer. If your site is more than five years old, or built on a DIY template, it’s probably time to start fresh.
- Own your assets – This means your content, your website, and your contacts. LinkedIn is not a replacement for your own recruitment brand. Neither is Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform. Almost daily I see a horror story of someone who is “locked out” of their account, often for unknown reasons, and loses their data, their connections or both. Use social media to drive traffic to YOUR assets. Never build on rented land!
- Focus on mobile – From voice search to GPS, make sure your website works for mobile devices. For better local SEO, make sure your business is listed on Google Maps and Apple Maps at a minimum. You may also want to include review sites like Yelp or Glassdoor. Content needs to be built around voice-activated search queries, which are often formed as questions.
- Ask for reviews – Social proof continues to grow in importance, and that includes your recruitment brand. Not only does it help potential employers and job seekers believe your organization is trustworthy, it also helps search engines determine that your site should be displayed to users.
- Fix what’s broken – Search engines look at many factors to determine if your domain is highly authoritative. External links, in particular, regularly break as content is moved – or removed – from third-party sites, redirect instructions are missing or incomplete, etc. Use automated tools to help you manage this – I can speak from personal experience how difficult it is to stay on top of links when you have a deep website with a well-established domain!
Modern platforms and tools make it easier than ever to build and manage your digital recruitment brand. As with most things, starting with a solid foundation will lead to more (and easier!) success. A properly-constructed website is the key element to your branding efforts. Find a great partner to make sure you’re following current best practices.