AT ALBION, WE DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY…

Over the years we have found that employment agencies often lose out by neglecting their online search market. Many seem unsure which marketing methods to use and which traffic streams and digital strategies are likely to generate the most leverage for the least effort and investment. Consequently, employment sector brands tend to waste a sizable share of their marketing budgets on methods that just don’t work.

For example, candidates rarely look on Twitter or Facebook when searching for jobs. They don’t generally look at Linkedin either, so time spent adding contacts and then messaging them with available vacancies can be a big waste of time. Try it, you’ll see.

The vast majority of candidates do exactly what you would do – they search Google. More often than not they refine their search queries to include keywords related to the job title and location. This stands to reason, but you would be surprised how much money agencies put into channels such as social media that just don’t produce the results they expect.

By achieving higher Google rankings in both natural and paid search results our clients enjoy more visibility and greater engagement from those looking for training or career opportunities. But attaining a high rank on Google requires more than just adding target keyword phrases to your job listings and hoping for the best. That simply won’t work when the competition within the employment marketing sector is so strong. You or your marketing agency will need to get a better understanding of how Google works in order to benefit from the online careers market. 

For example, if you are an employment firm specialising in the health sector you will ensure that your page’s content and metadata cover all the obvious words such as “Health” and “Recruitment”. However, you will also need to include a number of modifier keywords (modified variations of your target keywords) such as “employ“, “employers“ and “employing“. This is a great way to ensure Google understands the semantic meaning of your web pages. It works far better than outdated techniques such as “keyword stuffing”, whereby the same phrase is inserted in your page elements over and over again. No one likes hearing someone repeat themselves, not even Google.

To continue with the health sector example, you would be well advised to include qualifier keywords such as “medical”, “doctor” or “nurse” – as well and other phrases related to the employer’s name and location. This may help your web pages rank for a larger number of “long-tail” search queries (if a candidate arrives at your site having searched a specific phrase it means they are more likely to find what they are looking for). This also allows your page to qualify to be listed in the results for a whole range of related keyword phrases that you may not be aware of.

Another mistake many employment agencies make is forgetting to add the words “job“, “vacancy” or “position” when uploading jobs to their site. Because the content appears in the “jobs” section of their site they believe this will be enough. In terms of Google rankings, it’s not. You need to include these words more than any other – so check your content editor knows the importance of including even the most obvious words to every job listing on your site.

Applying basic keyword strategies is essential for achieving top natural Google rankings for keyword phrases. There are other tricks too; clever internal linking methods can help channel the “ranking power” of each target page. Albion’s know-how could be invaluable to your employment agency. Having a checklist of known win-wins is one of the most important things your team can have at hand to help them get the most benefit out of all the work gone into posting content on your site.