“Across all industries, job-seekers are turning to Google rather than their favorite sites. Now, 93% of online experiences beginning with a search engine (searchenginejournal.com)
“Across all industries, job-seekers are turning to Google rather than their favorite sites. Now, 93% of online experiences beginning with a search engine (searchenginejournal.com)
Such a trend presents an opportunity for your careers page. You now have an equal chance at grabbing some of the traffic flowing through that same search engine funnel.
How do you maximize this opportunity, and route the highest number of quality job-seekers to your own careers page?
Like any E-commerce site, two things need to happen:
- Your careers page needs to come up on page 1 on Google.
- Once job-seekers land on your careers page, they actually apply.
In order to achieve this, you need to turn your attention to the following key areas.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Your Careers page has to be Search Engine Optimized for Google to ensure it appears on the front page of a job-seeker’s search.
Google crawls the web on a regular basis, and so you want the Google Crawler to rank your job ad highly against the keywords job seekers might be using when searching for jobs like yours.
For example if you are advertising an engineering job in a Sydney location, then you want your careers page to come up on page 1 on Google when people are searching for “Engineering jobs in Sydney”.
The major job-boards spend serious money on their SEO strategy. If they’re doing it, you should be too.
A few tips on how to improve the SEO of your careers page:
- HTML and Meta Tags: This refers to the coding of job ads on your careers page. In the code behind the page, you can place content that readers can’t see, but search engines like Google can. This content is taken into account when calculating the relevancy of your page for various job-based searches.
- Backlink: A backlink is any link received by a web page from . Search engines often use backlinks to determine a website's ranking, popularity and importance.
- Rich Snippets: Snippets are the few lines of text that appear under every search result—are designed to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query.
- URL rewriting: The actual URL of the job ad needs to be built in a way that includes the search keywords. For example:
All the search keywords likely to be used are in the URL, meaning Google will rank this job ad high against searches like “mining or engineering jobs in Townsville”.
- Blogs: You need to be actively blogging about job and recruitment related topics and make sure the blogs are connected to your careers page.
Mobile & Tablet Optimization (multi-device optimized)
According to Google Research:
25%
Of job-related searches on Google, are done from mobiles.
57%
Of users won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site.
40%
Of users have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.
The above research demonstrates that it is critical for your careers page to work on mobiles, or you miss out on a significant chunk of potential applications.
Creating a positive experience while browsing and reading the jobs on your careers page is important, but it’s only part of the problem; the other key factor is the Job Application experience.
You can’t expect someone to answer 10 questions with 50 words each, while applying from their phone sitting on the bus on their way home from work!
Neither can you expect them to attach their resumes from their iPhone – right?
One solution is to give them the option to SMS or email the job ad to themselves, so they can apply for it later on from a PC.
Another solution is to offer job seekers the ability to apply to your job ads using their social media profiles; this way it would take them 5 clicks and they’re done.
Social Connectivity
It is important to provide social media features, such as allowing applicants to apply using their LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+ accounts. applying from social profiles such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+.
Your careers page should also offer social sharing – job seekers might decide to share your jobs on their Facebook page because they have a few friends that could be interested in one of your jobs.
Design has to connect with your Job Seeker audience
Your careers page has to connect with your particular target audience just like the rest of the site. So ensure your page has the same branding, logos, and ‘attitude’ used elsewhere.
Conclusion
Successful SEO implementation has leveled the playing field. You don’t need to be a massive player with significant resources at your disposal. Done correctly, your careers page can land itself on page 1 of a Google search.
However, if and when job seekers find it on Google, it would be a waste of application potential and even damaging to your brand if they don’t have good experience while reading and applying, no matter what device they use.
Anwar Khalil
CEO
MyRecruitment+
Phone: +61 2 9262 1745
[email protected]
