The Origin of the Job Interview

I somehow let this one go for years before realising that the Recruitment SEO people might enjoy it… silly me.  Enjoy the holiday weekend!

Completing the loop: What are you spending your money on?

It sounds a simple question, but how important is SEO to your recruitment website?  I honestly don’t know.  Did you expect me to?  How could I possibly know – you haven’t shown me the figures… so I can’t say.

You do have the figures… don’t you?  Don’t you?

If you’re putting any effort into marketing your recruitment company you’ll have some good idea of the cost of using various channels

• SEO
• Pay Per Click
• Social Media Optimisation
• Email Marketing
• Other online advertising or sponsorship
• Print media, newspapers, directories, Yell.com, etc etc.

… but it’s not about costs – is it.  If expenditure was about cost we’d all live in the woods under tarpaulin.   It’s about value.  What’s the value to your recruitment website of every pound you spend on any of the channels

And I’m not talking about value of a click – those are just flattery.  Surely you’re measuring your marketing in terms of a good CV or ultimately a placement.  What’s worth most to you – a click from Google on some long-tail search, or one of the 500 hits your site just sent out from its email alerts.

• What’s the best source of good CVs?
• Which keywords are generating the most placements?

If you’re asking those type of questions, you’re on the right track.  Job Aggregator Indeed.com have spruced up and modernised an old marketing phrase relating to the Four As of Advertising and in their white paper remind recruiters how they can only have true control over ROI for marketing if they think like a CFO and observer the four A’s:

1. Assign
2. Automate
3. Analyze
4. Adjust

I won’t go into it verbatim here, but I’m particularly keen on the “Automate” angle of recording marketing expenditure – and am currently helping a client to do this.  We’re looking at

• Providing full referrer information in a consultant’s application email (Source of click, keywords typed (if search) etc.)
• Providing a linkback to the Recruitment Database (in this case the FXRecruiter website also doubles as the database)
• Full custom reporting system that can pull application and referrer data from the database into easy to view graphs and spreadsheets.

Basically, it’s about filling the gap that currently exists between spending your money on marketing and getting good candidate CVs through the door and getting paid for making placements.  And recruitment is all about filling the gap – right?

Job Description Template

I’ve had a couple of queries about my post on the SEO template for a job details page – in particular about the job description and title itself, so wanted to expand on that a little. (more…)

Vanity Search nets a good job

If you think you’re working hard to get the right candidates in the right posts, think how hard some candidates are working…

Alec Brownstein, a 28 year old New Yorker who was in need of copywriting work.

Alec’s plan was to play upon the the guilty pleasure of ‘Vanity Searches’ (Googling your own name) and paid for Google PPC ads using the keyword of the name of his targeted big-shot employers. When those employers Googled themselves (go on – we all do….) the ‘sponsored’ result they saw was Alec Brownstein’s pay-per-click Advert, pointing them to his own website.

The clicks on all the ads cost a total of $6 – and he’s now employed. Nice work.

Recruitment Websites “by design”

One of the common problems we have to overcome is ‘design’ not really being about ‘design’ at all – but being about visual appeal.

I posted this earlier today on the Reverse Delta blog but thought it worth posting here… though I guess I’m preaching to the converted here if you’re reading a blog about Recruitment SEO!

SEO Template for Job Descriptions and Job Details pages

A client’s just asked me for a template to use to write their job descriptions in order to maximise the benefits of SEO.

Not a ‘template’ as such, but some ‘new-starter’ guidelines for SEO copywriting and page architecture for recruitment websites (more…)

What is a job search engine? Beyond Google and Yahoo!

Traditional organic SEO means (to put things simply) focus on mainly Google (organic) results and, if you have time, Yahoo (organic) results. It’s no wonder – if someone wants to find something on the web, we all know where people go first – it makes sense to focus your resources there. But what happens when they discover a ‘new’ search engine? (more…)

Writing Job Descriptions for search engines

I know SEO gets a bit of a bashing – especially when it comes to copyrighting.  Some people get it sooooo wrong and become obsessed by keyword density.  This is one of those ‘small’ factors in SEO that can frighten the heck out of people writing job descriptions, so here are some simple rules… (more…)

When Candidates are in Large Supply? More SEO needed!

A chat with my colleague Dave earlier today about the effects the recession is having on SEO for Recruitment Companies.

The Apparent problem: When there’s so many more people in the market looking for jobs, haven’t we achieved our goals, and got more visitors, regsitrations, CVs (i.e. people) to their website?
(more…)

The Long Tail of job searches

Here is a great interesting take on the “Long Tail” written by Dustin Woodard, guesting on Hitwise. (more…)