Don’t get me wrong – no-one’s about to oust Google from the top spot, but search patterns show that when people find a site that delivers the content they’re after, they go to that site. I’ll give you an example.

I’m a cyclist, and love to spend all my hard-earned on things for bikes. At first, when I was getting used to shopping online, I went to Google and searched for what I was after. Simple pattern – people do it. But then, after a while, I found that only two websites from the Google results suited me – and they way I wanted to shop. Now, it’s very rare that I Google for bike stuff – I’ve been brought in to the brand by Wiggle and Chainreactioncycles. These are “my” new search engines. Job done for those two companies.

Back to recruitment… using that example. How many candidates search for “London Marketing Jobs” every week on Google? I’m not sure ( I wish I had that level of insight!) but what I do know is that all of the results on the first page are sites with their own job search engine… www.utalkmarketing.com – www.brandrepublic.com – www.regananddean.co.uk – www.marketingweek.co.uk – www.londonjobs.co.uk etc. You can probably see where I’m heading with this. The point is, when a candidate finds a site that delivers the search results that they want, will they move to that site’s brand and away from Google?

So what can we learn from this?

1. Let’s not get carried away – and remember that Google’s own guidelines on optimisation are healthy as standalone advice.  A good page structure and page meta are helpful in all sorts of ways – not just getting to the top in Google
2. Make sure your job search works well for people.  You’d be surprised how many internal site searches don’t deliver what people need or expect.
3. Use Aggregators.  It stands to reason that these services -
   1job.co.uk,
   trovit.co.uk,
   indeed.co.uk,
   workcircle.co.uk,
   indeed.co.uk
   … all carry lots of might – and candidates are more likely to use them as their job search engine
4. Be innovative.  Putting your jobs on Facebook?  Tweeting your jobs on Twitter?  Why not?  It’s minimal effort and these are two big search channels.
5. You may only get a few chances to grab that candidate in Google, so do keyword research and get some relevant jobs and other content on your site.

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?

The web analytics can do you a service and a dis-service at the same time.  Yes – the sites have had more hits in recent months, more registrations, CVs etc.,  but there comes a point where it’s quality that counts.  100 useless CVs are nothing but a hinderance to any recruiter.  100 good ones could be even worse… same number of jobs but more good candidates.

If visitor levels increase to the point where the recruitment company decides enough is enough – “We’ve got all our traffic now – your job is done as far as SEO is concerned” – what do we reply?

It’s simple – the same approach that print magazines, newspapers and journals have used.  Circulation (or visitor numbers) is important.

If you were a potential client wanting to find the best recruiters for the job, would you pick the site with 10 visits a day or 500 visits a day?  I know which one I’d be inclined to pick.

1. Content – keep it coming and they’ll keep coming back.

If the content isn’t right then your market will let you know pronto.  A good site should have two new items a week. Less than one a week and you will endanger losing repeat visits.  Keep it fresh.

2. Know your analytics

Few visitors,  low levels of repeat visitors,  low or declining average session time, or a high bounce rate.?  See the signs!

3. Ensure that goals are prominent on the site.

How do your candidates register?  Apply? Subscribe?  Have you taken a step back and looked how easy it is?   How do your clients post jobs to your site?  If they can’t do, how can they contact you?  Will they bother clicking three times to find your phone number?