Job Title

I still seem to come across so many job descriptions on websites that appear to have been written for newspaper job ads. ‘Attractive’ headlines or calls to action may attract the eye in a newspaper, but the words are of no use to someone searching.

Make the job title simple and to the point.

• Use keywords that people might search for in the job title
• Don’t ‘waste’ words
• Describe – don’t ‘attract’
• Forget humour – keep it plain and businesslike
• Keep it to about one line (8 – 10 words, generally)

So – a good job title would be:
“Senior Mechanical Engineer for Rail Company in South Yorkshire, Permanent”

and a dreadful one would be:

“Are you a fast-mover who likes to keep on the rails?” … you get my point.  Think ‘keywords’ Which candidate would possibly be searching for a ‘fast mover’ etc etc.

Job Description

The description should always start with a brief summary paragraph. Think about having 30 seconds to get all the info possible across to a candidate. Use words they would use.

• Business area
• Role type
• Summary of tasks
• Level / seniority

Remember that the first 160 characters of opening paragraph is likely to be (or at least should be) the meta description.  This has keyword value in Google and other search engines, so get keywords in early.

Things you can use without ruining your SEO

• If you need to attract people to certain words, then use bold (or better, <strong> tags) – if needs be.  Search engines pay little or no attention to whether something is bold (depending on who you listen to) but the human eye can’t help but pick up on certain attractive words.
• Don’t be afraid of a bit of repetition – over-describe the role if needs be
• Qualifications can also be great keywords in some circumstances – list them in the job
• Use the word job.  It’s a job description.
• Location, location, location.  Say where it is.  People need to know.  They might be travelling to it.

… and things you shouldn’t use

• Precious few people search for ‘role’ or ‘vacancy’.  It’s a waste of a word in SEO terms. If you’re going to use it, use it sparingly.
• “My Client has an opening for” etc etc.  It’s obvious that they’re your client.  Waste of words.
• Humour, sarcasm etc.  Not good, waste of words, sets a bad tone.
• “Headline speak”  or “Questions” - Your site  is giving information out to people.  It’s plain patronising to says things like “Do you fancy a change of direction?” and it’s off-putting.

The template for a good job description

Job Title – round about ten words, keyword-rich

Introduction

• Describe role, location, employer-type, and anything else pertinent.
• Keywords in first 160 characters.

Full description

• about candidate requirements
• experience
• employer type
• job tasks
• area, hours of work, etc

Working details

• Conditions / pay
• Holidays if appropriate

‘About’ the application

• Closing date if appropriate
• Further contact info if appropriate
• Excluded applicants

Anything else about the job

• What will happen after application
• Other allowances if appropriate
• permanent or part time, etc
• Headline allowances, remuneration, and other attractive things in the package

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!

I’d liken this to a brickie not ‘getting’ what an architect does – or even trying to understand the process of architecture. A brickie could pretty easily build a house without an architect – so why would they need one?

This fascinating story on SEOMoz shows a web developer’s foray into the world of SEO – it’s a great read.

SEO is generally considered more ‘worthy’ by us SEO types. It’s doing something ‘healthy’ to the text elements of your website to help serve your users. But it’s good to remind ourselves from time to time that in some cases, paying more directly for those clicks through to your site is of equal or more value for money.

A recent study for NMA showed that 55% of companies surveyed intend to increase natural search budgets and just under half (45%) will up paid search investment this year as they look for measurable ROI in difficult economic times. The annual UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report, which surveyed 800 client companies, agencies and search consultants, found large numbers were continuing to increase spend on organic search. 48% of them reported better returns on natural search (optimisation) campaigns and 43% claim greater ROI on paid search (pay-per-click).

Life of your investment

SEO is a better long-term investment.  Put simply, when the SEO person has gone away, finished what they’re doing – for a while or for good, then the work that they should have done on the site will still bring rewards int he longer term.  That’s the beauty of optimising for the organic rankings.

Is should come as no surprise tro you that if you pay for every click that comes through to your website, you can turn that on or off at the push of a button (or a few clicks on an account page).  This is good if PPC is not working for you, or if your circumstances change; if your recruitment business moves into or out of a certain sector.   But the benefits tend to stop the moment you press the ‘off’ button.

Immediate Returns

Inversely, when you need immediate returns; visitors to your site right now, then PPC is the obvious way to go.  For a brand new website there is no way (for most budgets) that anyone could get you right up there in Google for anything other than the most niche search terms.  Organic just takes time.  It’s about growth, which is one reason that it’s called organic!

The Long Tail… again

I keep going on about the long tail but I can’t over-egg this one.  If your site has lots of good textual content then you are more likely to capture ‘less frequent’ and more specific search terms.  Those terms are from searchers who generally know what they are looking for, and hence have a higher conversion rate.  Example: Someone searching for ‘Marketing Jobs’ is a candidate just browsing.  Someone typing “Marketing Account Manager Jobs in South London” into Google knows damn well what they’re looking for and is far more likely to take action when they get to your site.

There is not really a way of capturing Long Tail search through PPC alone – the two notions don’t work together.  For good Long Tail traffic you need good weighty relevant textual content.

There’s no substitute for good architecture

A short word about why SEO more is worthy in my opinion.  SEO gets you into good habits.  You become aware of a website that is easily spidered (crawled and ‘read’ by the search engines) and that it contains the (textual) content matching people’s expectations.  Whilst PPC can bring you traffic in for any keyword you want (if you’ve got the budget), it need not match those visitor expectations when they click through to it.  I could pay £20,000 per month to get traffic to this site for the phrase ‘iphone’ and expect a good click-through rate.  But the traffic would leave the site immediately once it got here.  A well SEO’d site should never really do that.  Content should match expectation.

Summary

So… just to put it into basic sound bites…

ORGANIC SEO

Pros

Long term investment

Capture “Long Tail” traffic

Forms good habits

Content matches visitor expectations

Cons

These things take time

Slow Return on Investment

Slower to adapt to change

PAY PER CLICK

Pros

Instant – so good for new sites

Adaptable

Easily cancelled / suspended

Top of the page

Need not match your content

Cons

Visitor expectations may not match content

Benefits end when the budget ends

Brings no long term benefit

Popular words can be VERY pricey.

As we all know (surely!) a link to your site is generally a very good thing.  A link with good anchor text is generally even better.  This is because Google et al will understand what is at the end of that link to be summarized by the context of the anchor text.  (“Click here for Marketing Jobs” is good “Click here for Marketing Jobs” is not)

So… lesson 1… it makes sense, if possible, when you’re leaving a comment on a blog, try to get a keyword into the ‘Name’ field… as this is the anchor text of the link to your site (see above). “But wait, Dave…” I hear… “Don’t all blogs use the “nofollow” attribute, meaning that any link I leave on a blog will be useless?”

Let me clear that one up.  “No, no, no, no, no… you’ve got it all wrong”. The table below will explain why, but to summarise it in simple terms: a link to your website is followed on blogs (by most search engines) as long as the page linking to (generally this would be your homepage) had previously been indexed by that search engine. In short, nofollows ARE followed. A link to your site is a vote. Use yours well.

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

Links to the job:

Make sure the job title is the anchor text of the link (not ‘click here‘ or ‘more info‘)

Jobs pages

Just make sure there is one page per job!

In-page factors

Your Keyword Rich areas should be:

• Meta Title Tag
• Meta Description
• Job Title

… then other important keywords – especially job / sector or geographical ones should feature prominantly on the page.

Job description copywriting

1. Try to make the job title a term people would search for in Google / Yahoo etc
2. Avoid ‘non-search’ terminology like “Opportunity” or “Seeking a “, … “My Client is “ etc.  You can use these terms, but they’re wasting valuable space up in the Title and the early part of a job description
3. Familiarise yourself with the different levels of headings (or <h> tags as developers call them).  Headings and sub-headings on a page should flow properly, so if you want to break your job description down, don’t use bold headings, use h3 or h4 (Heading 3 or Heading 4) tags – like ‘Job Description copywriting’ is, above.
4. Avoid, at all costs, pasting anything into a web site’s text editor using Microsoft Word or another similar program.  These are designed for print and can put all sorts of unnecessary code into your text that could – in some cases – mean that Google can’t properly index the content.
5. Repeat those search keywords  coming wherever possible and relevant (think of candidates searching and what they might type into Google – then keep thinking it – what candidates call their job may differ to what recruiters call it)
6. Use lists if needs be to increase keyword density.
7. Think about synonyms — e.g. “team leader” as well as “project manager” or “sales manager” as well as “business development manager”

For developers:

• Make the Title Tags work dynamically in the following format
  • Meta Title: Job: [Job Title] – [Location] – [Category-or-sector]
    
  • Make the Meta Description dynamically take the Job Title then first characters of the Job Description up to a max of 160 characters
• Place the Job Title in <h1> tags
• Place the Location and Category in <h2> tags
• Ensure that the job editor allows site admins to add <h3> headings within a job description and train them to use them.

Google insight was launched recently and is proving to be a great indicator of what people search for if you learn to use it wisely.

The graph shows how we can put the example in the opening paragraph to bed…  People search for jobs.

But it doesn’t end there… Google Insight gives you some massive powers to get under the search results. For example; you may want to target people in Leicester if it’s ‘Jobs in Retail’ search traffic you’re after, whereas more Brentford People search for “retail recruitment” (see below, taken from the ‘Download CVS option on the Google Insight search shown above.

I have seen sites come up very high in the rankings with longer title tags, so I would venture to say that Google doesn’t give demerits for title tags longer than 68 characters, though I would be wary of creating title tags much longer than 80 or 90 characters.

My own Title tag basics for Recruitment websites:

1. Jobs pages:
   • Get the word ‘Job’ in early- that’s what the page is about, first and foremost.
   • Job Title
   • Location
   • Sector or Discipline
2. Avoid repetition like the plague.  There is good eveidence that Google will treat this as keyword spamming.  Essentially, it is!
3. Read Google’s own guidelines.   If your jobs site has good jobs on it for people searching in Google, then Google are also here to help your candidates find jobs on your site, believe it or not.

If you know the web address of where you’re heading, you type it straight into the browser. I may not be indicative of the general populaous but I’d wager that a lot of YOUR candidates and clients have tried your web address without the www. What worries me more, is that SO MANY recruitment websites seem to not work with the www.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. If your recruitment site is not configured to display without the “www”, would your clients and candidates be impressed?