Using a keyphrase to increase recruitment agency website SEO

This is part two in our Recruitment Agency website SEO series. The first article covered the Recruitment agency SEO Mindset and is a primer for all future articles in this series.

Someone visits Google wanting to see what jobs are available in the market right now. They type in the search box [marketing executive job in Dublin 2]. This search is a keyphrase, and today we want to help you understand how your website can appear at the top of Google by using SEO keyphrases.

Don’t you mean a keyword

Back when the web was younger Google used ‘meta keywords’ to get an understanding about what information people should expect on your website. The problem with keywords was that they were for search engines and not visible to website visitors. People began to exploit this flaw and stuffed in lots of keywords that had nothing to do with their website but would attract more traffic from search engines.

“This method relied on the trust of the webmasters in hopes they would only put in keywords related to their site; however, this quickly fell apart as webmasters learned they could rank for highly searched keywords by just adding them to their meta keyword tag. This abuse pushed the need for a better way to rank websites.
– The Meta Keyword Tag Is No Longer Used by Google in 2018

Nowadays search engines dig a lot deeper into website content and view it from the perspective of a real person visiting your site.

So what’s a key phrase?

A keyphrase is not a specific tag or something you add in one place. A keyphrase is a term/phrase/query you want people to type into Search engines to find a page on your website. SEO keyphrases are a guiding theme for each page on your website and help structure how you name images, create page titles, write meta descriptions and on page content.

For example, if you typed ‘web design for recruitment agencies’ into Google, the first result (after all the ads) would link to an article I wrote on 7 Ways to Get the Most from Your Recruitment Agency Website. This article focuses on a very narrow but specific group of people. It won’t appear on Google for lots of different searches but for the ones it does; it shows right at the top and is very relevant to what someone is looking for when searching.

Hidden Depth specialises in transformative design which is crucial in the recruitment industry. Appearing at the top of Google for the above keyphrase means we are showing people we are the go-to agency looking for recruitment agency web designers.

How to choose keyphrases for your recruitment website

1. Understand
2. Focus
3. Optimise
4. Test and refine

1. Understand your audience and the job story

The internet is growing every second with more and more content for everything you can imagine. With this growth comes a need to be more specific and clear about what you offer and for whom. People type more specific keyphrases into Google so they can filter out the noise and irrelevant.

Profiling your ideal customer is a great way to understand what people are typing into Google to solve their problems. Creating job stories for clients and candidates can help you better understand the answers people are looking to find when they search.

2. Focus on one keyphrase per page

Trying to be all things to all people is a sure fire way to be of no interest or help to anyone. Also, you don’t want pages on your site to compete with one another, so only use a keyphrase only once on your website.

The goal is to create pages on your website that are optimised for different keyphrases. Each page should focus on one keyphrase. Trying to focus on multiple keyphrases can blur the lines and make you less relevant to everyone.

3. Optimise page content, images and links are around that keyphrase

If you are a recruitment agency specialising in the marketing sector or IT or aviation or anything else; make sure you mention what sets you apart often on your site. Assume nobody has heard of you (including Google). Tell the same consistent story again and again through your other site content.

Page heading and subheadings can include your chosen keyphrase, but you don’t want every headline to be repetitive as this will be of no help or interest to the person viewing the page. Feel free to mix up headlines to include elements of your keyphrase or pseudonyms.

Make sure you name your images something related to your keyphrase for that page. Links to other pages should utilise their keyphrase to build good SEO links across your site.

4. Test and refine

Even though SEO may seem very technical, there is no proven path for every recruitment agency to follow. Your agency is unique, and the type of clients and candidates you are the right fit for may be different to someone else who appears alongside you on a Google search results page.

Job roles are a great place to experiment with different keyphrases. You may advertise the same types of roles again and again. What makes each role unique? Is it the location, company, sector? Including these into your keyphrase for that specific job posting allows you to target multiple keyphrases that all have the same goal; enabling you to see what works best over time.

Next up, we’ll cover SEO meta titles and descriptions for better recruitment agency SEO.