It’s a hard task modern recruiters are faced with. No longer do you sit and wait for candidates to come to you – instead today’s recruitment is all about driving candidates towards your vacancies.
Naturally, there is still a necessity for job adverts, but the way in which recruiters have to think about these ads and the way they construct them is changing.
With that in mind, we thought we’d give you some tips to make sure your ads start showing up in searches.
It’s important to look at your job adverts as part of a wider content strategy – ensuring they work in tandem with your site content and the way that your site map is put together. Having a straightforward hierarchy with ads which incorporate plenty of internal links is an excellent way to boost not just your vacancy visibility, but your entire site’s rankings.
Try implementing these tips to see a real difference in your site traffic and the quality/quantity of the candidates who apply to your positions.
1. A little research goes a long way.
We get it, you’re very busy and you barely have time to advertise, let alone spend time researching keywords.
But what is the point in putting out badly written ads that won’t generate half the candidate views a well-structured ad would?
Sometimes it’s worth putting a little extra effort in at the beginning to generate a better return. Use Google AdWords (if you didn’t need another reason to use it!) to see which keywords the job seekers in your industry are likely to be using. Then, it’s just a matter of incorporating these keywords into your advertisements. Which brings us to number 2.
2. Use your keywords in your advertisements.
For those of you unfamiliar with the way Search Engines index their results, your content will be ranked based on how relevant it is to the searches.
The number of times your keywords and key phrases appear is thus very important. Try to strategically incorporate the words in an authentic way.
The first 155 characters of your job description are arguably the most important, so try to do the following:
- Provide a short overview of the role
- Repeat the job title ONCE
- Repeat the location ONCE
- List a couple of related key skills.
It’s vital that this comes across in as natural and coherent a way as possible. Search engines reward well-constructed content.
Ideally you want the remainder of your job description to contain your keywords and key phrases in a variety of ways. Make sure that your job title appears between 3 and 6 times. You want that key phrase (the one all your candidates will be typing into their search engines) to make up approximately 5-10% of the page content.
3. Tailor your URLs
If you don’t do this already, start finding out how you can change the way your ads appear!
Customize your URLs to include the actual job title and make sure that your advertisements are completely optimized.
There are a few other tips and tricks that you can pick up when it comes to boosting the performance of your adverts, but these are the main things to look out for. It’s always a good idea to make use of Google Webmaster in order to see how your ads are performing on your site. It’s also a great strategy to use social media and other online content to guide your candidates back to your job openings. Of course, it’s also a brilliant idea to invest in one of our specialised job boards and boost your visibility that way.
Do you think we’ve missed a trick? Maybe you’ve got a fail-safe method of your own for ensuring your ads get posted? Get in touch and let us know!