Recruitment agencies spend a lot of their time and budget advertising jobs on various job boards and quite often overlook other forms of investing in recruitment advertising. 

There are numerous reasons behind this behaviour, from budget limitations to a lack of knowledge on how to run paid campaigns or even limited awareness of the benefits PPC job advertising can bring the recruitment industry.


So, what is PPC advertising and how can your recruitment agency use it within its recruitment marketing strategy?

PPC advertising

Let’s focus on one of the most popular options for digital advertising – PPC campaigns on Google.

PPC stands for Pay Per Click, which means that you will pay a set amount of money every time someone clicks on your advert. The price per click varies depending on the platform you decide to use, your targeted audience, or even the time of day or day of the week, amongst many other factors. You can usually get the estimated costs beforehand making it easier for you to set up your plan and control your overall budget.

Target the right people

Recruiters don’t usually consider PPC for recruitment advertising, missing an effective opportunity to reach new candidates. With a pay-per-click job posting campaign you can select a set of keywords to bid on, how much you want to spend on the campaign and even which geographical location the job advert is going to be displayed. This is a very effective method as you can decide when and where your ad is going to be displayed. You have better control of who can see your job offer which will give you better conversions and interactions from the users that see your advert.

Job adverts on Google

Some recruiters might think that it’s too expensive and competitive to advertise their jobs on Google and that there is no chance of winning against the big job boards. However, when we did our own keyword research to find out how expensive it can be, we found that what most recruiters fear it’s not usually the case. As an example, if we take the keywords ‘accounting jobs’ or ‘engineering jobs’ the cost is £0.37 and £0.47 respectively, which is not a bad price considering that these are very generic phrases. In some of our campaigns we achieved a conversion rate of 8%-23%, driving the right candidates to the website, who in turn are keen to apply for jobs, subscribe to job alerts or just browse the services on your website.


How can recruiters use PPC?

If you are a recruitment agency that specialises in a niche market, your keyword competitiveness and cost might be even lower than you expect. With many jobseekers starting their job search on Google this is the right platform to reach more candidates.

By using Google adverts you can also retarget users that visit your website, redirecting them back to it or to specific job description pages. For example, you can send a ‘Software Developer Job’ advert to users who performed searches on your website related to this job.

Recruitment advertising to source candidates

Where advertising on job boards is a very good strategy to attract active job seekers, PPC for recruitment advertising on Google or retargeting Google ads allow you to reach PASSIVE candidates. These candidates might not necessarily search for new job opportunities every day but might be willing to send their CV if they spot a good job opportunity.

Useful tips for your PPC recruitment advertising

Targeting searches and people with specific skills maximises the chances of receiving job applications from the right candidates. This is a good method to not only get more applications to your jobs but also as a way to increase your brand awareness!!!

If you need help to get quick leads cost effectively just drop me a line. 
Remember though – tread carefully. With Paid Search as soon as you stop any budget you will stop seeing results. This is where SEO is beautiful… SEO results are known as “evergreen” in as much as the results will stay long after the work has been done – you just need to maintain them with TLC.

Is your SEO bod good or bad??

If, like most recruitment businesses you don’t have an in-house SEO function, you’ll need to outsource that to a 3rd party. You can’t not do SEO; you probably don’t have the skillset yourself – so it gets farmed out.

BUT…if you don’t understand SEO, and the best practices for it, it can be hard to find the best recruitment SEO partner for your firm. How do you know their work is healthy SEO and not “Black hat”? SEO is difficult to implement effectively and as a concept to non-techie people is often confusing! Sounds more like something way technical rather that a useful marketing tool!

“SEO? Isn’t that something to do with websites??” is typically question asked by those who aren’t familiar. IFKYK, and if you DO know, you might get that properly done SEO can increase a website’s Google rankings. Very rarely does anyone except an SEO expert understand specifically how the process works.

Bad SEO practices can actually do damage to your online visibility, and a lack of knowledge in tur processes behind SEO can often leave businesses vulnerable to bad practices. If the damage to your visibility is bad enough, it can even mean that ranking on Google could be impossible – not just more difficult! When you’ve built an impressive, effective website, the last thing you need is to be invisible due to shoddy SEO.

How Do You Monitor Your SEO Contractor?

Ideally when you hire an SEO, you’ll need to understand SEO at a basic level, both as a tool and a concept. 

As I’ve said before, SEO is nothing more than a process. A process that is used to (usually) positively affect your website’s position in the results pages on Google for example. Good SEO practices can boost your positions and in turn offer exposure of your brand, attracting new clients and candidates. For example, if you’re a finance recruiter, you want your website to appear before your competitors’ when someone searches the words, “finance recruitment” or “finance recruitment agencies” etc. You can increase your search rank by implementing certain good practices like including keywords and internal linking. Hiring an experienced SEO agency or consultant can help to boost your rank subsequently increasing your visibility.

Could Hiring an SEO Threaten Your Current Rank?

To understand how a person hired to increase your rank could actually harm it… think about what motivates an SEO. Our job is to make your website rank higher than your competitors’. It’s literally our one and only objective. Everything that we do serves that purpose.

The problem is, Google doesn’t make this easy. AT….ALL. It looks at hundreds of factors to decide on its rankings, and some of those factors are difficult to change.

The enterprising SEO, who wants to keep their job or not jeopardize their contract, feels a lot of pressure to get Google to bend to their will. The quicker the SEO can get results, the better. If an SEO discovers a way to cheat Google – to lie about the factors Google considers to make rankings – then there’s very little to stop the SEO from trying it out. When these tactics are employed, they’re called “black hat” because they go against Google’s guidelines.

Google spends a lot of time searching for black hat offenders. When Google finds them, they tend to punish the websites by penalising sites, removing them from the results pages, even sometimes even taking down websites completely! In to the abyss! So, you may pay an SEO to boost your site in the rankings only to later find your website hit by a Google penalty that removes it from the results pages entirely!! 

How Do You Know If the Tactics Your SEO Expert Implements Are Black Hat?

To evaluate if your SEO tactics are white hat or black hat, you need to analyse them from Google’s point of view.

Google WANTS to show the best pages first. If somebody searches “finance recruitment,” Google wants to show the searcher a list of finance recruitment firms organised with the best choice at the top, whether that means the recruiter who is physically closest or the best rated. This is true of any search. Google prioritises the person searching, not the business the searcher is looking for. It provides the very best result it can, every time.

If a tactic your SEO implements seems to be tricking Google into thinking your website or your business is better than it is, that tactic is likely black hat. For example, your SEO might tell you that links are powerful indicators of a website’s worth, so the SEO suggests buying other domains, building a network of other websites, and using them to link to the one you want to rank. Google would see those links and think your website is particularly good – look at how many other websites link to it!

This tactic is sometimes referred to a PBN… “private blog network”… and would be black hat. Those links weren’t created by other websites because they legitimately thought your site was good. They were created solely to make Google increase your rankings.Building links by adding your website to listings or writing articles with links for other sites would be white hat practices.

Your SEO expert shoud suggest that you create strong, follow-links on different sites to support your own domain – this is how I do it! Your SEO will also explain how you need keywords in your target search terms on the page. Still, your SEO might advise a black hat technique. For example, if you’re a finance recruiter in Manchester, your SEO could suggest putting the words “finance recruiter Manchester” all over the website.

To prevent people from thinking that looks spammy, the SEO will say to make the words “finance recruiter Manchester” white on a white background so they’re invisible to visitors and are only visible to Google.Again, this technique is tricking Google into thinking your website has a lot to offer about “finance recruiter Manchester,” when a human visitor wouldn’t see it that way.

You’d be lying to Google about what’s on the page, so that would be a black hat technique.Aaaaaaand, even if you visibly add in too many keywords for no apparent reason, Google could count this as “keyword stuffing,”  which would be considered black hat. 

Ensure Your SEO Practices are Executed Effectively and Correctly

You don’t really need to know all of the specifics of SEO to determine whether or not an SEO’s tactics are black hat. You’d just need a basic understanding of SEO and to ask questions about certain tactics to ensure your hired SEO is not trying to trick Google.If you don’t, Google will find out and punish your site. Like most crime, black hat SEO doesn’t pay…at least, not in the long run. Protect yourself from Google’s penalties and your website will enjoy a lifetime of traffic, leads, and revenue.

If you’re ever on doubt, and want an impartial bit of advice I’m more than happy to chat to you and offer my opinion, freely of course. 

Any questions on anything in this piece drop me a line either on 07486 571264 or email me directly at dj@kaizen-digital.com

As you know there are so many different ways to market your agency but ranking high on Google using SEO is one of the highest ROI, powerful ways to generate more business.

If you’re a complete noob to SEO, fear not…I’m about to break down what SEO is and why it’s important.

So, “What IS SEO?”

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is nothing more than a process. The aim is to increase the amount and quality of organic (not paid for) traffic (visitors) to your website from ranking in search engines by optimising your site so that it’s recognised and favour by the search engine. Sites that appear higher up the results page on Google (as an example) will generally get clicked on more than those further down.

Studies show that 30% of people will click on the 1st result on the page, 15% on the second and approx. 10% on the third. Positions 4-10 get around 2-5%.

SEO shouldn’t focus only on the getting more traffic, the magic is getting more WELL-TARGETED visitors to a site, visitors that have an interest in the content of the site!

OK…Why is SEO Important?

Google alone receives more than 3.5 BILLION search per day!

SEO is useful in several ways, paramount is to increase your agency’s revenue. Also, you can save time with business development or cold calling for lead generation, you can actually reduce overall marketing spend and also grow your brand’s exposure.

With SEO, you can attract targeted visitors to your firm’s website, and ideally you want to aim for your site to be ranked in the first 3 spots on the 1st page of google. That’s the prime real estate and where your competitors are aiming for, even if you’re not!

Achieving that presence will drive qualified leads to your agency, people who have an express intent/interest in what you have to say and/or offer.

For example, people searching for “technology recruitment London” on Google are very likely to either be a candidate looking for representation or a client with a requisition.

If your firm does tech as a vertical in London, then ranking well for that term when someone searches for “technology recruitment London” will send you targeted leads that are already qualified.

These leads, generated from free search engine traffic could well result in an increase in billings. I’ve said it before – it’s no overnight success and it does take resources and time to achieve webpage ranking for competitive keywords, but when successful, your site could have ongoing, valuable visitors!

By creating more web pages, more blog/content creation etc, and continuing to SEO that content, you will continue to drive targeted traffic over time, aiding in business growth.

So then, how does it work?

Here’s a really quick summary…

Step 1 – Keyword Research

Before executing an SEO campaign, you need to decide which keywords you want to rank for in the first place. You need to find keywords that will send targeted traffic to your site and also have enough search volume to be worth your efforts.

Google Keyword Planner is the most popular keyword research tool because the data comes directly from Google. After creating an account, you simply enter a keyword or phrase that you think people might use to find your content. Keyword Planner will show the search volume for that keyword along with related keyword phrases and their search volumes.

Keyword Planner does have some limitations. Since it is designed for Adwords users, it doesn’t provide much data on long-tail keywords, i.e., keywords with low search volume.

For this reason, people sometimes also use other keyword tools to discover more keyword opportunities. Some other popular keyword tools include KW Finder, SEM Rush, and KeywordTool.io.

Once you have decided on which keywords to pursue, you are ready to create and optimize your content.

Step 2 – On Page Optimization and Content Creation

When planning out content creation, start by doing a quick search to discover what content is currently ranking for the keywords you are targeting. Take notes on what makes those pages good and areas where you think you can create something better or different.

Try to create web pages that are of higher quality than what is currently ranking. Higher quality content will attract more people, receive more links, and have increased chances of ranking higher in the search engines.

Asides from focusing on quality content creation, you also have to optimize your content by including keywords in it.

The title tag is an important field as it tells search engines what your web page is about. Make sure to include your keywords at least once in the title tag.

Also, include your keywords in your meta description field as this description sometimes appears in the search results under your title tag. The meta description is not used as a ranking factor but can encourage people to click your link and visit your website.

Your keywords should also appear on the actual web page at least once. Write your content naturally and then look over it to make sure the keywords you are targeting are included at least once on the page.

Step 3 – Off Page Promotion and Link Building

Creating content is not enough. You also need to promote your website and your content so that people find out about it.

One important factor that search engines use to determine a website’s quality is the number of inbound links to the site. A link from another website is like a vote of confidence that your site contains quality content. Getting a lot of links to your site shows search engines that you are trustworthy and creating content that people want to see.

Not all links count the same. A link from a site like BBC is worth a lot more than a link from your friend’s personal blog that only has a few subscribers. BBC has a lot of traffic and tons of inbound links from other sites, so it is considered a high authority website.

Publicity can help websites attract links naturally. Big brands get lots of links each day from other websites mentioning them.

But you don’t have to be well known to start getting links to your site. Even brand new websites can get links by doing marketing activities like doing email outreach to build relationships with other website owners or asking for links to quality content.

Website owners have countless options for getting links to their sites. Some link building tactics include blogger outreach, getting press coverage, or reverse engineering competitor backlinks.

Step 4 – User Experience

Creating a good user experience should be another goal as search engines are getting better at measuring user experience factors. Be sure that your site is easy to use and has intuitive navigation so that people can quickly find the content they are looking for.

Websites should load quickly as slow loading sites frustrate users and cause them to leave, which can hurt your website rankings. Websites should also be mobile responsive so that they can be viewed and accessed easily on multiple devices and different browsers.

Avoid having too many advertisements on your site or having an excessive number of pop-ups.

These are just a few key factors that influence search engine rankings. But if you focus on these factors, you will do well and your site will see an increase in targeted traffic from the search engines.

So, there you have the bare bones of how to SEO, the basics of the process. You can action as much of this as possible. If though, like most recruiters you’re focused on billing, admin, making brews….and don’t have the time or expertise then give me a shout. Happy to answer any questions and critique your current/past efforts.

Call me on 07486 571 264 or get me at dj@kaizen-digital.com

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