Is there anything worse than knowing what your website or digital marketing needs, but at the same time having no idea where to start? Most of the time this lack of knowledge leads you down a rabbit hole of outsourcing, external audits and costly solutions, and time consuming online guides – which promise the world and deliver very little.

We know how frustrating the world of online marketing and the internet can be – because we’ve been there, and we’ve seen it all. No matter how great your content is, or how much value you are practically giving away for free, if you don’t do exactly what search engines like Google want you to do, they can hide you away and ensure that no one visits your site. Not only is this disheartening, but it’s mighty bad for business.

So, you call in auditors. They tell you where you’re going wrong, and then start throwing anagrams at you – namely SEO and PPC.

Well, this article looks at what’s holding you back before you even get to the content itself and considers the steps to take to resolve your issues. Consider this your DIY guide to auditing your own online presence and understanding the steps to achieve the ideal solution – all in-house, and without a single Youtube video or expensive guide in sight.

What does a DIY SEO audit look like?

When we talk about SEO, we are essentially referring to the quality of your content through the eyes of Google. Crucially, this doesn’t mean assessing the quality of the writing or the validity of your offers, but rather how well you have presented it according to what Google deems as high quality.

If Google likes what it sees, it will start to present your site as a search result when consumers search for terms relating to your business, what you do, and what industry you operate in. If Google doesn’t approve, you might as well delete your site altogether (except don’t, because that would be extremely counterintuitive…)

What IS Google Index?

If you thought this was going to be a basic exploration of keywords, think again. Because none of that matters if your site isn’t registered correctly in order for Google to find it. The very best and most effective websites – and thus the most successful businesses – start from scratch with Google Indexing, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do now.

To find out where you’re starting from, head to Google and, in the search box, enter this:

site:[YOUR DOMAIN NAME].com

For example, site:BBC.com

When you hit enter, what will appear is a list of all the pages that have been indexed as “searchable” by Google on your website. For a global site like NotOnTheHighstreet, the numbers are in the millions as every creator’s page is indexed to work alongside search results. For your site, the numbers will almost always be much lower – but if it’s not presenting all of your pages, including your Blog and your Services or Products page, then you immediately know your site is not performing as well as it could – or should.

What to do if hitting Enter throws up a big 0

Google doesn’t blacklist your site for no good reason. If there are 0 search results, ask yourself if your site is doing anything which could cause Google to ban or block your content. It may also be that you have accidentally done something in the backend of your website which blocks Google and other search engines from discovering you – likely something you will want to reverse, in which case have a chat to your web developer about isolating the issue and resolving it as soon as possible.

You can also do a quick check yourself by entering

[YOUR DOMAIN NAME].com/robots.txt

Any restrictions placed on search engine indexing will show here and can be easily changed.

Is everything you want to showcase on display?

If the number of indexed pages for your site was much lower than expected, it’s time to investigate and dig deeper to see what’s going on.

Most of the time, you will find that during development of your site, access to search engines was restricted and accidentally left behind when the site was made live. You may also find that full website folders and menu drop downs are missing – something you can check in the same way using the Robots.txt link.

Another reason why Google may be hiding content or particular webpages is if they contain duplicate content – either from another page on your own site, or through plagiarism from another site entirely. There are tools out there which can help bring your attention to any unintentionally duplicated content, or else you can perform your own review and refresh of your website copy and content.

Is there such a thing as TOO much on display?

Yes! If the number of pages on your Google Index is unexpectedly high, this can also be hinting at some underlying problems – especially when those pages are not providing any value at all. Not only will they damage your website’s viability on Google, but they will prevent consumers from finding the pages that actually mean something and can lead to customers and conversions.

This can often be caused by plugins which replicate pages or generate new pages to coincide with event links or calendar dates as advertised by your website. Another common cause is hacking, whereby hackers can put their own spam links onto the end of your domain so that the spam pages appear whenever a consumer searches for something linked to your website. This can be hugely damaging for your reputation and reliability as a business.

Plus, Google will penalise you – and that is arguably the biggest obstacle to overcome.

The importance of SEO when it comes to growing online – and offline

SEO is what gives you a leg up against the competition and enables you to reach out and provide valuable solutions to consumers who know you, who have heard of you, and those who don’t yet know anything about you.

Yes, content and keywords are important, but until you get the fundamentals right with a high level Google Indexing audit, all those words will never be read by anyone except you. 

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

• If you want to advertise on Google you will need a Google Account;
• Before you start creating your PPC recruitment campaign, do some research about the audience size and type you want to reach;
• If you advertise on Google check specific keywords popularity and their competitiveness;
• Try to target users who search for longer key phrases, for example ‘software developer jobs London’;
• When you drive people to your landing page make sure the content is relevant to your advert. It will increase the chances of further interactions from users who will apply for a job or register;
• Add monetary value to your conversions in Google Analytics, this will make it easier to analyse your ROI.

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.

Don’t Make These Rookie SEO Mistakes.

SEO… you may have attempted it already, or at least considered it, and if that’s the case there’s no doubt you’ve read a few things around the subject. I see this all the time as an SEO for the recruitment sector; clients who have a vision to increase their website rankings in Google, but have read dodgy materials on “what is the best SEO strategy” or something similar!

The problem (as always – there’s a problem!) is that a lot of this information my clients read is misleading, some is even bad SEO practice. So invariably, they’ve picked up one or two bad habits!

This post concerns a flip on “how to do SEO”, we’re going to look at what SEO is not!

SEO isn’t about finding yourself!

Why would you WANT to rank for your own business name? You know what it is. I know what it is, everyone that knows you – knows your business name, and that’s all well and good, it’s called the “known market” and I bang on about it all the time in my video audits to clients.

In order to grow, you need more business. More new business. More business is brought by more clients and candidates and THOSE clients and candidates likely don’t know of your agency so won’t search for it by name.

Trying to optimise your site to be picked up for your business name is a waste of time and sweat equity – you could use that time and effort to optimise for a more effective keyword or keyword phrase.

SEO for recruitment isn’t about stroking your ego. “Look at me I’m top of Google!”, well done! Are you going to pay yourself a 5-figure fee? Erm….

SEO isn’t a one-off event!

“I want to be top of Google!” is something I hear all…the…time.

I can’t really blame clients for making this statement, after all, it’s the ultimate aim of the SEO game, but it’s a big ask. You might say that I’m shooting myself here, but let’s be realistic. I can’t, and won’t make promises like that. I guarantee my work, and guarantee to improve metrics, which if done correctly can and will have a positive impact on SERP results.

But be wary, of dodgy “marketers” promising you map pack positions or 1st place rankings.

Organic, white hat recruitment SEO isn’t a one off thing. Search engines are too dynamic and you might get to position 1, but it won’t last and you’ll probably get penalised.

Honesty is the best policy and transparency is my mantra, so I’ll tell you for real, I can do all I can to potentially get you to where you want to be. But it’s not a one off, it is continuous, consistent effort, required I’m going monitoring and working.

It doesn’t replace the good old phone.

Recruitment is a hugely personal business which requires human interaction. As I’ve said in previous posts, and you know yourself, people buy from people, so once you’ve attracted clients or candidates through using recruitment focused SEO, connect your prospects.

You can automate all but a few if your processes using technology, but it’s difficult to sell a role or sell a candidate without a human touch. SEO is not, and should never be a substitute for reaching out to people – it should act in conjunction with your day to day activity. If you think otherwise you’re wrong.

Improving your metrics and rankings unfortunately doesn’t come with any short cuts.

Successful recruitment SEO is a commitment from you and from me, to the process of doing SEO properly and the objectives we’re trying to achieve.

We’re on the same team you and I, unlike Recruiters and HR!! (Haha)

If you know someone who needs to see this hit share and tell your friends.

If you want to book a 15 min call to thrash out some ideas, hit this link!

https://calendly.com/danielajones/15min