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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What I think about video job specs.
In the old days, job specs or descriptions were…let’s face it – mundane.
You know what I mean, all formal, straight talking, sub heading after sub heading, bullet point after bullet point, word after painstakingly typed word.
It was hugely difficult to covey any character or personality in them, usually meaning that the reader switched off and scanned straight to the crux – what’s the salary and what are the package benefits.
But it went beyond that. Trying to sell the role was hard enough, how do you showcase the environment or culture of the candidate’s potential new work place?
Erm, you couldn’t, not effectively anyway.
Same scenario with ads for newspapers (who?!) Or later on the job boards.
You had to grab the reader’s attention with in the first 15 seconds or so. Unless you were a wordsmith or a bard it was, for the most part an arduous task.
Thankfully, there IS a better way.
Unless you’re a recluse in the Himalayas you have heard about this new fangled thing called “Social Media”!
I jest of course, but the biblical rise of social media has made the good old job spec or description a million times A) more enjoyable to produce and B) more engaging for the candidates.
VIDEO!
Consultants on a compatible device (ergo ANY) talking into a camera as a real human being expressing the ins outs and shake it all abouts of the role they’re offering (selling).
Of course there are some old fashioned recruiters out there who will say that face to face discussions are the best.
Yes, there’s absolutely a place for the in person approach. It’s excellent for an agency that operates solely on a local basis. The reality is though that a large proportion of firms operate not only regionally and nationally but globally.
Can those same stuck in the mud recruiters claim that a candidate in Texas needs to interview in person at their office in Slough? (other places are available I am not endorsed by the town of Slough)!
Video specs have well and truly arrived and you’ve probably seen more and more agencies utilising this method.
So what’s the big deal?
It’s no secret that people buy from people. By talking into a lens it’s almost as if you’re speaking directly to the person watching (think Deadpool!) So immediately there is a subconscious connection. People buy from people…
The consultant can convey enthusiasm and other feelings to the candidate to evoke an emotional reaction from them, and as you know people buy from people… can you spot the theme here?
Also in today’s day of technology and information bombardment, either you like it or not as humans our attention spans have become somewhat selective if that’s the right word?
Essentially it’s easier to assimilate information aurally and visually than to read and digest information. The latter requires more of an investment from the reader. The former (if done properly) is subconsciously easier to do. It’s like reading a novel written in Latin vs watching The One Show (extreme example!)
For too long the recruitment industry has had a rubbish rep. I saw a post on LinkedIn recently that echoed a lime from an Eminem track, a pissed off candidate referred to the entire industry as “blood sucking succubus”, so seeing the recruiter as a person and not just a cog in an abominable machine can REALLY help with rep too!
So, finally, here’s what I think…
I think if you don’t do video specs you’re absolutely missing a trick.
Bob Dylan once wrote “the times they are a-changin'”, where realistically they already have. You’re going to get left behind. The talent pool of today is made up of an ever increasing amount of people becoming increasingly reliant of tech and in that is Social Media.
The ability for recruiters to reach exponentially more candidates than before, coupled with the ability to ENGAGE those candidates will mean that those agencies that exploit the hell out it will, invariably fare better than those that don’t, and destroy those firms who refuse to.
Video killed the radio star…Video will help you kill it in recruiting!
Once you’ve crafted your videos, if you need help reaching more of the right kinds of eyes – I can help with that with once of my Social Media Marketing packages.
Designed to really reach and engage, perfect to reach those passive candidates.
Give me a shout to hear more about it and see if we’re the right fit.
And thanks for reading!
