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3 SEO tips to boost candidate applications to your job advertisement

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Do you think about SEO strategies to boost candidate applications? You should be, here’s why.

With so many organisations competing for the best talent, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an easy way to gain a competitive edge. The ultimate goal for many organisation’s marketing strategy is to rank on the Google’s Page One for their keywords. Imagine how many more applications you’d receive if your job advertisement hits the top of a job board or careers page ranked on Google’s first page as candidates search for a role.

Imagine…

You’re hiring for a Marketing Manager for your business based in North Brisbane. A candidate is searching for this exact role and location on Seek. Your job advertisement appears on Seek’s first page and immediately grabs their attention. They click the link through to your advertisement and search for your website to read more about the company. They submit an application and they’re an ideal fit for your organisation.

What a great result.

The truth is, they may not have had the patience and continue searching to find you if you hadn’t hit the top page in their search query.

In today’s candidate-driven market, the easier it is for candidates to find you, the better edge you’ll gain over your talent competitors.

How does SEO help you to successfully reach the best talent?

Job seekers will be able to see your vacancies by simply searching for a role or a keyword on Google or job boards. If you want to master SEO for this purpose, you’ll need to utilise Google and job boards yourself. The Goliaths of the recruitment world will probably be paying for their ads to be seen first, but if you rank organically, this can look more authentic to your audience.

Job board algorithms are very similar to Google and you should approach the job advertisement copy for SEO in the same way you would for Google optimisation. Google ranks pages that it considers to be valuable based on particular key points. See a few tips below to help you optimise your job advertisement and to improve organic ranking on both Google and job boards.

3 SEO tips to get the most out of your job advertisement

1.     Keywords, keywords, keywords

Similar to writing a blog post or website copy, when writing your job advertisement for SEO, think about the keywords you’re using. The main keywords to consider in this case are the job title, location and popular work benefits (such as ‘flexible working’).

Keep these keywords as accurate and relevant as possible. So, for the example above, your keywords would be: ‘Marketing Manager’ and ‘North Brisbane’.

Try researching similar roles too to check out the top results – that way, you can determine what terms your competitors are using to make their advertisements rank. In assessing high-ranking, similar advertisements, pay close attention to the webpage title, meta-description, URL slug and the first few lines of text.

Bonus Tip: Once you’ve identified what keywords you’ll need to include in your copy, use a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner to help with optimisation.

2.     Be accurate and clear

Being accurate and clear is particularly important. Keywords will help you rank, but search engines and job board algorithms are clever and read your content to ensure it is relevant to the keywords you’re using. Don’t over-kill it on the keyword front; a selection of keywords is adequate.

Incorporate those keywords and write an accurate job description with your ideal candidate in mind. The algorithms will like your copy if it is clear, explanatory and precise. If it’s too vague, all your keyword research will go down the drain as the search engines won’t understand your copy.

3.     Increase traffic, reduce bounce rate

SEO algorithms are clever; they rank based on usefulness and relevance. Traffic heading to your page with a low bounce rate is a big tick, as it shows your page to be useful, and should therefore cause it to rank better.

How do you achieve this?

  • Ensure your advertisement is as accessible to those who are viewing it on their smartphones and tablets as it is for desktop. Giving candidates the ability to read your advertisement on a mobile device will reduce your bounce rates and prove it’s worth.
  • Optimise your advertisement for sharing. By ensuring your link is optimised for people in your organisation (and potential candidates) to share on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, you’ll be able to drive more traffic to the page.
  • Consider placing links within your advertisement. For example; a link to your organisations ‘About Us’ page on your website and social media pages. If candidates are able to interact with your webpage, Google and the job boards see it as useful.

Need some help optimising your job advertisement for search engines?

Find out more information about Employment Office’s Recruitment Advertising services. Our team are experts in writing the copy for and strategically implementing your job advertisement. For more information on how our experts can help you reach the best talent available, call us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.

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