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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.

Is Your Job Advertisement Arrogant?

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Your job advertisement is more than a tool you use to fill an open position. It’s also the first impression of a potential employee with your company. That’s why it’s so important that your job ad says positive things about your company, and unfortunately, many companies write job advertisements in a way that doesn’t make a great first impression, and in some cases can be described as “arrogant.”

What Makes An Arrogant Job Advertisement?

There are several different ways your job advertisement can seem arrogant to the potential applicant. These include:

  • No Idea Who You Are

There are some companies that everyone knows. Google, Intel, and more, are all names that 80% of the country is aware of. But those represent about 0.1% of employers. Most other companies are a complete mystery to job seekers. Yet many job advertisements give no background, because they arrogantly assume that everyone knows their name.

Even though you think your name may be well known in an industry, some of the best talents may have no idea who you are, and you need to make sure that you’re talking about yourself, explaining what you do, and getting people excited about working for your company.

  • Talking Down to Applicants

Many job ads also use language that talks down to the applicant. They may talk about all of the things the applicant “must” have in order to work for you. But they only talk about what the applicant must have, and not what they provide. This is a form of arrogance, because it makes the employee think like they need to be “good enough” to work for their company. You want everyone to feel as though they are good enough, and then you can select the ones you need the most.

  • Extremely Detailed and Complex Job Ad

Similarly, a job advertisement that is extremely long, complicated, and asks the applicant for thousands of different requirements can also be seen as an arrogant ad by the potential applicant. While you may have requirements, the most complicated job ads say to applicants “we are so important that only those with all of these qualifications will be able to work here.” That’s rarely true, and is going to turn off some talent.

How to Make a Less Arrogant Job Ad

Your job ad needs to get people excited about working for you. It needs to talk about what you can do for the employee, how you benefit them, and more about who you are. Above all else, when writing the job ad it needs to emphasize the idea that the employee is seen as valuable, and should be written by those that know how important the employee is to the company. That’s how you’ll be able to write an inviting job ad for potential talent.

For more recruitment and branding tips you may contact us at info@employmentoffice.com.au or visit our website at www.employmentoffice.com.au.

Do You Really Need 3 Years of Experience?

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As an employer, your job advertisement is perhaps the most important factor in finding great applicants. It needs to be designed in a way that will attract the talent that you want to add to your company. Every detail you add to your job advertisement is there for the perfect applicant to say “Hey, that’s me!” and apply.

Unfortunately, many employees perform the fatal mistake of adding requirements to a job advertisement that are not necessary for the job. Most companies think up their qualifications and add them on a whim, rather than carefully considering each quality and whether or not it is necessary for the job.

The “That’s Not Me” Approach to Job Advertisement Writing

For companies that hope to attract the right talent, carelessly requiring specific criteria from the applicant could cause a qualified applicant to look elsewhere. The most common example is when a company requires X years of experience working in a specific field, like:

  • “Minimum 5 years of experience working in marketing strategies related role.”
  • “3 years of experience required working with landscape design architecture.”

On paper, these may sound like good qualifications. But in practice, they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Is 2 years of experience really not enough? What about 1 year? Is there something special about 3 years (or 5 years, or 10 years) of experience that makes one candidate significantly more qualified than another?

This can be a significant problem. A candidate that has a lot of knowledge or experience, but has only worked in the field for 2 years may say “oh, that’s not me” and move on to another job, even though they were the perfect candidate for the role. Technology itself changes so often, that experience at all may not be necessary. In some cases, a recent graduate just out of college may be as qualified or more qualified than one that has worked in the field for decades.

Creating a True “Candidate Profile”

Before you create your job advertisement, you need to be willing to ask yourself these types of questions. It is not simply years of experience either. Some people throw in qualifications that are not necessary for the job, like:

  • Experience with Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Experience with Program X (When the Program Isn’t At Your Company)
  • Graduate Degree

Certainly there are some cases where knowing this information could be useful. For example, if the candidate is going to work with PowerPoint on a weekly basis. But if they use it once a year, or they don’t use it at all, chances are they do not need to know it, and they certainly do not need “2 years of experience.”

As you decide how to write your job ad, pay very close attention to the differences between what you need, what you want, and what doesn’t matter as much as it sounds like it does. You want to attract all of the best applicants with your job ad, and the more specific and logical each qualification, the more likely you will find the applicant you desire.

For your recruitment and branding concerns you can contact Employment Office at info@employmentoffice.com.