At , we know that the best way to fill job roles quickly and effectively as a recruiter is by getting your job advert in front of more of the right eyes.
But how do you do that?
By improving your SEO. 🎉
For recruitment agencies, optimising your job adverts could be the difference between hiring an ideal candidate and passing them by.
Yet, 42% of recruiters openly admit to never making an effort to optimise their job adverts, even though 30% of all Google searches are related to employment.
However, it’s not just Google For Jobs you need to think about.
Popular job boards also use keywords to determine how they rank job adverts.
With this in mind, we’ve included three vital points to help maximise your job advert ranking and give yourself the best possible chance to find the right candidate for your client.
3 Ways to Optimise Your Job Advert on Google For Jobs and Job Boards
1. List Your Job Ad with The Right Job Title
The right job advert title will combine several elements, and the best way to determine whether it’s titled correctly is to put yourself into the shoes of the candidate.
What will they be searching for, whether they’re on Google or a job board? 🔎
If you’re too specific with the job title, you’ll ruin your chances of getting your job advert ranked highly.
Therefore, you must avoid unnecessary and overly specific quantifiers like ‘Mid-Weight’.
On the other hand, if you’re too vague, you might find your client is inundated with applications from unqualified and unsuitable candidates.
Include key skills to narrow things down.
For example, make the job title ‘Java Web Developer’, rather than ‘Web Developer’.
It’s all about asking the following questions:
- When is an additional descriptor necessary and informative?
- When is it limiting and prescriptive?
Include Location (But NOT in The Job Title)
One thing that definitely shouldn’t make it into your job title is the location of the role.
When you upload a job ad onto a popular job board, the location will automatically be incorporated into the job title.
So, if you manually place it there, it’s likely to end up appearing twice.
If it does, Google could perceive it as keyword spamming and penalise your ranking.
Still, be sure to include location within the opening sentence of the advert content.
And when you do, try to be as specific as you can about it.
For instance, don’t use a county or just put London. 🛑
Candidates want to weigh up whether the commute is realistic and worthwhile.
Instead, always include the town, area or postcode. 👍
If you’re relying on your own recruitment site to advertise, the opposite rule applies.
You’ll need to include the location in the meta title, meta description and even alt-tags on any images.
Incorporate Keywords (Without Keyword Stuffing)
There’s a fine line between optimisation and spamming, as touched upon above.
Aim to include the job title between three to six times across your listing, and throw in some related keywords, too.
The key 🔑 is to naturally incorporate these words into your sentences so that the prose still flows as it should.
As the name suggests, a related keyword is a variant or something semantically related to the main keyword.
In some cases, these can be long-tail keywords.
If you’re dealing with a job role with multiple names, such as a copywriter and a content writer, always use SEMrush and Ubersuggest to check traffic volumes to help with Google rankings.
You can even put the location after the title to see which option is more popular in the local area.
Our rule of thumb at is that keywords should make up about 5% of the job advert.
So, in a 300-word job listing, you’re looking at around 15 keywords.
Perfecting SEO for Job Adverts Equals Recruiting Better Candidates
The world of search engine optimisation has been around for many years.
But in recruitment, it’s still a relatively new concept.
Nevertheless, recruitment SEO is evolving at a rapid rate.
The ever-changing algorithms of Google and the ranking system on popular UK job boards aren’t always your first thought when you’re in a rush to publish a new job ad.
However, if you can take a few extra minutes to get it right or use an automated job advert builder tool like to do it for you, this will help you drastically lower your cost per hire and enable you to source top candidates your competition couldn’t find.
The choice is yours. 💪
