Standing out from the recruitment crowd

In the current economic climate, the number of job seekers is rising and competition between job sites is rife. A search on Google is often the first port of call for job seekers, so visibility and ranking in the search results is key to a recruitment firmís survival. With 90 per cent of online job seekers looking no further than the first two pages of search results, achieving high rankings in search engines is critical for recruitersí success.

Nigel Muir, managing director of search engine marketing specialist DBD Media, has provided 5 top tips for recruitment search success:

Take the time to understand and evaluate whether pay-per-click advertising or search engine optimisation (SEO) is right for you. High-ranking SEO results are often more trusted by users, but can take months to appear. PPC campaigns are instant and highly measurable, and you can quickly see results. To attract the maximum number of applications, integrate both.

Search is a user-generated medium, so ensure that your keywords are terms candidates are actually searching for – such as job titles and locations – rather than the terms you guess they are using. Research using an agency or some of the free keyword tools will quickly tell you which keywords have high volumes of searches.

Donít forget to include negative search terms to refine the relevancy of your PPC campaign. This saves costs by controlling which user searches your ads appear against, and ensuring that they only target the most relevant searches.

Optimise your website for natural search listings around keywords that are too expensive to compete on via PPC, or which convert to applications very well.

Even after all these steps have been taken, your search investment will be wasted if candidates canít find what they need when they reach your website. Make sure that the links from search engine results go to a page that is relevant to the search query. So, for example, if the search is for ìaccountancy jobs in Brightonî make sure that the user lands on a page featuring these jobs, rather than your home page.

Search is a powerful but complex acquisition tool that requires expert understanding for maximum returns. Recruiters looking to gain a real edge and ensure that their vacancies stand out in the crowded market should ensure that they partner with a specialist to ensure that the best candidate for the job can find them.

Nigel Muir, managing director at DBD Media