First off, why would you want to demystify SEO? I mean if you are not motivated, then what is the point, right?

For well over 14 years, we have helped recruiters gain 10% to 80% of their new business sales/enquiries from their websites using SEO.

So if you want to get more sales from your website, then that is why we think you would want to demystify SEO. 

Secondly, if you are expecting your website to generate you income in a crowded marketplace, then it has the same chance of doing so as a recruiter you hire hitting target who is commission only, can’t use your phones, can’t use your computers, gets no CVs from your database, has no allocation of your job board spend, is not mentioned on your website or recognised by reception if a person calls for them… But fund it as you would a recruiter, and it can be one of your biggest billers year in, year out.

Thirdly we don’t sell SEO, so this post was made solely for recruiters’ benefit. Any questions you have, just pop over to my LinkedIn page, and I’ll be happy to answer them all free of charge (when I say ‘helped’, that is given them the tools/introduced them to key vendors and sometimes sold them one of our websites). Darren Revell LinkedIn. 

 

Major Components of SEO

Technical SEO:  Your website, its CMS and technical setup/hosting.

As the name suggests, Technical SEO is about the infrastructure of your website, such as how it is made and what the Google search engine can or cannot find on your site. Unless you are paying your website vendor a fee for Technical SEO research/updates and/or your SEO suppliers are not giving them tasks to do each month/quarter/year, then chances are your website is going backwards technically from an SEO standpoint. 

Our own websites are specially made with Technical SEO in mind. Where clients have their own website, we help to recommend vendors that will set and fine-tune the technology used to meet all of Google’s needs.

But don’t fall into the trap of some website vendors when they say their websites have SEO. Websites do not have SEO, as that is like a Rugby player saying they have sports. If you need to know more about that, then ask me a question via my LinkedIn page, as that is where I spend most of my time these days.

 

On Page SEO:

Your content

This is about the text that is placed on your site (in all areas of the site that Google reads it), the number of quality pages you have, how they deal with the products or services you sell, and so on.

It’s important to note that Google prefers the use of designated landing pages as entry points to your website, rather than using a single product or service page for the same role. This is most relevant to your recruitment niches, because if you look like a jack of all trades and not a master of some during your user experience, this can make the visitors to your site drop off the scene quicker than an X-factor winner.

Recruiters naturally have jobs, but Google wants sites to provide more than their core info. They gave an example a while back of a vintage motorcycle parts website offering on the parts page links to other vendors who may provide the oil, or tools, etc. that may complement this part. In the case of recruiters, your sites will carry your jobs, yes, but your websites can also carry who, when, where, why and how info about your niche, changing jobs in your niche, growing your skills in your niche, etc. It is claimed by Google that 30% of searches daily are employment-related; note they did not say job searches, but employment related. Answering the who/what-type questions for your niche is the ‘related’ part which can make your site jump to the top of rankings.

 

Off-Page SEO:

Your authority

This works by using 10-30 SEO techniques out in the wider web community to gain authority status with Google (and the other search engines) for your site. This increase in authority will then have a positive knock-on effect for your rankings in competed-for markets.

Despite anything you may have ever read about links, Off-Page SEO is all about links to your website, and NO, LINKS ARE NOT DEAD WHEN IT COMES TO SEO. It is just that today you need ten quality links per month, not 1000 spam links like 14 years ago. Those quality links are hard to come by and so can typically only be provided by a high-quality SEO firm. Not for £30 on Fiverr.com. 

 

Social:

Your wider web presence on websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and the like.

SEOs are split on the way in which social affects your rankings, but for sure it affects your income from web sources, so all good SEOs will have some plan of some sort to ensure you make the most returns online.

Get social; this means getting clients/candidates. You just need to be consistent at your social or pay someone to be consistent for you.

 

Conclusion:

As they say in property, it is all about location, location, location. In SEO, it is all about keywords, competition for keywords, and providing keywords in a who/what/when/where/why/how/format.

The best advice I can give you here is to look for the non-obvious keywords and start there. I mean, only Reed needs to know of every job for every accountant in the UK to make its website better for its clients. You probably only need to know of all the accountants looking for jobs in Essex, or even in a 20-mile radius of Colchester if you are a Colchester-based accountancy recruiter offering a local service. The reason I point this out is that too many recruiters ignore SEO because they make a search for accounting jobs, see Reed, Monster, etc. and think, erm, they can’t compete. The reality is you rarely have to for the big terms, but you almost always should for the less competed-for terms.

Of the job searches that make up the 30% of employment-related searches Google says there are each day. Google also confirms that 50% of them are for searches that contain 4 to 9 words. Which in practice would be job searches like “forensic vat accountant jobs in Braintree” “jobs for construction sector accountants in Newcastle”, etc.