More than a year has passed since Google for Jobs entered beta. Although there was widespread fear at the time about how the launch of Google’s job search capability would impact independent job boards and recruitment websites, the actual outcome has been far less dire than many predicted. Independent job boards can enhance their SEO strategies to compete with Google for Jobs and other mega-sized job listing aggregators.
Online recruitment is a $200 billion industry, with companies spending an average of $4,000 to schedule, interview, and assess each job candidate. With so much at stake, it’s understandable that publishers with online job boards want to do everything possible to keep their sites relevant, and to keep traffic from search engines flowing.
In this article, we’ll lay out exactly how independent job boards can enhance their SEO.
Increase the number of landing pages
Yes, we understand that creating separate landing pages for each job listing takes time. But the effort is well worth it from an SEO perspective.
Using automated processes, and taking advantage of self-serve portals with online forms that employers can use to input information for their own listings, you can quickly create separate landing pages for each listing on your job board. Along those same lines, you might also consider creating separate landing pages for each employer on the site. Each employer’s landing page would include links to that company’s active listings.
When individual job listings get their own landing pages, that increases the number of pages for search engines, like Google and Bing, to crawl. Those individual pages also give you the opportunity to have more long-tail keywords, which is an important way job boards can enhance their SEO. Having individual landing pages for each job listing and employer also means visitors will be spending more time on your website, leading directly to longer dwell times.
Create more backlinks
A backlink is an incoming link from one website to another. Basically, the more people who link to your job board, the higher your site will rank in the search engines. Google considers backlinks to be votes of confidence, telling them that your job board deserves to rank higher in search results. Of course, there’s always a caveat. Not all backlinks are created equal. Bad backlinks, the kind that come from spam sites and content mills, can actually hinder your efforts to keep your website relevant.
The good news here is that having individual landing pages for each job listing increases the number of backlinks that point to your job board. The more landing pages you have accessible on your site, the more chances there are for other reputable websites to link back. For example, there’s a chance that businesses will link to their company landing pages on your websites. Other job search aggregators may link back to your individual job listings, as well. The greater the number of landing pages you have, the greater the opportunity for backlinks.
Improve your social strategy
Did you know that search engines look at social signals, like ‘likes’ and shares, when they determine their rankings? It’s true. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are playing an increasingly outsized role in search engine optimization. Independent job boards can enhance their SEO simply by boosting their reputation on social media.
How do you do that? For starters, make sure that social sharing links are included alongside every job listing on your website. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to share job listings with their friends. Not only will that boost your rankings in search, but it may help the employers who put listings on your website find more qualified candidates at the same time.
Don’t forget page titles and meta descriptions
You’d be surprised how many publishers forget to add unique page titles and meta descriptions to their webpages.
Meta descriptions are meant to give search engines a short description of the content on a given page. They should be no longer than 155 to 160 characters. Customizing meta descriptions, as well as page titles, will help individual pages rank better for certain long-tail keywords.
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It should go without saying, but none of these SEO strategies will work in a silo. For maximum effect, these strategies need to be taken as a whole and considered when putting together a comprehensive search optimization plan. If you’d like even more details about how an independent job boards can enhance their SEO to maximize website traffic, reach out to our team here at Web Publisher PRO.
