How Can I Quickly & Easily Improve My Recruitment Website Without Any Technical Knowledge? PART 2

This is a continuation from our previous blog / Mikes Ames podcast, which I talked about how you as a recruitment marketer or recruitment agency owner could improve your recruitment agency website with little or no technical help. Read on...

Google Search Console

Do you regularly use the Google Search Console or have you even set it up yet? Do you know what it is? If you don’t know, then Google Search Console is a web service by Google, which allows you to check indexing status, search query rankings, crawl errors and optimise the visibility of your recruitment agency site. Here's a piece we wrote about using the Google Search Console as a recruitment agency.

If you haven’t set it up yet then navigate to Google Search Console start page and click “Start Now”. You’ll now be faced with a modal, with two options - 1) “Domain” and 2) “URL prefix”. If you already have Google Analytics 4 set up then you can enter your website homepage url into “URL prefix” (you’ll need to be in the same browser that you used to set up Google Analytics 4 for this to work). If you’re not sure if you have GA4 set up or if you haven't then select Domain, via this route you’ll need to verify ownership of your domain and add a txt record to your website records - don’t worry Google Search Console will talk you through it and there’s a tonne of online tutorials on YouTube if you need help. 

If you have set it up already then navigate to the Google Search Console start page and click “Start Now”, this will take you directly through to your search console stats. 

You can read our separate blog post on getting the most from Google Search Console as a recruitment agency.

Backlinks

Backlinks are a great way to direct traffic from other websites on the internet to your recruitment agency website. The more backlinks your website has (from reputable & authoritative sources), the more authority search engines grant your website, meaning a higher search ranking. There’s a tonne of ways to get backlinks and we’ll run through a small selection here. 

First would be to draw up a list of your top 20 competitors and enter their root URL into Google, you’re essentially searching for places that list their website URL. This will give you lots of inspiration and some quick wins. You can also use the ahrefs backlink checker, free of charge. Just copy and paste the domain you want to check and it will give you their top 100 backlinks. Now search through this for opportunities where you can also get backlinks.

Another great way is through guest blogs and comment or opinion pieces. Draw up a list of recruitment news websites and business to business magazines & websites and reach out to them offering your services - if they ever need an opinion on the market or maybe you can write a blog post about the current state of recruitment in your sector. This will be a lot tougher but it’s worth the time investment in the long term. Also check out Connectively (used to be HARO) as it offers you the chance to pitch real journalists for a mention in their editorial pieces.

Directory listings are a quick win, for example Yell.com or Agency Central. You can list your company details and website URL on Yell.com and this will give your recruitment site a little SEO boost. There’s easily a dozen directories you can list your recruitment agency on so get searching! 

Google For Jobs 

I’m sure we’ve all heard of Google for Jobs by now and they will be one of the most dominant job boards within a few years time. I imagine within the next 5 years, Google for Jobs, LinkedIn and Indeed will dominate the large majority of the job board market with the rest fighting over the scraps. 

To make sure your jobs are listed on Google for Jobs, your jobs need to be set out in a certain structured way and have certain information about each one. To see if your jobs are available to be listed you can enter the URL of one of your job listings here and it will show you if there are any errors stopping it from being listed - https://validator.schema.org/. Also make sure you optimise your adverts for Google for Jobs too.

Jobs Page

Stop sharing the link to the LinkedIn advert of your job on LinkedIn and instead push candidates to the job URL on your website. The increased traffic levels will benefit your search ranking and candidates can have a look at other roles that might be relevant for them that aren’t listed on LinkedIn. Also make sure you include all relevant information for your jobs, this should include a job reference, job title, location, salary bracket, contract type, date posted, working hours, contact details for the consultant looking after the position, video content, etc. Take a look at the jobs pages of your competitors and see how their jobs are displayed.  

Open Graph Tags (OG Tags)

OG tags are snippets of code that control how URLs are displayed when shared on social media and other platforms. They were first introduced by Facebook in 2010, and since then OG tags have become widely adopted by various social networks, including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, for enhancing the visibility and appearance of shared content.

They have a half dozen main components…

1. “og:title” (the title of your content as you want it to appear when shared).
2. “og:type” (the type of content being shared, “article”, “video”, “website”). 
3. “og:image” (the URL of an image you want to display alongside your content when shared). 
4. “og:url” (the canonical URL of the page or content being shared). 
5. “Og:description” (a brief description of the content. This text will appear below the title when the URL is shared). 
6. “og:site_name” (the name of the website where the content is published).

You can check to see how a particular page of your website is displayed when shared on social media by using a tool such as opengraph.xyz. Simply type in your URL and the website will show you how your page is displayed on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  

Google Business Profile

A Google Business profile is a great win to increase your local SEO points. It also makes it a whole lot easier for your clients & candidates to find you and also makes it way easier for them to contact you. It’s easy to set up and it will generate business for you. 

Not sure if you have a Google Business Profile for your recruitment agency? No worries, there’s two main ways to check. Firstly type your business name into Google with the town of your office location and hopefully your Google Business profile should crop up on the right hand side. If that doesn’t work then navigate to Google Maps and enter in your company name with the company location.

How do I add a Google Business Profile for my recruitment business? There’s a few different ways to do this but I’ll talk you through an easy one. Firstly make sure you don’t have a Business Profile. Then navigate to Google Maps, type in the full address of your business, then click “Add your business” and follow the steps. 

Legal Requirements

It’s small but your website must, legally carry important pieces of information about your company, including your registered company name, company registration number, the country of registration and the office address the company is registered to. I can’t imagine you’d ever get in trouble over something like this but it’s best to include them to avoid annoying situations. They are typically added to the footer. 

It’s also a legal requirement for your website to carry a privacy policy letting users know what kind of data you collect and how this is processed and stored. 

Your recruitment website should also have a cookie consent popup. I often see cookie popups simply stating that this particular website uses cookies but doesn’t give the user the option to opt out of cookies. You must always give visitors the option to opt out of cookies.  

Integrations

Now to be frank you’re going to need a developer at this stage for most integrations but they’re worth a mention as they’ll make your life so much easier. There's a tonne of awesome software you can integrate with your recruitment agency website.

As mentioned previously it’s well worth integrating your website with Google Analytics 4 as this will give you in depth reports on the amount of traffic your website is receiving, which pages are the most & least popular, on which devices people are using, demographic of visitors and so much more. All of our recruitment websites have an in-built integration with Google Analytics 4. 

Also it’s worthwhile looking into a LinkedIn Advertising integration if you run any display campaigns on LinkedIn. Once again all of our recruitment websites have an in-built integration with LinkedIn Advertising. 

One big integration that should definitely be seriously considered is an integration with your recruitment CRM. If you do decide to integrate your website with your recruitment agency website then decide on the depth of the integration and what you want to get out of it. For example you may want to consider if you want all applications from the website to be pushed into the recruitment CRM? Or do you want all newly created love jobs to be pushed directly to your website? 

Also consider integrations such as virtual chat, chatbots and WhatsApp for Business. 

Maintenance

If your recruitment website is a WordPress website then you’ll need to spend time each quarter maintaining the website and its plugins. Plugins are essentially little bits of code that perform a specific functionality that another developer has written. You can then plug in these bits of code into your website. To make sure your WordPress website is stable, compliant and secure you can update these plugins yourself. 

Before you start, make sure to backup your website via a plugin for backups or your hosting provider's backup solution. Next check that the new plugin versions are compatible with your version of WordPress and with other plugins or themes you're using. Next, you’ll need to access your site's admin dashboard by going to yourwebsite.com/wp-admin. Navigate to the plugins section - click on "Plugins" > "Installed Plugins". Here you'll see a list of all your installed plugins. If there are updates available, you'll see a notification beneath the plugin's name indicating that a new version is available. WordPress also periodically checks for updates and displays notifications at the top of your dashboard. I would recommend individually each plugin, one at a time. Click the "update now" link beneath the plugin's name. Then check you haven't broken anything and move onto the next one. 

By means this isn’t an exhaustive list on home to improve your website but simply an introduction with some basic advice & guidance. If you feel as though your website just isn’t doing your agency justice then maybe it’s time for a change. You can reach us here if you’d like to discuss it further.