What Are, How To & Why Create Backlinks For Your Recruitment Website?

How do new candidates, talent and clients find your recruitment agency? Typically you’ll have a portion of incoming enquiries from job board adverts, CV databases, new business pitches in face to face settings, telephone pitches, referrals, traffic through social media engagement and of course through your website. 

So now we move onto how people find your website - this can be through search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc.), through your social media channels, your Google Business Profile, job adverts and so on.    

Search engine optimization is important for any recruitment agency! Landing on those first couple of pages can bring in huge amounts of long-term business for your firm. When I ran my previous recruitment firm, Media Square Recruitment, my website went from barely ranking in the top 10-20 pages to the top 1-2 search results for the majority of search terms related to my business. I saw quality candidates and client leads coming in on an almost daily basis off the back of that. 

Improving your search engine results involves a huge number of factors and work but one of those components, which we’ll discuss today is backlinks. Backlinks establish your business as an expert in its field and drive traffic directly to your agency site. 

Now this article isn’t exhaustive but it should give you enough information to form the structure of any in-depth research and for you to hold a reasonable conversation with an SEO expert. Also what’s a blog about backlinks without a tonne of backlinks crammed into it so we’re going to do our best! 

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are essentially just hyperlinks from another website that point back to your site, so maybe a hyperlink on The REC website (like this) announcing your nomination for the REC Awards, with a link to the homepage of your website. They’re like digital referrals or votes of confidence from one site to another.

There are different types of links and the quality of links also vary. Acquiring more links from high-ranking sites is of more value to your business than links from low ranked websites 

Type wise we can break down backlinks into a variety of categories. Firstly we have external and internal links. 

External links are websites from external websites that are outside of your control, for example links from the APSCo website or the The British Institute of Recruiters mentioning you and your agency as a member with a link to your website or maybe from a company such as Precision Global Consulting who may mention your website in a client case study. 

Internal links are links to pages in your own website so maybe a link to a page about SEO that you have on your own website such as this (https://abstractionlabs.co.uk/features/search-engine-optimisation) or a blog post. You can use internal links to explain or define technical terms by using an existing blog post or page or maybe you want to direct a user to an action such as directing them to the Contact Us page after they’ve read the content. 

What’s the benefit to my recruitment agency? 

We’ve essentially got three main benefits from investing time into backlinks.

Firstly, it establishes your recruitment agency as an expert, as an authority within your particular field and builds trust and credibility.

Secondly, it directs traffic directly to your recruitment site, which can lead to increased engagement and conversions (candidate CVs and client briefs).

And thirdly it helps to increase your website’s visibility as search engines look more favourably on your website and give it a higher rank in the listings. 

Why would an external website link to your agency’s website? 

We’ll need to place ourselves in the other website’s mindset to see what the benefit of them is. A few primary considerations will be…

• Would the page on your recruitment site benefit their site's readers?
• Is your recruitment agency directly competing with them?
• Is the specific page you’re trying to promote directly competing with them?
• Does your recruitment firm’s website look good and appealing?
• How much authority does your website have?
• Would building a relationship with you benefit them now or later down the line?

Types of backlinks

Inbound links: come from websites, recruitment related or otherwise, that link directly back to your firm’s website. These are the types of links we’re gunning for to improve the ranking of our website. For example a recruitment news website, such as The Recruiter might mention a recent promotion of a c-suite individual in your organisation and link through to their profile page on your site’s team page. And the types of inbound links we receive will help Google to put our website into context, for example if we receive lots of links from recruitment sites then Google figures we service or are linked to that market. 

Outbound links: are links that lead people away from your recruitment agency's website. They provide useful content for your audience and are still relevant but won’t provide direct search engine ranking help for you. Where we link to tells the search engines a lot about our site, what our website is about and how much authority we are given. It can actually help you to link out to authoritative related websites. It tells google you are related to this site and its subject. You will be associated with a “good neighbourhood” and be more likely to show up in related search results.

When linking out to external sites it’s best to do so within relevant content so for example don’t just create a page on your website with 100 hyperlinks - Google probably won’t even bother indexing that page as it sees it as low value to its audience. It’s better to place these hyperlinks in text context. So if you’re an IT recruiter you could write a blog post about the 10 companies who are really making major advances in AI technology, write a little profile about each one, their products, founders, what they’ve contributed and link out to their website. 

Organic backlink: is essentially a link placed naturally by a real person on a website. The owner of the website might think a link to your content is beneficial for their audience and that it adds further value to their website. Maybe you produced a great infographic, a guide, a study or a video interview with someone relevant to their content. 

Guest post links: in this respect you’ll need to build relationships with other website owners, essentially complementary businesses. For example as a recruitment agency you may offer to write blog content for one of your clients, maybe giving an overview or insight into the current state of their sector. With these links it’s integral that backlink brings value to the article without being promotional.

Forum and Q&A web links: these will require a little more research and focus on keeping active in discussions and communities. For example you could join Reddit’s recruiting subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/recruiting/) and post useful content in response to user’s queries with relevant links to pages on your website. 

Press release links: involve your recruitment agency releasing a press release about some big piece of news and sending them out to relevant news organisations. These could be large organisations such as the BBC or they could be more relevant recruitment news organisations such as The Recruiter, The Global Recruiter, UK Recruiter or The Recruiting Times. They’re not of huge value as Google passes links in press releases and classifies them as unnatural. To avoid falling under Google’s sanctions, your press release links should be no-follow. 

Do-follow links: this is essentially a regular link. It is the common type of backlink and you’d only use the term do-follow in the context of no-follow. It is linked to the HTML attribute rel=””. A code example of the template (HTML) in your website code would be 

<a href="/abstractionlabs.co.uk">Abstraction Labs</a>. This code would make the “Abstraction Labs” text a hyperlink and would link directly to the homepage of my website. 

No-follow links: actually use the HTML tag of rel=”nofollow” which instructs search engines not to follow the link or pass on any page ranking weight to the website the link refers to. In the website’s HTML code this would look like <a href="/abstractionlabs.co.uk" rel=”nofollow”>Abstraction Labs</a>. This was introduced back in 2005 to combat spam and prevent link manipulation and is typically used on social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. 

Sponsored links: we also have the HTML attribute, rel=“sponsored”, which is specifically used for paid links. It indicates that the link is a paid placement and not organic. Website owners would typically use this to avoid being flagged for a link scheme violation. It’s a Google recommendation to use this attribute to specify that the backlinks were purchased for advertising purposes.

User generated links: these are signalled with the rel=”ugc” attribute to inform search engines that the content was generated by website users. These links refer to social media posts, comments, forum content, reviews, etc. The classic example is Instagram content created by a user who tags a brand or uses their hashtag.

Text content links: this is the most common backlink and it’s also best SEO optimisation wise. We’d traditionally embed the link in an article, page content or blog post and it‘ll be surrounded by text that provides additional context. 

Image links: these will be clickable images that may link through to another page on your website. For example you may run an IT recruitment firm and you might have an image of an engineer standing in front of a server stack and this image is clickable and links through to your specialism page about IT engineering recruitment. 

Footer links: these are any links that link to external or internal pages. For example they could link to internal pages such as Candidates, Clients, Specialisms, Contact Us, etc. or they could link to external sites. A common external site link in your footer would be recruitment membership bodies your agency is part of such as APSCo, The REC or The Employment & Recruitment Federation, TEAM, RecConnect or The British Institute of Recruiters. These links are typically given less weight than text links and are considered secondary in terms of importance. 

Widget links: less relevant as you’re unlikely to be using these to promote your recruitment agency website but essentially it's a web-based mini-app containing a link to a website. It’s typically contained in an iframe. 

Service exchange links: these are normally as part of a mutually beneficial agreement, for example Abstraction Labs may offer a small discount on your website to place a small link in the footer of your website some companies get backlinks in exchange for services such as website development, web design, and server hosting or in exchange for links on their website. These types of backlinks are often added to the footer.

How are backlinks achieved? 

This can be achieved by creating engaging, informative and useful content that other people want to share on their websites. You might engage in guest blogging on reputable recruitment industry websites or industry websites within the sector you recruit for. You can regularly participate in community discussions and forums - maybe contributing your thoughts on a particular topic and leaving a relevant link to your website that gives further thought and insight into the area. You can also just reach out to influencers or websites for backlinking opportunities - if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Through all of these components you can build a network of high-ranking sites that direct traffic back to your website. 

Why Is Backlink Building Important?

We don’t know exactly how the major search engines like Google rank websites and decide which websites to show for which user search terms but part of it is to do with backlinks and Google will rank your recruitment website higher when it has more backlinks from other reputable and well ranking websites. 

Backlink building is an organic way to increase the number of links to your website. Ideally you want these websites to be within your industry as the major search engines will see these as higher quality links - this could be industry bodies, recruitment marketing agencies showcasing the work they’ve done for you, recruitment sales trainers citing you and your website in work they’ve completed, clients you recruit for and so on.

It also contributes to faster indexing. Google and the major search engines only have a finite amount of resources and so sometimes it can take days, weeks or even months for Google to find your newly added website page and add it to its listings.  Backlinks further assist search engine bots in discovering and indexing your site more effectively.

How to build backlinks?

You can do a lot of this yourself but I’d always recommend enlisting the help of an SEO expert such as our SEO partner, Artur Jach at Curious Marketing or at specialist recruitment marketing agencies such as Thrive and ThinkinCircles. 

I’d first suggest focusing on internal backlinks then moving onto the external backlinks. The internal backlinks are quick and easy wins and will get you into the appropriate mindset for the external link work. For example you can go through your previous blog posts and interlink them giving further reading material for the visitor where necessary and relevant. Or you can add a link to your contact us page at the end of each blog post to encourage visitors to start a conversation with you.  

Our external links will be links to our website that we place on other websites. One possibility to find relevant websites is to start by brainstorming topics related to your business and searching for keywords around that. Once you’ve found non-competing and complementary websites simply drop them an email or give them a call and pitch them on guest posting. You’ll write a blog post for them and hopefully the content is relevant for their audience and they link back to your website in the blog post. 

Ensure that the websites you are linking to are reputable, well-known recruitment websites or websites in your specialist area. Ensure the backlinks to your website are relevant and useful to the reader. And you’ll need to be patient, this kind of work won’t necessarily grant your significant results in a few days. It could take weeks or months to start seeing any boost to your rankings. 

One of the best ways but also hardest ways of garnering backlinks is through producing high quality content. The kind of content people enjoy reading and really learn from. The kind of content people find valuable and feel the need to share with others. It’s the holy grail of content but that’s what we’re aiming for. 

Guest blogging as mentioned before is a great way. Get in touch with the team at The Recruiter and possibly offer to write a piece about your recruitment journey or about a piece of new legislation that affects recruiters in your space.  

Finding broken links elsewhere and replacing those with your relevant content. This can bear fruit but takes a huge amount of work, time and research to find these broken links so it’s more of an “opportunity win” if you come across them. 

Collaborate with influencers within your industry for content sharing and linking. Maybe invite them to speak at an event you're holding for candidates in your space and ask them to share links to the event on your website.  

What are your competitors doing?

Type relevant search terms into the search engines and see which websites your competitors crop up on, also type their company names in Google and see which websites they crop up on - some of these will be directory websites and you’ll be able to grab a quick easy win by inputting your company details. 

Who should be creating backlinks for us?

This really depends on the size of your agency and whether you have an internal marketing team or if you work with an external marketing agency or SEO specialists. If you’re a small recruitment agency without marketing support and little budget then there’s still a lot here that you can achieve yourself relatively easily. If you do have a budget of a few thousand pounds then I’d thoroughly recommend getting in touch with an SEO specialist such as Curious Marketing or a generalist marketing agency such as ThinkinCircles or Thrive.

Where are some easy backlinks places? 

Now for the juicy stuff, You can place profiles of your company (along with the website URLs) across several sites including LinkedIn, Trustpilot, Yell, Gov.uk, Crunchbase, SignalHire, Doogal, etc. 

If you want any further advice on backlinks then get in touch with us.