10 Ways To Optimize Your Website for Hiring

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and other website optimization techniques can help you hire top talent and save you money on recruitment. Apply principles of website optimization, like onpage SEO and improving your site structure, to your website and career pages and you will quickly attract more candidates.  

Why Is SEO So Important For Hiring?

There’s two main reasons why SEO is so important for hiring. Firstly, the reason SEO is important in general—many job seekers will be using Google to look for jobs and, as with everything on Google, they are more likely to click on the top results—or at least results on the first page of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Secondly, SEO means that job seekers can find your career pages more easily, and they’re more likely to apply for jobs at your company without you spending a lot of money on costly job listings or ads. 

Optimizing your website for hiring is very similar to optimizing your website for sales. Let’s take a look at what you need to do:

Part 1: Optimize Your Career Pages

Optimizing your career pages is the main way to make sure your jobs rank well in the SERPs:

Have a Career Page

Firstly, it may seem obvious, but if you don’t already have a career page on your website, you should get one. You need something to show up in searches when potential candidates search “Your Company Jobs”. 

A dedicated career page, as opposed to just a list of open positions, is also great for linking to other career related content on your site, such as job-related articles on your blog or a FAQ about what it’s like to work at your company.

Have Good On-Page SEO

Your career pages need to have great on-page SEO to rank well. This means: 

• Use the right keywords: Do keyword research using SEO tools like Moz or SemRush to find out what you want to rank for and include those keywords in your recruitment pages. For hiring SEO, using location based keywords (e.g. Web Developer Jobs Sydney) is a good idea. 
• Use headings and titles: Headings and titles are great places to use keywords and make it easier for Google and visitors to read your text.
• Consider using images or videos: Pages with images and videos rank higher and are more engaging.
• Have quality content: There’s no point in including lots of keywords if they don’t tell job seekers what they want to know. Make sure your careers content is engaging so that visitors don’t bounce, which will hurt your SEO. 

Have Good Technical (Off-Page) SEO

Top notch technical SEO on your career pages is just as important as good on-page SEO. But what is technical SEO and how do you use it?

• Use keywords in metadata. etc.: Make sure you include keywords in your metadata, titles, and URLs. 
• Include structured data: Structured data or schema helps Google know what your page is about. Google has its own guide on structured data for job postings.

• Check your indexing and sitemap: Check Google Search Console and your sitemap to make sure your recruiting pages are properly indexed. 

Part 2: Optimize Your Website 

Your recruitment SEO goes further than your career pages. Optimizing your website for hiring will help you gain more candidates:

Improve Your Site Structure

Improving your site structure will improve your rank in the SERPs and help job seekers find you. How can you do this?

• Link your recruitment page directly from your homepage: This means that your career page will gain page authority (PA) from your homepage, which probably has the highest PA of any page on your site. Linking your recruitment page to the homepage is also good UX as it helps visitors find it.
• Make your site easy to navigate and use: Good UX in general is important. Remember that job seekers will browse through your site, so having an easy to navigate site, with a ‘flat’ sitemap, will help you. 

Optimize for Mobile

There is one site structure issue we haven’t mentioned: site speed. Visitors frequently bounce from slow sites and look elsewhere which can devastate your recruitment efforts. And speed is especially an issue on mobile devices, which 90% of job seekers are now using to search for jobs. 

Build Links

As with any SEO, link building is important for recruitment SEO. There are several ways you can go about this:

• Link individual job listings to your careers page: Instead of listing all your job openings on the same page, consider linking them to the main recruiting page as this will help with link building. It will also make individual jobs easier to find on Google as they will come up when job seekers search “Your Company X Jobs”. (If you are having trouble dealing with all your listings, consider using an ATS like Pypa Hire). 
• Link from job sites and social media: You can also build links when advertising your jobs on job sites or social media by linking back to your website (where candidates can see the position description and other information).

Get Your Jobs Published on Google Careers

The new Google Careers is a cross between a job site and a search engine. It’s also a great way to make sure candidates can find you. Make sure Google Careers can find your listings by following the technical SEO tips above (i.e. making sure your career pages are indexed and have schema data attached). The only downside is that Google Careers is currently only available in the US and the UK which means it’s not very useful if you’re hiring elsewhere. 

Consider Publishing Hiring Content

Content marketing can also be useful for hiring. Consider including articles with useful information about getting jobs in your field on your blog (and link them to any current vacancies). This is a great way to attract candidates—though make sure your blogs are useful, high-quality, content, or it might not have the effect you want. 

Part 3: Non-SEO Optimization

Not all website optimization has to be SEO related. Here are non-SEO tips on how to improve your website for candidates: 

Have Useful Information on Your Website

Attract candidates off job sites by including useful hiring information on your website which can’t be found anywhere else. This could include:

• Position descriptions and more detailed explanations of the job.
• Videos of current employees talking about what it’s like to work at your company.
• Info about your culture and employee brand.
• FAQ about working at your company.
• Live chat with your recruiting or HR department.

Always make sure all of your information is up-to-date. (Updating regularly also improves your SEO performance).

Branding and Employer Branding

As part of optimizing your website for hiring, it’s important to think about how you are branding your company. Do your career pages and website look inviting? Do they reflect your company culture and brand persona? Does your company look like a fun place to work? It’s important to consider these things when designing your website, as well as simply including information about your employer brand. 

Optimizing your website for hiring is worth it, and if you follow these tips, you’ll have more candidates to choose from. From publishing hiring content to creating backlinks, SEO and other website optimization strategies can help you hire. Want to up your hiring game and save time so that you can get on with the nitty-gritty of hiring?—Register for Pypa’s ATS, Pypa Hire today!