If you want your website to be found online, you have to put considerable effort into planning a viable search engine optimization (SEO) strategy so you won’t be lost among the millions of Google hits associated with a particular keyword. If you don’t do a good job with SEO, your site won’t be seen or it will be seen by the wrong people—people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer.
Job marketing follows similar patterns. If you haven’t put any strategy into how you write and market your job listings, you may be missing out on the best candidates. Let’s take a look at four SEO strategy tips you can apply to your job marketing efforts.
- Identify a target audience.
How narrow or broad do you want your audience to be? The more specific your job title, the fewer people will see it. That may be a good thing if you have very specific needs, but if those specifics are nice-to-haves rather than must-haves, you could be missing out on some great talent. Is that skill set absolutely essential to have up front, or could it be learned if the candidate has other desirable qualifications? Particularly when trying to fill positions that specialize in cutting-edge technology, it may be difficult to find someone with a degree in the specific area of interest, so a broader title may bring in more leads. - Choose strategic keywords.
If the position you’re trying to fill is naturally broad (Marketing Coordinator), you can narrow the field by adding special skill needs in the title. If your position is very narrow, think about what your desired candidate pool might be searching for. If it is unlikely that they’ll search for the specific job title you need to fill, you can include more searchable words and phrases in the job description. - Consider geographic marketing.
Many candidates search for jobs within geographic areas (for example, “data specialist in Atlanta, GA). Including this keyword phrase within your job listing can help you capture some of those searches. If you offer relocation incentives, you can mention those as well. - Give special consideration to titles.
Job titles are like headlines—they carry more SEO weight than the rest of the listing. For this reason, you should put your most important keywords in the title and leave out anything that isn’t essential. If you really want a Social Media Marketing Specialist, then use that as your listing title, but if you really want a Marketing Specialist with social media skills, adjust your title accordingly.
Online job boards are by no means the only places you should be seeking candidates for open positions, but they are still important points of contact for many job seekers. By putting your SEO skills to work in your job listings, you can attract more of the right kind of talent for each job opening.
