If you’re tasked with writing SEO-friendly recruitment marketing copy but don’t know where to start, you’re not alone. To many – whether a full-time copywriter or a someone who has to squeeze content in with the other aspects of their job – search engine optimization may seem somewhat elusive. And while it’s not something you’re likely to master overnight (or possibly ever with the ongoing search engine updates), there are a few simple steps you can take to stay on track.
Step 1 – Content Generation
Identify your ideal candidates and target audience. If you are a company with a wide variety of jobs, start by identifying those hard to fill positions and gear your content to those job seekers. For example, if you are a healthcare company looking for physicians, it’s a no-brainer that you need to create content that will appeal to their interests. Sounds simple enough, but you also must keep SEO in mind. How will your target candidates find you? This is when you put yourself in the shoes of a physician and think about what searches he/she might be conducting in Google. Look at related keyword phrases in Google Adwords to help you identify topics and the best phrases to include.
Step 2 – Content Marketing
Content generation can be expensive and/or time consuming, so why wouldn’t you market your content after it has been created? It’s like buying an expensive dress, locking it up in a closet and never wearing it. SEO plays a huge factor in getting your content in front of the right users, but it doesn’t perform miracles, so get that beautiful content out there on your social recruiting channels, careers site, e-mail campaigns and more. Spend some time developing links through other industry forums and blogs to help build your ranking and credibility.
Step 3 – SEO Goals and Metrics
Last but not least, define your SEO success metrics. Whether it’s organic traffic or link equity, social engagement or other, decide what is important to your company and how you plan to measure progress. Also, have activity goals for your team. For content creation, the goals should be around how many content pieces you hope to generate every week, month or quarter, and for content marketing, develop a clear strategy for how you plan to market the work. Activity goals will ensure you stay on track, and then you can measure your progress, review and repeat.
Image: Vlad Butsky/Flickr
Author: Nagini Indugula
As a Product Manager, Nagini drives the SEO Strategy for the Talent Network product at CareerBuilder, from automating a keyword generation strategy to large scale content & linking strategies. In the process she drives strategic partnerships/vendor relationships and has an MBA from Kellogg School of Management and a Masters in Computer Science from Kansas State University. Follow Nagini on Twitter @nagini_i or connect with her at http://www.linkedin.com/in/indugulanagini.
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[...] copy will be quickly dismissed into the lower ranks by search engines. Plenty of good quality content –blogs, articles, downloadable booklets – can pay great dividends. It appeals to search [...]
[...] copy will be quickly dismissed into the lower ranks by search engines. Plenty of good quality content –blogs, articles, downloadable booklets – can pay great dividends. It appeals to search [...]