As you work hard to bring top talent to your doorstep, you may only use some of the available tools. With leading specialists staying on the job market for less than ten days and most of the best candidates being passive seekers, you must strengthen your recruitment tactics.

That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. SEO can help attract top talent just as effectively as it reels in your customers and clients. By applying SEO best practices to recruitment, you don’t just deepen your talent pool but also position yourself as an employer of choice.

Let’s look at leveraging top SEO tactics to improve your recruitment strategy. Start with these steps:

1. Create Your Candidate Persona

Even if you already clearly understand who your perfect candidate is, you may need to go deeper to use this data for SEO practices.

Besides understanding the skills and talents you want that person to possess, you would also need to identify the following:

• Demographics, hobbies, and interests
• Type of company they may already be working for
• Educational certifications
• Geographical location

Creating your candidate persona will help you create a recruitment SEO campaign targeting the best-fit candidates. It can also assist with streamlining traditional recruitment efforts.

2. Conduct Keyword Research

Keywords are the foundation of any SEO campaign, and recruitment SEO isn’t an exception. Since around 70% of job seekers use search engines to find employment opportunities, you must list their keywords.

You can begin with brainstorming and making a list of primary keywords that may look like this:

• Software developer jobs
• Content writer position
• Sales rep job offer

Next, you can use keyword research tools (Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner) to expand your list and make it more appropriate for your SEO efforts.

The main keywords should include specifics, such as a location, company name, and industry name. For example, the latest version of your keyword may look like this: „Financial software developer position Denver.“

Check out what your competition is doing with keywords and how well its websites rank for your key phrases. You can gain valuable insights that drive your SEO strategy forward. 

3. Create Content

Regarding SEO, content is the driving force behind the campaign’s success. You should create high-quality content that attracts candidates and positions your company as an employer.

The content you create doesn’t have to relate solely to your industry or your goals as a company. It can help candidates gain valuable information and see you as a credible source.

The content could differ from the latest market analytics to interview tips in your industry. The goal is to get into your candidate persona’s shoes and provide information they find relevant.

For example, you could begin writing a blog or creating a podcast that helps candidates find the job of their dreams in your industry. From articles to blog posts, this content should include your keywords in the most organic way possible.

To save money, some companies rely on ChatGPT to produce content for their SEO efforts. However, this content typically requires heavy-duty fact-checking and editing. It also needs to catch up on the brand voice. To achieve top results with recruitment SEO, you must ensure your content is engaging, correct, and consistent. Otherwise, it could have a reversed effect.

4. Work On On-Page SEO

You may already be implementing on-page SEO tactics to attract customers or clients. Adjust your efforts slightly to implement relevant keywords for recruitment purposes.

You would also need to work on internal linking to make it easier for candidates to navigate your content and reach web pages they find interesting. Additionally, add images related to your recruitment tactics.

If your website is optimized for customer marketing efforts, you want to avoid mixing apples and oranges. Create new web pages specifically for recruitment purposes and work on applying recruitment SEO efforts there.

5. Fortify Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to tactics you use to improve your website’s visibility from the outside. These tactics include such elements as:

• Backlinking
• Brand promotion
• Forum presence

Backlinking is one of the most vital off-page SEO tactics that can contribute to deepening your talent pool. It builds your company’s credibility and strengthens top talent’s desire to join your team.

However, it’s also the hardest one to achieve. Besides creating top-notch content that other credible sites want to link to, you can collaborate with influencers or companies in different industries to create links to each other’s websites. This collaboration would require extensive research of companies that can contribute to your candidate search without being competitive.

6. Boost Your Recruitment SEO with Social Media

While working on on-page and off-page SEO, you can maximize your efforts by leveraging social media. By building LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram profiles, you can attract more candidates to your website.

Remember that social media is an excellent place to find passive candidates. They may not be actively googling „sales rep in New York.“ However, they could be looking through social media profiles of potential employers.

Social media could become a bridge that leads a suitable candidate to your website, where on-page UX efforts kick in and drive them to make contact.

You can repurpose the content you create for your website for social media recruitment efforts and encourage shares across the entire digital realm.

7. Get Real Estate in Online Directories

When candidates use search engines to find a suitable employer, they often end up in online directories. Becoming visible there is an integral part of local SEO. If you still need to create or claim your Google My Business profile, do so as soon as possible. It won’t just streamline your traditional SEO efforts. It can also help job seekers find your company easier.

While you can’t use online directories for talent search directly, you can leverage them to maximize visibility and bring candidates to your website. You can also add relevant keywords to descriptions to make it evident that you are hiring.

Online directories, especially GMB, allow you to grab more real estate on search engine result pages (SERPs). This increase in results pages, in turn, helps candidates find you faster.

8. Track Your SEO Recruitment Campaign

You need to evaluate your efforts as soon as you start taking advantage of SEO for your talent-deepening goals. To do that, identify your key SEO metrics and measure them regularly. They could include:

• Traffic
• Bounce rate
• Rankings on the SERPs
• The time candidates spend on your recruitment pages

You can use Google Analytics to analyze your data and gain insights to improve. Recruitment SEO analytics aren’t different from traditional SEO analytics. The goal is to catch the issue before it becomes an expensive problem and capitalize on effective tactics.

Bring Top Candidates to Your Doorstep

As the hunt for top talent becomes more and more complicated, so do the tools your competition uses. Search engine optimization is an excellent recruitment instrument that can improve your company’s digital visibility and help passive candidates make active decisions.