A brief guide into Social Media and SEO techniques within the Recruitment Industry. It explores, tactics, pitfalls and considerations.

1. Social Media & SEO
Recruitment Industry

2. SEO or Social Media? For many recruitment agencies with limited
resource, time and money, SEO and social media
activity become competing priorities. So, what gets
sacrificed SEO or social media, which one has more
leverage within the recruitment industry?
Will SEO result in more new business enquiries
funnelling from google searches? Or will social
media activity organically drive more relevant
visitors to your website and engage with potential
candidates?
Let’s take a look at some of the tactics and
considerations for both SEO and social media.

3. Marketing activity for recruiters falls into two categories
Candidates Clients
Online tools fall into two categories
Social Media SEO

4. SEO or Social Media? This brief guide outlines how to utilise social media in
searching and connecting with potential candidates and
how to implement SEO techniques to reach new clients.
Candidates Social Media
Clients SEO

5. SEO The internet is our prime reference point, it’s where we
all turn to find information, whether we are looking for
a product, person, or service. For some businesses it
has become an integral element to business growth in
that their sales depend on their Google position, for
some it is less relevant but undoubtedly every business
needs an online presence. SEO for recruiters will
become increasingly important as the internet
continues to dominate communication channels.
Business
SEO Clients
Growth

6. Tactics
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Fresh content
Continuous fresh content is integral to effective SEO. If you do little
else, other than blog or update a news section, utilising key
recruitment words you’ll see gradual but significant gains. You’re
also providing a reason for people to re-visit your site. There are
numerous sources of information upon which to create new
content, such as monthly employment statistics, skill shortages,
legislation and of course recruitment processes.

7. Tactics
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Long term gain
SEO content remains beneficial for a long time, when you create a web
page, it is indexed in search engines and will return as a result in the
searches engine for years to come. So if you write a blog post
especially if it’s evergreen content (recruitment topics with longevity,
which remains relevant) your few hours of effort writing and
optimising that content can continue to drive traffic and for years.

8. Tactics
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Long-Tail search yields targeted traffic
Investing in SEO means you’re probably optimising for long-tail search.
Long-tail search is just what it sounds like a search term that is long,
usually containing three or more terms. And the longer a keyword is,
the more specific it gets. Think about the difference between the
search term, “recruitment agency” and “accountancy recruitment
agency Bristol.”
That second search term tells us that the searcher is looking for three
things: recruitment agency, which specialises in accounting job and
who are located in Bristol. That’s way more information than a short-
tail keyword and it drives extremely targeted traffic to your website.
Plus, long-tail keywords are far less competitive than short-tail
keywords, and as such yield quick traffic wins for your website.

9. Tactics
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Inbound links
A comprehensive SEO plan includes inbound links, and one of the most
effective ways to obtain these are by offering to guest blog or write
articles for other recognised industry websites. These could be
recruitment, HR or employment focused sites. Think outside
recruitment and look for opportunities within the specific industry
sectors you service. Topics could include thought leadership or unique
data, which you may hold within your system.
This will also enhance brand awareness and position you as an expert
within your industry. Establishing relationships with authorative sites
does take time but by initiating some simple PR techniques this is time
well spent.

10. Considerations
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Time
Consistently creating quality content takes a lot of time. SEO is no
longer as simple as dotting keywords all over your web page and in
your meta data. And if you’re seriously crunched for resource, the
content creation required to maintain a sustained recruitment industry
SEO program may be overwhelming.

11. Considerations
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Technical elements
While constant quality content creation as an SEO strategy will get you
far, it will only get you so far. There are still some things that are a
little out of your reach unless you consider yourself well versed in
technical SEO - you know, 301 redirects, site structure, site hosting,
404 configuration – SEO jargon!

12. Considerations
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Inbound links
While on-page SEO is important, off-page SEO has a bigger impact. And
by off-page SEO, we chiefly mean generating inbound links with
reputable sites, such as HR Zone, Recruiter, REC and of course local or
national press.
So while you can work really hard to optimise every single web page,
you still have to rely on other high-authority sites to link to you, use
proper anchor text, and not split the juice of that link by linking to
several other sites. Unfortunately that takes, persistence, contacts and
unique content.

13. Considerations
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Constant upkeep
While you may appear on page one of google today, if you don’t
consistently update your site and generate inbound links, your
rankings will soon slip and all your previous work will have been lost.
In other words, you need commitment, dedicated resource and
continual evaluation in order to analyse your activity and results.
Equally you need to keep on top of all the constant changes to SEO
techniques.

14. Social Media Social media is a rapidly changing space and it can be
hard to keep up with the ongoing analysis of where we
are, where we’ve been and where we’re headed next.
More people spend more time online every year and it’s a
trend that is going to continue to grow. For recruiters
social media is a vital element in attracting quality
candidates and if you don’t find avenues to attract them,
your competitors will. Developing and maintaining
proactive social media activity is therefore crucial for all
recruitment agencies regardless of their size or location.
Placement
Social Media Candidates
Growth

15. Tactics
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Twitter
There is no point tweeting job vacancies if you cannot be found
online and no one is following you on twitter. Identify what
keywords and hashtags are being used by your target audience.
What twitter chats are taking place and when? Recognise the prime
time twitter usage – timing is key.
This will enable you to produce a list of appropriate hashtags and
industry specific chats, utilise twitter scheduling to ensure your
tweets coincide with twitter prime time for your target audience.
Twitter is all about engagement, building a group of advocates who
follow and engage with you online.

16. Tactics
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Facebook
Facebook is the largest social media network and a phenomenal
marketing and recruitment tool. But it can only be as effective as
your strategy to use it. The purpose of your company facebook page
is twofold. Firstly you need to carve out your company facebook
space. This is achieved by projecting your company culture, tapping
into engaging topics to generate ‘likes’, there should be a steady
flow a updates to continuously increase the number of ‘likes’.
Secondly it’s about constant engagement. Once a candidate ‘likes’
you, they will automatically see your company updates. Quality of
content is essential to engagement, it’s not just about sharing job
vacancies.

17. Tactics
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LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the biggest social media destination for professional
networking. The power of LinkedIn lies in the ability to leverage the
networks of your company, colleagues, employees and their
connections to find the best talent. It’s absolutely crucial all your
employees actively use LinkedIn every day, to share and participate
in company updates in order to maximise the networking dynamics
of LinkedIn.
It’s equally as important to participate in LinkedIn group discussions
as it is to merely post job vacancies as your continual LinkedIn
presence will bring a new audience to your company page.
Obviously this is only beneficial if your target candidates are on
online, for some industry sectors such as logistics this won’t be a
viable recruitment tool.

18. Tactics
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Pinterest
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks and often
overlooked by recruiters due to the visual nature of the site.
However, Pinterest can be used to showcase different types of
careers with engaging images. Effective messages can be
incorporated via infographs, a popular communication tool which is
constantly growing.
Companies can easily create pinboards for specific industry sectors,
combining images, photos and infographs. It can also be used to
project your company culture and is excellent for sharing event and
charity photographs, all of which will contribute to building a group
of followers.

19. Considerations
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Planning
Planning requires foresight and understanding of which platform is the
most appropriate. Discipline is essential for the continual updates and
posts, which boosts connection and engagement. A social media
schedule should be unified in terms of the message, which means
cascading the same message in different ways. Equally as important is
building in an evaluation process so you can monitor progress.

20. Considerations
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Resource
It’s imperative to allocate dedicated resource for both continuity and
consistency. Continuity is essential to obtain and maintain
engagement, which are both equally important. Consistency ensures a
unified message is cascaded across different social media platforms,
which not only engages with candidates but improves brand
awareness. Evaluation and analysis is important, in order identify
what works and what doesn’t.

21. Considerations
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It takes time
For your social media presence to drive meaningful results for your
business, it needs to grow. But growing a social media following
doesn’t happen overnight. It takes months upon years to build up a
strong social following and wide reach that will drive engagement with
potential candidates. Patience and persistence will deliver results.
When used effectively, social media can give an unprecedented boost
to a company’s recruiting capabilities.

22. Considerations
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Unified approach
One of the dynamics of social media is sharing. This is particularly
crucial for LinkedIn and as this is the largest business network, the
potential to reach thousands of contacts is phenomenal. However,
this relies on all employees embracing the initiative and educating
them to routinely update and share posts on LinkedIn. There are
some fundamental set-up aspects to LinkedIn which you can find in
our LinkedIn guide.

23. Summary
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Neither SEO, nor social media, can survive without a consistent stream
of quality content. Without content, there’s nothing for Google’s
crawlers to pick up and index in search engines which means they’ll
visit your website less and less frequently.
Without content, there’s nothing valuable for you to share in social
media, which means, much like Google’s crawlers, your fans and
followers will stop engaging with your updates and eventually stop
following you.
But with so many information sources, research hubs and streams of
statistics there will never be a shortage of content ideas. The biggest
challenge for recruitment agencies lies in planning their social media
and SEO strategies and then finding the most appropriate form of
delivering and managing it.
Obviously you can use Social Media to connect with potential clients
too, please refer to our Business Growth with Social Media guide.

24. For guidance on planning and devising a social media and SEO strategy
please contact Claire Doherty
Email - claire@studio10design.co.uk
Mobile - 07554 661927