Tag: SEO

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Blogs

SEO for job advertisment?

Is Search Engine Optimization important for advertising your jobs on the job boards? Should you optimize every single job post? Isn’t optimization of job post on a job board actually only ‘Keyword Stuffing’, since you do not control any other page element?

Short answer:

Yes SEO is extremely important when publishing a job on a job board. Yes, you can only play with text, s0 make sure you do it well!

Why SEO-in a individual job post?

It will attract searches composed of number of words (‘Long Tail Search’) that describe the desired position. In general a job seeker that searches for ‘Jobs’ is on average of less ‘Quality Applicant’ than someone searching for ‘IT Project Manager Dublin South’.

By optimising the job specification for the search engines – the quality of the applicants raise dramatically. I have done tests with a number of my clients in publishing the two versions of the same role. One the way they would ‘Normally’ write it and the other highly optimised for the most used search words combined in search phrases constructed from:

  • Job location
  • Job title or role name
  • Job Location
  • Skills required or technologies used
  • Qualifications required or desired

The result is that the majority of candidates interviewed came from a version of the job advertised that was optimised for the search engines. The majority of the applications would tend to come from a day to 3 – 4 days after the publishing of the role. The overall quality of the applications would tend to go down as times goes by after that.

Categories
Blogs

How to find jobhunters?

Or how to make jobhunters find you?

Remember my post about the Jobs-Ireland.ie web site?

Here is the record of the traffic in the first 30 days:

Jobhunters finding Jobs Ireland job site

The average number of jobhunters for the first 30 days was 10 per day.

The average number of jobhunters for the last 7 days was 20 per day.

The number of jobhunters on the site yesterday was 30 (per day).

Funny how you can still make web sites with the ‘Buid it and they will come’ marketing philosopy, and if you bouild the site right, the job hunters (visitors) will really come.

Categories
Blogs Google Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO SERP

Google AdWords in Recruitment?

Google AdWords was good!

Years ago I was preaching to the recruiters in Ireland to start using Google AdWords. The cost per click (CPC) was literally a few cents. The early adopters really drove massive traffic, and relevant traffic to their web sites. I remember my own www.IrelandJobs.ie – and how easy was it to purchase a thousand visitors a day. We experimented a lot and found that the best click trough and the conversion rate on our web site was for the AdWords Campaigns linking directly to a job just advertised.

Today the scenario is the opposite.

Google AdWords is bad!

Cost per click started grooving from the day one. It was just a question of time when will it all stop making sense. In the late 2007, when CPC reached the 1 Euro, a lot of people started revaluating their Google AdWords accounts and rethinking if that spend still makes sense. A large number of advertisers stopped their accounts or limited their budgets. The results are that the CPC stabilised for a time. It took some time to get used to pay over a euro for a visitor. Advertisers got used to it, and the price is soaring up again.

So why is paying a single 1 Euro per job hunter bad for your business?

Well simply because you could be paying about half by purchasing your traffic from other sources. Call today for details: 01 440 1900!

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency SEO

‘Long Tail’ Search Results in the Irish Recruitment Industry

What is the ‘Long Tail’ search result?

According to HitTail (a nice online SEO tool), the Long Tail is an economic concept that says the collective demand for less-popular items can exceed all the most popular added together. So, long tail search is about using terms related to your prime search terms that will individually cause less search hits but collectively increase your search hits. Get it?

Long Tail Search Results - RED is people search for 'Jobs' while GREEN is people search ing with the long search phrases like: 'multilingual sales representative'

The opposite of the ‘Log tail’ is the ‘Short tail’. Short tail search result listing in the Irish online recruitment industry is your site ranked for the single word (like ‘Jobs’) or simple phrases (like ‘Cork Jobs’). Long tail example is a visitor that came to your site by searching for: “multilingual sales representative”:

http://www.google.ie/search?&q=multilingual+sales+representative

… or even longer search phrase, hence the name ‘Lon Tail’ search phrase result.

The importance of ranking the recruitment web site in the ‘Long Tail’ search engine results is absolutely huge. That is the fact. Here is why:

QUALITY
The better the job hunter ‘describes’ the job he is looking for in the search engine the more relevant candidate you are getting to apply for your jobs. Increasing the quality of the applications for your jobs will bring benefit to almost all steps in your selection and recruitment process.

QUANTITY
This is where it gets ‘unexpected’! The logic says that since less people are using the long search phrases while searching for jobs, there should not be MORE applications from the Long Tail results than from the listing for the short broad terms like ‘Jobs’. The reality is the opposite, simply because of the sheer QUANTITY of the Long Tail search phrases. The total amount of the applications for the long tail search phrases will ALWAYS be higher that the applications that came for the broad search terms.

Conclusion on the Long Tail search phrases in the Irish recruitment:
By listing your site high for the long and descriptive search phrases will bring you the best candidates in the largest volumes.

Sounds like a dream? And jet it’s sooo doable!

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency SEO

Win a Free SEO Web Site Review Service

Are you an Irish Recruitment Agency? If so – read on! There is a freebie for you here!

There is the ‘Hard to Believe’ fact that not a single Recruitment Agency web site have ever managed to appear on the first page in Google.ie for the simple search phrase ‘Jobs’. Basically here:
http://www.google.ie/search?&q=jobs

One would think – it is a budget problem. If there is enough job boards pumping enough money in the search engine optimisation, they will fill the top ten slots, and there is no place for the recruitment agencies there. But anyone who knows anything about recruitment industry in Ireland knows well that Ireland is too small to host ten strong generalist job boards that would compete for so strong and broad search term like ‘Jobs’. The marketing budgets of the top 10 recruitment agencies dwarfs the total revenue of some of those job sites listed there on the first page in Google for ‘Jobs’.

I have always wanted to put an Irish recruitment agency there on the first page in Google for the word ‘Jobs’. I never hided that ambition.

So in partnership with the SEO Consultant, I am offering a FREE SEO Web Site Review Service to all recruitment agencies in Ireland. First comes first served. The SEO Web Site Review Service is a first step towards listing your recruitment web site on the first page in Google for the word ‘Jobs’. You need to take the first step to reach your goa and rank your recruitment web site high. So sign in for the free SEO Web Site Review Service today!

How to get the Free SEO Web Site Review Service – just request it in the Comments section below.

Categories
Blogs Jobs Recruitment Search Engine SEO

Job Boards and SEO in Ireland

Year 2008 started funny for the Job Boards in Ireland. Job boards started understanding that the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the core of their business.

The reason the big job boards understood the y need to invest in SEO is because the year 2007 was the year where a largest number of the niche small job boards appeared in a single year. More than 20 new job boards requested to be included in the multiple job posting software eRecruit.ie in the year 2007 only! Those small niche web sites are in most cases industry specific, and usually have some link with some existing organisation or publication, or are just set up by someone who does know the industry. Knowing the industry helps in organising and running the small niche job board, so more often than not the niche job sites have some success as well. That hurts the job big boards, and it hurts them badly! So the national job boards decided to fight back in 2008, and to do so they are looking for the SEO people.

Irish Jobs - SEO JobIrish Jobs looking for the SEO Specialist:
http://www.irishjobs.ie/JobDesc.asp?ID=5125108&MID=3233

Due to continued expansion and focus delivering maximum jobseeker traffic to our websites worldwide a vacancy has arisen for an SEO specialist.
Job responsibilities:-
Knowledge and experience of SEO, Web 2.0 concepts, traffic and SEO analysis tools (Google Analytics, Google Webmasters Tools, keyword and structure research spiders)… Web 2.0?!

Jobs.ie Jobs - SEO JobJobs.ie (owned by Irish Jobs) are looking for that same SEO Specialist:
http://www.jobs.ie/ApplyForJob.aspx?Id=652847

This is actaully the same job in the same sompany as advertised by Irish Jobs. BTW Jobs.ie was purchased by Irish Jobs a year and a half ago.

Loadza Jobs - SEO JobLoadza Jobs made the adverts sound better by naming the job Online Search manager (SEO/SEM)
http://www.loadzajobs.ie/view-job-details.jobs?jobId=1077057

The Job Description finishes with the very funny sentence:

“Please do not apply if you have not got a good solid knowledge of the internet.”

That clearly shows they know what they are looking for!

Recruit Ireland…. nothing? About 20 different agencies have a job that appears in the search result for the word SEO, but no SEO jobs from the job site itself. Do they not need a SEO staff like the rest of the ob boards? Do they not trust the web site to deliver the candidate and have advertised in their papers?

Monster have a new site with a bit strange front page, and again they are not looking for a SEO specialist in Ireland. In all fairness, their SEO needs are probably managed from the head office in the US.

Ok, Ok,… EmployIreland.ie – no we are not looking for the SEO Specialist, we do have our SEO Consultant (that is available for projects!).

Categories
Google Jobs Recruitment Search Engine SEO SERP

Is the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) a compulsory skill for The Online Recruitment Marketing Manager?

The ‘usual’ Marketing Manger in the recruitment industry in Ireland up until a few years had his job divided into the traditional offline marketing efforts (even a guerrilla marketing falls into this here!) and the online marketing. Online marketing consisted of purchasing the subscriptions on the job boards, getting the recruitment web site done up, and perhaps purchasing a banner or similar advertisement from the news portals. And it was all well back then, and most of the actual work could easily be outsourced to an external vendor – a marketing agency. And then came Google…

Google messed up the life of a marketing manager, simply because someone up in the management got an idea to ask a question:

Why do job hunters not apply to our web site and instead go to the job boards, and we have to pay for advertising there? Surely we can do a good site as well?!

The classic advertising or marketing agency failed to deliver a single visitor from eh Google search engine, so Google invented Google AdWords. Being the number crunchers and statistical people by nature, the Google failed to understand who will be the end users of their AdWords tools, so the interface was all in numbers, percentages, and zillions of statistical acronyms. You really needed a PhD in statistics to understand anything there. So a new breed of consultants surfaced, the Google AdWords Management Consultants. Most Irish recruitment marketing managers even today fail to understand they do need to hire them to manage their AdWords campaigns. It simply undermines their management authority to outsource management of their precious budgets. Jet they didn’t really care for the statistics in school., but are ‘creative’ people by nature.

When enough Irish online recruiters, and those who wanted to become ones, started using Google AdWords to drive the precious job seekers to their recruitment web sites, the price of the visitor started climbing up. And up… So the Google AdWords became too expensive for the generalist recruitment, and the new breed of marketers surfaced up in Ireland the SEO Consultants.

My Definition:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a ‘science’ (is it?) that defines the elements that affect search engine ranking of a web site for a particular keyword in a set search engine.

So how can a SEO Consultant help a Online Recruitment Marketing Manger in Ireland? Well a SEO guy can help ‘optimise’ the recruiters web site so that it gains higher ranking for the recruitment related keywords (or phrases) or for some other (industry or location) related search keywords. A search keyword or search phrase is the text that people using the search engine type to perform the search. So in short, a SEO consultants job is to change the web site so that the web site gets more traffic. In the recruitment industry – it means more free visitors – more applications – more CVs – more placements!

This is where it gets very confusing to our Irish Online Marketing Manager. The SEO Consultant simple does not speak the same language. Also there is absolutely nothing exact in the SEO!? There is no formula (Google keeps it as a Coca Cola recipe!), nothing really to back up what the SEO Consultant is ‘preaching’.

The effect of this falling behind in the ever changing knowledge of running the online business is very beneficial for the Irish Jobs Boards. Since absolutely no Irish recruitment agency have ever made a substantial effort to make a web site that would have a high visitor numbers, they simply have to purchase traffic from Google AdWords or completely rely on their advertisement on the job boards. There is a limited success they achieve with newsletters where they offer a iPod Nano raffle for a CV submitted, or a bit of Radio and print advertisements. But all those traditional marketing efforts combined bring only a small fraction of het CVs that a well optimised recruitment web site bring in Ireland today.

Therefore a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a compulsory skill for The Online Recruitment Marketing Manager in Ireland today.