Last week, we wrote a blog post on what Google for Jobs is, with some initial thoughts around what it means for the future of SEO in recruitment marketing. If you haven’t read that yet, I’d start there first. Since then, we’ve looked at all the examples in the public domain – from Google’s own announcement to other examples that have been posted. It was exciting to explore the functionality, and we’ll see how the full version rolls out. It was a great user experience in some regards, but there’s still a good amount of fine-tuning that needs to occur before it’s ready for “prime time.”
How to prepare your recruitment marketing SEO efforts:
Here are seven main points to consider, as we move into this “new world” of recruitment marketing SEO.
1. It’s time to revisit your job titles.
It’s always been important to have clear, concise, keyword-friendly job titles, but this greater focus on job search results amplifies that to new heights. Leave out internal jargon, unnecessary ID numbers, and the little sales pitch lines like “$5,000 SIGN ON BONUS!!!!” At the same time, don’t make them exceptionally brief and generic.
2. Focus on advertising on job sites.
The Google for Jobs rollout means there could be positive externalities from having those specific job listings show up high on a Google search. Instead of just posting that job on Careerbuilder, that job listing will now be more accessible on Careerbuilder AND Google. It may be time to re-evaluate where your paid budgets are going, to get greater visibility across the Google for Jobs partner sites.
3. Job Schemas are important now.
It’s not clear at this point if and how job schemas impact the ranking of relevant jobs, but they do at least appear to affect the way they are displayed within the search results. For example, a little clock icon appears alongside the date or time the job is posted. This correlates with those jobs using the “datePosted” job schema. In the past, Google’s stance was, “Google doesn’t use markup for ranking purposes at this time, but rich snippets can make your web pages appear more prominently in search results, so you may see an increase in traffic.”
Think of the images, star ratings, calories, and time to prepare within search results on the page for a chicken soup recipe. I wanted to share a link to the Google Webmasters post, but strangely enough it now redirects to the Schema.org FAQs page. I did locate this page for Schema usage on archive.org, in case you want to review Google’s stance. Their “at this time” phrasing does give me pause.
4. A mobile-friendly, responsively designed career site is crucial.
Mobile friendliness is already built into Google’s core algorithm, and you want to give job seekers a clean experience once they reach your career site job descriptions. These jobs will have the ability to appear directly within the Google for Jobs results.
5. View the apply process from a mobile perspective.
Our data has shown large gains in mobile traffic to career sites over the past few years. Be cognizant of the experience once users have found the listing on their mobile device, considering that these listings will be easier to find from mobile devices than they once were.
6. Ask what else can your career site can do.
Since you could very easily have greater visibility from Google for more competitive queries, what else is there for the job seeker? Is there a Talent Community to opt into, so that they can stay up to date on new jobs? Is there additional job-focused content that helps tell the story of “why should I work here?”
7. Know where you’re driving paid traffic from the Google for Jobs partner sites.
It should be to your mobile-friendly career site that checks off the boxes mentioned above. Here is a screenshot taken from the Google keynote speech:
Google for Jobs is an exciting development in the SEO for Jobs space, and one that we will learn much more about in the coming weeks and months as it rolls out live to everyone. It will be interesting to see how the live version varies from the beta one that’s being tested now. Best of luck to all in the digital recruitment space as we embark into this new age.
If you’re finding that you are lacking in any of the above-mentioned areas, reach out to us and we can start a conversation about how we can help address your digital needs.
- Google for Jobs Paid Ads To Be Discontinued: What It Means for Your Pay-Per-Click Job Advertising - April 11, 2024
- Bing Rebrands ChatGPT Integration as “Copilot” – What It Means for Your Career Site - January 4, 2024
- Google’s Generative AI Search for Talent Acquisition - November 8, 2023
- How You Can Use ChatGPT’s AI to Accelerate Career Site Content Creation - February 21, 2023
- Top 10 Things to Consider When Building a Career Site Page - December 12, 2022
- ‘Google for Jobs’ Quality Control Guidelines Part 2: What Does the Data Say? - June 24, 2022
- ‘Google for Jobs’ Quality Control Guidelines: Are They Working? - May 12, 2022
- How to Find Job Seekers Who Aren’t Seeking Jobs: Part 2 - September 24, 2021
- How to Find Job Seekers Who Aren’t Seeking Jobs: Part 1 - July 14, 2021
- The Value of SEO in this New Era of Work - May 28, 2020
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