March/April 2007 Newsletter
Newsletter March/April 2007
In this issue:
- How can recruiters ensure career pages on their company websites are listed in the top 10 of a Google search?
- Upcoming PageUp Events
- Congratulations...
- Opinion Poll - Vote now!
How can recruiters ensure career pages on their company websites are listed in the top 10 of a Google search?
For most HR people, posting career content online consists of simply writing the content and passing it on to the people in charge of the company website. Leaving it to your IT department reduces potential opportunities, which many organisations simply cannot afford to do with this current market shortage of candidates. One of the biggest challenges for recruiters is to accept that managing their careers page is not as difficult as it sounds.
If a website is optimised, which means it is designed to be fully readable for search engines to browse, organisations can start putting their faith into Google, Yahoo and ninemsn to fill positions, thus reducing the cost of advertising on job boards �?" which can be an enormous drain on any company.In this final article in a two-part series on how to improve your attraction technology techniques, I�?Tll explain 13 ways to optimise your career pages to improve the probability that more people will read your website and that your organisation is continually listed in the top 10 of search engines.
TIP 1: Before you embark on your online strategy, revamp review some company websites that do search optimisation well. These include; Valero, Microsoft, First Credit and most job boards.
TIP 2: Determine your target audiences, e.g. what demographics are you targeting to attract employees and for what roles? Older, younger, part-time, full-time, engineers, marketing, etc. Focus on the areas of greatest need or most critical roles for your organisation.
TIP 3: Before you write an ad, plan your search words first, in line with your target. Build-in team-word meanings or phrases, as opposed to generic common words, which everyone else uses. If it�?Ts for a legal position, write �?olegal firm�?�, �?olegal job�?� or �?olegal counsel�?�. There is no limitation to the number of search words you register. The more words, the better the chance you�?Tll reach the top 10.
TIP 4: Always write great content. The more uniquely written it is and the more often keywords are woven into your content, the more people will visit your site.
TIP 5: Ensure your content is readable to search engines. Many companies use a third party solution to post jobs on their website, such as Seek or MyCareer. A significant negative result of this approach is that pages produced via a third party solution are invisible to search engines. To find out if a job description on your site is readable, do the following:
- Go to the page with your job description
- Highlight and copy the URL
- Go to Google and paste in the URL
- Click search
If the page does not appear in Google�?Ts index, you�?Tll see a �?osorry, no information is available for the URL�?� message.
TIP 6: Check with your IT department that your site is not constructed using �?~frame�?T technology. Most search engines cannot index a framed page.
TIP 7: Search engines recognise statistics and numbers. If statistics are relevant to your page, ensure you include them.
TIP 8: Ensure you keep the important content at the top of the page. Think how a newspaper article is written. Keywords should be in the first sentence. Search engines (spiders) read this to determine rankings. Some engines will place a higher rating of importance based on where they find the text on the page. Keywords should also be peppered through the page as it develops a theme, and this is important too for the search engine to pick up.
TIP 9: Search engine read the content in your title tags. Make sure that your career pages have titles that represent your page�?Ts content and that the title is short, less than 60 characters, and always includes your primary keyword(s), for example: �?oLegal Counsel for Law Firms�?�.
TIP 10: Always keep your career pages updated. Search engines are attracted to fresh content and constantly updated websites. Make it a goal to add a new page of content every month. Writing about an employee or new company developments works well. Also, check links often. Make sure the links are still active. Dead links are not only inconvenient but also negatively influence your rankings, especially if you have reached the top 10.
TIP 11: Target your design on your audience. Great design does not impact your rating as search engines don�?Tt have eyes for beautifully formatted text or images. All they see is content. Although, once you get in the top 10 ranking and people click through, you want to ensure your site is appealing to those people.
TIP 12: Search engines are attracted to lots of links on a page. They view the page as live and active. A site map is a good way to link all your website pages, including a link to your careers page. Make sure you don�?Tt have too many links, keep them down to less than 50.
TIP 13: Encourage other organisations to link to your careers site by having valuable content. A site linking to yours means your site is worthwhile viewing. The more links you have the more attracted the search engine is to your site.
TIP 14: Make a point to always check, at least once a month, that your site is in the top 10 list according to your search words. The way search engines search rank changes constantly, so make sure you cover every component of this list to keep your site on top.
Upcoming PageUp Events
PageUp are sponsoring the Employer Brand Global Masterclasses, lead by Brett Minchington, across Australia during May, 2007. For more information on how you can register for this event, please visit our website. PageUp will also be exhibiting at the CIPD HR Software Show in London in June, 2007. For more information on this event, please visit www.cipd.co.uk.
Congratulations�?�
�?�to Kerry McKeand, of Latrobe University, for winning our door prize from the Australasian Talent Conference. Ms McKeand has won two bottles of premium wine and a PageUp White Paper.
Opinion Poll - Vote now!
How likely is it that you would use Search Engine Optimisation techniques as part of your recruitment strategy?
Cast your vote now at www.pageuppeople.com
Tell us what you think
We�?Td love to hear what you think of this issue! Please send your comments, questions, and ideas for upcoming issues to us at: racheld@pageup.com.au. Your feedback matters to us!