Optimize Your Career Page SEO Through SEO

With an increasingly competitive job market, companies compete in creativity to increase their online visibility. Among the tools they have, we notably count SEO - a marketing discipline that can transform into a real recruitment lever. In this article, we explain why and how to optimize your career page SEO through SEO.

SEO, definition

SEO (for Search Engine Optimization) refers to a set of methods allowing a website to obtain more online visibility. How? By positioning itself at the top of Google search result pages!

In practice, SEO allows obtaining natural (therefore free) traffic to a website. It should not be confused with SEA (for Search Engine Advertising) which is paid referencing (unlike SEO), and concretely amounts to running online advertising campaigns.

💡 Unlike SEA, which allows obtaining immediate results via paid clicks, SEO is a tool that bears fruit in the long term. This discipline therefore requires deploying regular efforts, over time.

What impact can SEO have on your career page?

But then, how can SEO, which is a marketing tool, concern you and serve your recruiter interests? It's simple: investing in an SEO content strategy can have multiple benefits for your career page. Explanations 👇:

More visibility for published job offers

Since 2019, it's now possible to search for a job directly on Google, without going through Job boards... Indeed, just type the word "job" on Google to see many job ads appear on the results page. Google's goal: to reference almost all job offers online. In other words, the search engine offers there a superb opportunity to strengthen the visibility of your job ads!

Generate more traffic sustainably

SEO allows generating traffic in the long term. The more you offer rich content with information, the more these contents will have keywords - and it's then these keywords that will allow you to rise in Google search results.

💡 A well-optimized career page will also allow you to generate more applications (in marketing, we would speak of "leads" - contacts with potential clients).

Gain credibility

Deploying efforts to optimize your career page SEO necessarily implies creating high added-value content. To position your career website on Google sustainably, you can for example create a blog, on which you'll share useful content, like tips in recruitment field, intended for your potential candidates. A blog will also allow you to share your company's news or its sector of activity, your team life... An excellent way to boost your employer brand, in short!

💡 A good SEO strategy must allow staying competitive against competitors who invest in marketing strategies - and notably in a content strategy.

SEO: best practices to optimize your career page

The most beautiful or original content is not very useful if it's never read. That's why, whether writing a specialized article, a job offer, or a product sheet, it's absolutely essential to ensure this content positions correctly on Google, to attract as many clicks as possible. How? By applying these best practices:

Choose your job title carefully

Logically, this title should be the main keyword (also called "target query") of your page - and it must correspond exactly with words typed by candidates on Google to search for this job. The reason? You want to attract candidates looking for this position!

💡 SEO tools like Uber Suggest, Google Trends, or Answer the public can help you find the most searched terms by candidates on Google (which will therefore allow you to formulate the adapted job title).

Highlight this job title on your job offer.

Once the job title is defined, you'll need to write content that shares its semantic field - a sine qua non condition if you want to position yourself on your target query!

👉 For example: if your new job offer is looking for a Front-End developer, your main keyword is therefore "Front-End developer" and the keywords that should be associated with it are therefore terms like "user interface", "web development languages", "HTML", "CSS", "JavaScript", "responsive", "tags", "W3C standards", etc.

Also think about highlighting these keywords in strategic places on your page, like your titles/subtitles, but also in your image files, and in their alternative text.

Specify the job location in the page title

This way, you can filter applications and ensure they're as qualified as possible. Job location can for example appear in the main title (Meta title) of the page. You can also insert it in the meta-description (this is an HTML tag that displays on Google results and summarizes in two lines a web page's content - see example below)

Offer a pleasant browsing experience to candidates.

We mentioned this point in a previous article: in 2022, a good part of job searches are performed on mobile... Your career page must therefore be designed accordingly, and offer simple and fluid navigation, even on mobile. To learn more, don't hesitate to consult our article dedicated to the subject of mobile responsive career pages).

Optimizing your career page SEO through SEO, in conclusion

Well known by marketing experts, natural referencing has no equal to increase a company's attractiveness in potential candidates' eyes. In addition to allowing you to receive more applications (notably spontaneous applications), a well-conducted content strategy can strengthen your employer brand and attractiveness!