93% of online experiences
begin with a search engine
(searchenginejournal.com)
The trend of people starting their searches on Google as opposed to going directly to their favorite sites, seems to be valid across all categories including cars, real estate and jobs.
In my opinion, such trend presents an opportunity for your careers page. You now have an equal chance at grabbing some of the traffic flowing through that same search engine funnel.
So the question now is, how do you maximize this opportunity, and route the highest number of quality job-seekers to your own career page?
Well just like any E-commerce site for example, two things need to happen:
- Your careers page needs to come up on page 1 or 2 on Google, and;
- Once job-seekers land on your page, you need to then convert them into applications
The following are key points you need to address in order to attract job seekers to your careers page, and convert them into applications.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Careers page has to be Search Engine Optimized for Google.
Google crawls the web including your careers page on a regular basis, and so you want the Google Crawler to highly rank your job ad content against the keywords job seekers might be using when searching for jobs like yours.
For example if you are adverting an engineering job in a Sydney location, then you want your careers page to come up on page 1 on Google when people are searching on “Engineering jobs in Sydney”.
Take all the major job-boards, for example – they spend serious money on their SEO strategy. If they’re doing it, you should be too.
A few tips on how to improve the SEO of your career page:
- HTML and Meta Tags: This is pertaining to how the job ad pages are coded on your careers page. In the code behind the page, you can place some content that’s not visible on the page, but search engines like Google take them into account when calculating the relevancy of your page for various job-based searches
- Backlink: A backlink is any link received by a web page from another web page. Search engines often use backlinks for determining a website’s ranking, popularity and importance
- Rich Snippets: Rich snippets are designed to summarize the content of a page in a way that makes it even easier for users to understand what the page is about in the search result of a search engine
- URL rewriting: The actual URL of the job ad needs to be built in a way that includes the search keywords. For example: http://careers.barminco.com.au/job-details/query/mining-engineering-vacation-program-qld-andamp-tas-201314/in/townsville-and-northern-qld/5444626/ – as you can see all the search keywords are included in the URL of the ad – for example Google will highly rank this job ad page against searches like “mining or engineering jobs in Townsville”
Mobile & Tablet Optimization (multi-device optimized)
According to Google Research:
25%
Of job-related searches on Google,
are done from mobiles.
57%
Of users won’t recommend a business
with a poorly-designed mobile site, and;
Have turned to a competitor’s site
after a bad mobile experience.
So considering the above research from Google, you might agree that it’s critical that your career page works on mobiles or you will be missing out on a significant chunk of your potential applications.
Creating a positive experience while browsing and reading the jobs on your career page is important, but it’s only a part of the problem.
The other key factor is the Job Application experience.
For example, you can’t expect someone to answer 10 questions with 50 words each, while applying from their phone sitting on the bus on their way home from work!
Neither can you expect them to attach their resumes from their iPhone – right?
One solution is to give them the option of SMS(ing) or emailing the job ad to themselves, so they can apply for it later on from a PC.
Another solution is to offer job seekers the ability to apply to your job ads using their social media profiles; this way it would take them 5 clicks and they’re done.
Social Connectivity
Your career page has to provide features such as applying from social profiles (OpenID) such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+.
Your career page must also offer social sharing – job seekers might decide to share your jobs on their Facebook page because they have a few friends that could be interested in one of your jobs.
Design has to connect with your Job Seeker audience
Your career page has to connect with your particular target audience just like the rest of the site. So ensure your page has the same branding, logos, and ‘attitude’ used elsewhere. Make no mistake, this is marketing to the core – you’re not the only person competing for the most outstanding talent.
Conclusion
Successful SEO implementation has leveled the playing field. You don’t need to be a massive player with significant resources at your disposal. Done correctly, your career page can land itself on page 1 of a Google search.
However, if and when job seekers find it on Google, it would be a waste of application potential and even damaging to your brand, if job seekers don’t have good experience both while reading your job ad content and while applying to them… and that’s no matter what device they came to it from.
As seen on the HC Online website & Human Capital Business Review:
