Back to School Time - SEO Style

Although SEO seems to be the new buzz in recruiting web 2.0 strategies, it has actually been used for years as a tactic to increase sales for online businesses.

SEO and how it fits into the recruiting industry is greatly misunderstood. I completely agree with Marvin in that SEO is not enough , but it makes me wonder who said that it was the golden ticket to begin with.

SEO Is just a tool

At the end of the day, SEO is not the end all be all. It is one tool that can be very effective to have in your tool box. No doubt, if done correctly, search engine optimization can work wonders for getting your jobs seen by people using search engines but it goes beyond just a platform or technique that helps to get your jobs visible in Google. In fact, it’s really about optimizing your entire employment brand on the Internet.

SEO may not be for everyone

1. There's more than just keywords and a few meta tags that go into a successful SEO strategy, if you’re not willing to look at SEO as a long term investment, it might not be the best fit for you. Maybe something more instant like SEM (PPC) might be more what you’re after.
   
2. Go where your candidates are – If the jobs you have available are not what people are searching for within the search engines then maybe you don’t need to do a whole comprehensive strategy. Maybe you just run a basic SEO strategy that strengthens your employment brand.
   

Note: Keep in mind that 70% of search engine queries are unique, just because a keyword research tool like the Google Adwords tool says that a phrase was not searched does not necessarily mean that it won’t be in the future.

SEO Misconceptions


Can a service provider guarantee a first page ranking? No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. See Google webmaster tools.


Using the .jobs domain extension will ensure search engine visibility. The .jobs domain in itself will not automatically help with your search engine visibility. Those who believe otherwise don’t fully understand the way a search engine treats newly-registered domains. Search engine trust is a very important factor in the visibility of your career site. A newly established domain -- .jobs or otherwise -- has not had time to build search engine trust.

Search engine trust includes a variety of factors including but not limited to: when was the domain registered, is there quality content on the domain, is content updated frequently, are there quality links pointing to the domain, etc. In reality, the .jobs domain has more of an employment brand benefit than SEO.

Search engines cannot access my content if using an ATS - It is true that most Applicant tracking systems put up technical barriers that prevent the search engines from being able to access their job content. But there is a work around: If you can get an RSS/XML feed of your jobs and upload the feed to search engines as well as place the feed on a page that search engines can access, your job content will be indexed. This is not an SEO solution but it will allow content that was once hidden to be found.

At the end of the day candidates use a variety of sources to look for jobs. Find out where your candidates are and advertise/be visible in those places, simple as that.

Microsoft /Yahoo Deal - Are Your SEO Vendors Prepared?

The July 29th announcement of a search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft means that the search landscape is changing significantly.

It's said that the combined share of the market that Microsoft's Bing search engine will have is nearly 30%. Time will tell if that percentage holds true.

Key Takeaways of the Mergers

• The term of the agreement is 10 years.
  


• Microsoft’s Bing will be driving search engine results on Yahoo properties
  


• Yahoo will provide the sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
  


• Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business.
  


• Self-serve advertising for both companies will go through Microsoft’s Pay-Per-Click platform (AdCenter)
  

What Does This Mean for SEO?

Being Bing’s results will power search results for both the Bing and Yahoo search engine. Organizations can’t afford NOT to optimize their career sites to perform within the Bing search engine.

How to Optimize for the Bing Decision Engine

Since Bing is MSN with new name and slightly upgraded algorithm the SEO techniques for Bing will remain somewhat the same as for MSN. Here are few SEO tips for Bing

1. Content is king - This holds true for all search engines but keyword rich content seems even more important on Bing, given the way that it organizes and presents information in the search engine results pages (SERPS). Preliminary research indicates that Bing favors pages with at least 300 words of text.
   


2. Domain Age is Key - Bing appears to put a lot of stock into how long a domain has been registered. Since there’s no way to artificially build up a domains age, if you have a newer domain concentrate on all the other factors.
   


3. Keyword rich domains do well - Domains that include keywords seem enjoy good visibility in Bing.
   


4. Sitemap Submission is important - Be sure to submit your sitemap to Bing webmaster tools
   


5. Keyword placement matters - Ensuring you have your keywords in all the right places is imperative with Bing, especially within page titles, header tags, and link text.
   


6. Authoritative inbound links are important - Although this is agreed to be essential for any search engine, Bing appears to act even more favorably toward inbound links, particularly those that are from sites that also have a high number of quality links.
   


7. Linking Out - In the past SEO's have been very careful abut linking out to external websites as yo not to decrease their page rank of the site being optimized. However, it appears that Bing likes external links and increases the page ranking of those pages that have more of them.
   


8. Title Tags of Other Pages - When you link to an external site, ensure that the title tags of the pages you have linked out to have the keyword that is most relevant to your page.

As SEO's become more familiar with Bing and its algorithm I expect that this list will change. If you have additional tips on optimizing for the Bing decision engine, feel free to post them here.