As a new or established recruitment agency, one of your ongoing business objective is building or increasing your agency’s online brand within the market. A way that you can achieve this is by considering adding local SEO to your website.
Local SEO has become more and more prominent over the past few years due to Google’s rapid shift to champion local search results; the idea being that local search results will be more relevant to the user and more likely to provide the most useful answer. This is backed up by HubSpot’s survey which shows that, “76% of local search result in a phone call.”
The beneficial thing about local SEO is that, as a recruitment agency, you can implement these simple tactics cost effectively and appear in the top search results for candidates and clients who are searching in your area. Effective local SEO can, therefore, drive more and higher quality traffic to your website. So, what is local SEO and why should it be a priority for you?
NB: Even if your target clients and candidates are national rather than just local, a strong local SEO presence should be an important component of your online strategy because you still need to show Google where you are operating from.
What Is Local SEO For Recruitment Agencies?
In a nutshell, local SEO comprises of optimising your online presence for local searches in Google and other search engines. As long as Google can identify where the search is being performed from, whether that is through a registered IP address or on a mobile or tablet, the search results provided will give preference to local businesses. Therefore by sending strong signals to Google that your recruitment agency is operating from a particular location, you can improve the chances of your agency appearing higher up in local search results.
How Does Local SEO Work?
Here is a simple example: You own a recruitment agency called LegalEx Recruiters based in Birmingham, UK and your primary focus is to build a healthy client and candidate base within the city and surrounding area. With a optimised website, you employ local SEO tactics which clearly espouse to search engines that you are a legal recruitment agency operating in Birmingham, UK.
LegalEx Recruiters are now more likely to appear in local searches not just for “Legal Recruitment Agencies in Birmingham” but will also compete for generic search terms such as “Legal Recruitment Agencies in the UK”.
Attracting only clients or candidates in your local area may not only be your business objective, but as we’ve mentioned local SEO can still prove beneficial. By sending SEO signals to Google about the nature and location of your business, you should start to see your site boosted in rankings for relevant search terms in general.
What Are The Benefits Of Local SEO for Recruitment Agencies?
1. Less competition
By focusing on local SEO, you’ll be dealing with less competition – a stark comparison to national search, where you’re vying for the attention of your target audience along with every other recruitment agency in your specialist sectors.
Optimising your website for local search may reach a smaller population, but they will be more targeted and therefore higher quality searchers which should translate into more inquiries from both clients and candidates.
2. Save money
Implementing local SEO can be a more cost-effective way to spread the word about your recruitment agency. Once you have optimised your website for local searches, all you have to do is monitor, maintain and review – which will require minimal resources. The more time your website is optimised for local searches, the more high quality traffic your website should attract from local searches.
Google AdWords and online adverts may be a tempting alternative route to try, but the expense is continuous and rarely sustainable.
3. Gain more visibility
As a new or established recruitment agency operating in a local area, one of your key challenges is gaining visibility to the market. To create visibility, you may be more inclined to try more traditional methods like speaking or sponsoring local events or advertising in print media. While these can be successful, they often take a lot of time, considerable investment and there are no guarantees as to how successful they will be.
When local SEO is implemented correctly, it will provide you with more online visibility to your target audience and can be easily measured on Google Analytics.
How To Implement Local SEO?
It can be relatively straightforward to start implementing local SEO tactics, especially with the wealth of information online about the subject. A particularly useful resource that you can use is the comprehensive Local SEO Checklist from Moz. This will take you through the steps you need, from checking how easy it is for candidates or clients to find you right through to each individual criteria to ensure that you’re appearing in localised results.
SEO is a key building block of inbound marketing, but to be effective, it needs to be supported by a wider strategy. Find out how you can get started with inbound marketing by downloading our free eBook today.
