SEO Letting You Down? How to Boost Your Website Ranking Part 1
By Rick Maré, Founder & CEO, JXT Connect with Rick on LinkedIn
Being part of the digital recruitment industry, we have learned how important Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is in driving our client acquisition and candidate attraction. SEO helps you to capture relevant traffic and engage them with your website. So you may ask what are the ways recruiters could use to take advantage of SEO to improve their brand, services, content and connect with the right audience. Read on to find out.
1. Do your keyword research
The first thing you want to do is identify precisely what keywords and phrases you want to focus on. Google’s Keyword Planner has been set up to help you do exactly that. Use this tool and start searching specific phrases like “Sydney Recruiter” and note the average monthly searches and competition level of these keywords, whilst looking at other ideas. It’s a good idea to include a location in your keywords to see how results differ throughout the regions you operate in.
Once you’ve found a few phrases, you can use Google to find alternative ideas to work with. However, use an incognito tab in your Internet browser to prevent Google from accessing your cached search history and interfering with your research. After you’ve searched your keywords, scroll to the bottom and look at suggested related searches for more ideas. To keep track of your research, index each potential keyword or phrase for each recruitment solution you provide, industry and job you recruit for, and location you operate in into a spreadsheet.
2. Check your current website ranking
After you’ve documented the keywords and phrases you want to focus on, you’ll need to evaluate where your website currently ranks within Google’s search results. A great way to do that is to use free tools like Positionly or sign up for a free trial with Alexa. Load your websites into these platforms, input your keywords, and this software will evaluate your current keyword performance. Additionally, you can periodically track your website’s performance by using an incognito browser and searching your keywords in Google, and monitor any change in your website’s ranking.
When you’re evaluating your current website’s SEO performance, it’s a good idea to check your page loading speed through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. This testing platform will evaluate your website’s content and provide a grade based on how quickly your pages load on all devices. If your grade is too low, this page speed tool will also provide some useful advice on how to improve your loading speed.
MAIN TAKEAWAYS
“Keyword research is crucial to the success of your Search Engine Optimisation. Use Google’s Keyword Planner and search engine in an incognito browser to identify what keywords you should be targeting”
“Track your current SEO performance and website ranking by loading your websites and target keywords into tools like Positionly or Alexa”
I hope this gets you thinking of the simple steps you could take to kick-start your SEO. Have fun and I’ll be sharing more in my next blog articles on this subject.
About the author
Rick Maré is the founder and CEO of JXT, the number one provider of cloud-based digital marketing solutions for recruiters and corporate recruiters. Rick has coached thousands of recruiters, empowering them to take their businesses and careers to the next level. Connect with Rick on LinkedIn.
