If you want to attract recruits, then the internet is the place to be – but to get noticed, you need to get to the top of those search engine rankings. Michael Millar demystifies the ‘dark art’ of search engine optimisation

Critics say that search engine optimisation (SEO) is a 'dark art', and when you start delving into a world populated by electronic spiders and Googlebots you would be forgiven for seeing their point.

In fact, SEO can turn your website from a shopfront for your firm into an integral part of the business — one that will continue to work for you long after the last person has left the building for the night.

Richard Baxter, head of SEO at recruitment website specialist 4Mat, says it could give your website "design, functionality, content, links and experience".

He adds: "SEO will allow an internet user to find your site (or a specific page on your site) on the first page of the main search engine results pages, allow them to find the right content, and follow with a 'conversion', for example, a CV registration."

Winning the race to the top of the search engine rankings is incredibly important. The 2008 National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS) reported that a third of job-seekers found an agency's website through a search engine like Google rather than going to it directly.

It also showed that the number of people who only used the internet to search for work doubled to 9% in the past 12 months. If your site is buried deep in the list of search results — even on page two — then there's every chance it will be ignored.

To avoid internet oblivion, you need to have a website that a search engine deems relevant and important. It does this by sending out electronic 'spiders' to crawl around your site and analyse how user-friendly it is. They will rate you on 'keywords' on your pages, the number of outside sites that link to you (and how authoritative they are) as well as how long the site has been up and how often it is updated - and that's just for starters.

These spiders will be among the best recruiters you could ever have, potentially sending hundreds of thousands of internet users your way — so it's advisable to tend to their needs.

But this can be an expensive business. Good SEO can cost thousands of pounds (and hopefully safeguard you from cowboys using so-called 'black hat' practices that fool the search engines and can get you blacklisted). So is it worth it or just another technological fad?

Bruce Stander, managing director of SEO specialists Optimal Internet, says SEO makes sure an agency's jobs and services are in front of the right audience, leading to rich rewards.

"Over the course of a year in a very competitive market like IT, we would expect a cost to benefit ratio of around one to 10," he says. "With particular niche clients it can be one to 25."

Of course it's his job to say this, so what do recruiters themselves think?

Sophie Relf, head of marketing at Totaljobs.com, is certainly a convert.

"No online organisation can afford not to do SEO," she says. "We have SEO policy which affects all web page updates or new web pages and all site launches."

Bottom of the searches

Joe Slavin, chief executive of Fish4, says until January last year the company hadn't taken SEO very seriously.

"Historically we were at the bottom of website searches," he says. "So we hired an agency to make us sexier to the spiders.

"Now we get 100,000 clicks a month alone from people who found us by typing in the word 'jobs'. Before it was probably close to zero because we were so far back you wouldn't have found us.

"Now 50% of our marketing budget is targeted online — we know where you have come from and what your behaviour is like when you get there."

Damian Rossi, global marketing director of Premier Group, which recently relaunched its la crème recruitment website, says the guiding principle is the online presence needed to reflect the company's offline offering.

"We used in-house expertise and external consultants," he says. "The in-house team really understand the nuts and bolts of designing websites, whereas the outside perspective challenged us to reconsider things we were doing."

This meant "long days and long nights" trying to work out just how clients and candidates think and use the web and what words they use to search, as well as how they categorise and describe jobs and organisations.

This was done using web analysis tools and then taking the findings to the company's consultants and asking if they rang true.

Number three on Google

Rossi says the same process, when applied to another of the company's sites, had seen it shoot up to number three in Google searches and stay there since the re-launch in December.

It seems SEO is effective in even the most unlikely areas.

Lesley Smith, regional manager for driver recruitment agency protemp4logistics, says traditionally the company had not focused on the internet because they didn't think drivers would register online.

However, protemp's SEO overhaul shows how a bit of lateral thought can really pay off.

"A lot of drivers don't feel up to date with new rules and regulations, so we put all this information on the site and linked it to the professional body," she says. "People won't necessarily apply but what they see might make them visit a branch."

Within six months of the site relaunch, there was a 10-fold increase in visitor numbers. Smith says SEO had led to a 25-30% increase in business, with half the candidates in Bristol now coming via the internet.

While some are appreciating the great benefits SEO can bring, Luke McKend, industry head of careers and classifieds at Google, says the recruitment sector has been slow to catch on.

"Job candidates spend so much time online, that's where you've got to be — but as an industry, recruitment is not keeping up," he says. "Consultancies still seem to be using fairly traditional routes - print and job boards - when their website could be an amazing resource."

Job board visits falling

To do this is to ignore the current trend in consumer habits. NORAS figures show visits to job boards have fallen year-on-year for the past five years.

Ian Coyle, managing director of Barclay Simpson, another company that has recently given its website the SEO treatment, says a good website is a true asset in the mercenary world of job boards, which try to be all things to all people.

But he warns SEO is not something that can be done, then ignored.

"Some people say it's a one-off process but it's not if you are in a dynamic business," says Coyle.

This was echoed by Rossi, who says "the day you launch [a new website] it's potentially out of date".

Many recruiters might ask if they can afford to keep spending money on SEO ad infinitum, but those who have already done so would no doubt reply "can you afford not to?", as they stare down from the lofty heights of their search engine rankings.



DOs and DON'Ts of Search Engine Optimisation:

• DO make pages for users, not for search engines — make sure you understand customer and client needs.
• DON'T deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
• DO avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. Ask: "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• DON'T participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking.
• DO avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• DON'T load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• DO choose a supplier based on their experience in your marketplace and check their references.
• DON'T stop talking to your supplier about your needs — a good ongoing relationship will help you stay up to date and limit your costs.

Sources: Google / Optimal Internet