SEO for recruitment agencies: win both candidates and clients

Two audiences, two funnels

Candidates search for a job title plus a place, often with words like remote, part-time or salary. Hiring managers search for a recruitment agency in a sector or city and compare a few firms. Job boards such as Indeed or LinkedIn win the first group by sheer volume, so the agency's edge is niche focus.

We usually pick a lane. A specialist firm in, say, accounting or engineering roles can own those phrases in its region. A generalist firm should focus on employer pages and treat jobs as a supporting feature.

Job pages and Google for Jobs

Google can show job listings directly in search when pages carry valid JobPosting structured data. It needs a title, description, hiring organization, location, a valid-through date and, where applicable, salary information. Agencies often get this wrong when the real employer is hidden.

• Add JobPosting markup to every job page and keep it in sync with your applicant system.
• Remove or mark expired jobs so that Google does not send candidates to dead pages.
• Use real salary ranges where you have them. Pay transparency rules are changing in several US states and countries, so check with your lawyer.
• Give each job a stable URL and avoid generating separate URLs for every filter combination.

Applicant systems such as, for example, Bullhorn, JobAdder or Greenhouse differ in what they output. We test your feed before building anything on top.

Page plan for a recruitment site

Candidate data is personal data. If you serve the UK, Ireland or EU, GDPR applies, and you should have a clear privacy notice. Our GDPR website checklist covers the basics, though you should confirm details with your lawyer.

Employer pages that bring hiring clients

Hiring managers do not read job feeds. They read pages that tell them how fast you can shortlist, what you charge and how you handle a candidate who drops out. We write one page per sector you recruit in, built around a real question such as how to hire a mid-level accountant in your city, and we answer it with your process, typical timelines and the questions you ask candidates.

Case examples help when you have permission to share them. Without named clients, describe the type of role, the problem and what you did. Add a short form that asks for the role, location and urgency so your consultants can reply with something specific. Keep fee wording clear and check any claims about placements with your own records before publishing.

Link these pages to your sector candidate pages so that a visitor who started as a candidate can be offered an employer route, and the other way round. Our SEO audit checklist can help you check the basics yourself before we start.

How we run it and what it costs

We start with an audit of your job feed, sector pages and the keyword gap against two or three competing firms. Then we fix the feed and markup first because those changes show up quickly. Employer lead pages follow, written with your consultants so the process reflects how you work.

Hiring is seasonal. January and September are busy for candidate searches in many markets, and employers plan hires around budgets. We build pages two to three months before those windows. Projects start at $1,500 at $30 an hour, and the number of sectors and the quality of your job feed drive the price. See our B2B SEO services for how we approach employer pages and the main SEO services page for method.