Before you start to design and build your recruitment website, you might have some predetermined ideas about the keywords you think people will use to find your website. This is quite normal and very often people get hooked on a number of different keywords and the typical approach is to perform a search on Google using a fixed set of keywords, clicking through to the first 5 or 10 pages.
For some people, this can almost become a daily ritual, checking the SEO performance of their competitors and observing what changes are occurring in the ranking order of websites. The Google search results are always in a state of change and the results can change every day, and even several times a day.
Dealing with Reality
Before you go live, you will have preconceived ideas about the search phrases you predict people will use to find your website on search engines.
It gets much more interesting after your website goes live, because you will start to build up some analytics data, and this can reveal the actual search words people are using to click through to your website.
Search Analytics: these are the real search queries displayed in Google Webmaster Tools from real people, and how your job site is ranked. Please use the menu for extra data on:
An impression means your website registered an appearance on the search results, but it does not means it was clicked. CTR means click through rate and position means how close your website is to position 1 on page 1.
There will always be surprises and you can start to use this information to your advantage. For example, if you discover that your website is performing well against a keyword phrase, then you could consider expanding the scope of that phrase in an attempt to draw in more traffic. However, do it with caution because we believe it is best not to overload your web pages with search engine keywords, because if the search engines think you are trying to gain an unfair advantage, they can downgrade your ranking and push your web pages lower on the search engine results pages.
The raising and lowering of your page ranking can happen automatically, as a result of the Google algorithm and the way it sorts/ranks billions of different web pages.
Why do the Search Results Change Frequently?
Our headline described SEO as a moving target, so let's explain why. Understanding this phenomenon means we have to look at 'PageRank', the algorithm which was originally used by Google Search to rank websites in their search engine results. PageRank has been superseded by more sophisticated algorithmic models, known as 'Penguin' and 'Panda'.
Whether it is PageRank, Penguin, Panda or something else, the important point is that the Google algorithm is always changing and this means the search results will vary over time. This also means that even if you made no changes whatsoever to your website, your search ranking will often change due to modifications to the Google algorithm.
Another important factor is that the ranking signals which influence the algorithm will change over time. A good example is 'Meta Keywords', which used to have a big impact on the search results. Currently it is believed 'Meta Keywords' have little or no effect on SEO.
Another example is the impact of social media on SEO performance. 10 years ago, social media was not even on the radar in respect of SEO planning, but when Facebook and Twitter became very dominant and mainstream, social media popularity started to play a big role in SEO performance.
Discover New SEO Techniques and Enjoy the Experience
As mentioned in our executive summary, it can be very rewarding when you see your hard work turning into real traffic, generating new leads for your recruitment business.
There is always something new to learn in the world of SEO and the challenge is finding out which techniques work best for you.
Creating your SEO plan and getting results is rather like navigating a very large ship in the ocean. When you want to turn, for the best results you have to look ahead, cruise at the right speed, allow the vessel to change direction slowly and then you will make headway more quickly. There are not many shortcuts when it comes to SEO, and making changes can take time to ripple through into improved search results.
SEO is about making small methodical decisions which combine to help you to see the bigger picture and drive more traffic to your website.
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