9 Tips to Build the Best Recruitment Website

1. Build your site with SEO in mind

You can put as much hard work as you want into a website, but if nobody can actually find your site then it’s not going to have the desired effect.

The solution?

Search engine optimization.

SEO uses a variety of techniques to improve both the quantity and the quality of traffic to a website through organic search results. It’s not a quick-fix solution to boosting business, but does promise long-term growth and success by using a variety of different techniques to refine your website, all of which will deliver on results.

For example, link building is a key part of successful SEO and data shows that the top result on Google’s search engine results page usually has 3.8x more backlinks than those below it on page 1.

Targeting longtail keyword phrases with website content is also an established technique, with research revealing that longtail keyword phrases that are searched tend to have up to a 5% higher clickthrough rate than more general phrases.

If you’d like to see how we put SEO in action for one of our clients, check out this case study.

Basic SEO, such as optimising titles, headings and meta-descriptions, increasing page speed and using keyword research to dictate your content, can be learnt from blog posts and video tutorials, most of which can be accessed for free. All of this will increase the organic traffic coming to your website and improve your ranking on search engine results pages, helping you to be seen by more potential clients.

Investing in the services of an SEO specialist (cough cough) is the best way to start using more complex approaches to increasing your recruitment website’s visibility on search engines and ensuring that you are being found by the right people. Technical aspects such as site structure and internal links all affect a site’s SEO, and optimising these can make a big difference.

Here are three things we’d recommend you can do now to your site to help with SEO:

Improve page loading speed by compressing images and minimising plugins
Use keyword research to ensure your landing pages and website copy include key competitive phrases from your industry
Optimise your title tags and metadata with keyword phrases

2. Keep the user journey simple

Smooth and simple site navigation is vital for a successful recruitment website. It ensures that your users find what they are looking for quickly, minimising the chance of losing leads because your site was too complicated to understand.

One of the best ways to keep the user journey simple is by aligning your business aims with the website’s navigation, so that users are directed to pages that are most likely to spike their interest and produce leads. It’s important to note that the journey for clients and candidates is going to be different, so remember that both of these will need to be optimised separately.

The most important thing to focus on is getting your audience to respond to the calls to action your website is featuring, whether that is getting in contact with the agency, subscribing to emails or a newsletter, or applying for a job. Over 90% of the people who read a headline on a page also read the call to action, so you need to ensure that this text is as punchy and eye-catching as possible.

After these paths are clear and easy to follow, you can focus on more nuanced ways of ensuring effective site navigation such as working on internal links, navigation bars and overall design.

If you’re looking to make your recruitment website stand out from the crowd and generate the most interest from clients and candidates as possible then these tips and examples are a great place to start. It’s also always a good idea to look to your competitors for an idea of what you should be including or implementing if you want to stay ahead of the game.

A great example of this in action comes from the Adecco website, which has a series of calls to action on their homepage to get candidates to journey further into their site and gather information from warm leads. The phrases used are short and direct with an informal tone that stops these calls to action from being too in your face, and the use of ‘It’s easy—it only takes a few minutes’ is a particularly good idea as it lets the user know what to expect from the page they are about to see.

Take Inspiration:

Include multiple calls to action for different target customers on your homepage to maximise the number of users who click through to another page
Short and simple text is most effective with a call to action
Letting the user know what they are going to be clicking on increases the likelihood of engagement

Adecco

3. Have a strong sense of identity

Recruitment is an incredibly competitive market, and if you want to showcase what makes your agency unique, you’re going to need a website that stands out from the rest. Working with a good graphic designer is a key part of this, but so is considering different features you can add to your homepage and landing pages that will make your site memorable.

Having interactive elements is always a good way to better engage visitors and break up the monotony of landing pages. Using video to tell a visual story is also incredibly effective, whether you’re using a short clip in place of text, presenting a client testimonial or giving an insight into your agency’s culture.

Including photos of your team and office is also a brilliant way to communicate your brand identity. Not only will this add more unique touches to your site, but it also humanises your agency which makes potential clients and candidates much more likely to warm to you and engage with your content.

Whilst creative flair is a good thing however, always keep in mind that your website needs to look professional and trustworthy above everything else, to give the best impression to those who are considering working with you.

A brilliant example of a recruitment agency website with a design that clearly communicates brand identity is We Are Peas. As a consultancy for creatives and designers, moving image/ film and project management, their site is simple, colourful and harmonious with scrolling navigation and straightforward text. It stands out from its competitors without being overly flashy or ‘out there’ and shows the brand values and attitude with the style of the website’s design.

Take Inspiration:

You don’t need a complicated website design to show off your agency’s unique identity

Ensure that the style of your website matches the visual style of the industry you are trying to target clients and candidates in

We Are Peas

4. Keep your target audience in mind

One of the best ways to ensure that your entire site is optimised to attract and convert as many viewers as possible is to design it from the start with your target audience in mind.

Not only will this include using customer and keyword research to ensure you’re providing the information people are searching for and solving the challenges they’re looking to resolve, but it also means gearing your website’s design towards the industry and individuals you are trying to target.

For example, if you are an agency that specifically sources candidates for clients looking to fill roles in HR then you will benefit from analysing the language and visuals that this group engage with, and keep this in mind when deciding on the style of your website.

Identifying your target audience and the best way to engage with them early on is a useful strategy overall for a recruitment business, as this will help to inform every element of your marketing and sourcing process. Below are some of the best tools on the market that can help with developing audience personas and understanding how best to appeal to their interests.

Tool	Description	URL
XTensio	Xtensio is an app that allows you to edit and manage documents with your team. They also have some useful pre-defined templates, like this customer persona template.	xtensio.com
Smaply	Understand your customer’s characteristics and needs and optimize your products or services toward their interest with Smaply’s Persona tool.	smaply.com
FlowMapp	More focused towards designers, but a nice interface to build out your customer personas.	FlowMapp.com

Establish what your agency’s unique selling point is, along with the pain points that your target audience will be trying to solve. Make sure that these are displayed on your homepage, and try and fit this into other elements of the content and design on the website as well.

5. Make your contact information clear

No matter how innovative your website is, you won’t gain any new clients if they don’t know how to get in contact with you.

This might seem like an obvious piece of advice, but you’d be surprised how many people just bung their details in a hidden corner of their website and forget about it.

If a user has to really dig to find your details they might just give up and go somewhere else, which is why one of the top tips for a brilliant recruiting website is to feature a ‘Contact Us’ button on every page. This can either take the user to all of your agency’s contact details or give them the option to get in touch instantly with a form or email pop up.

Your ‘Contact Us’ button should also include a creative call to action that is going to ensure people actually click on it if they have a question or want to enquire. Adding something like ‘We respond to all messages in 24 hours’ or ‘We offer free 30 minute consultations to every potential client’ will motivate users to take that next step and get in touch.

All recruitment websites should have a section dedicated to contact information, listing an email, phone number, address and ideally a map that can provide directions to your agency office. You can also provide users with a form to get in contact with you, meaning that you can offer personalised help and better engage with potential clients or candidates who might have questions.

If you have social media accounts for your recruitment agency as well, you should also link these here.

Frazer Jones’ agency website does this perfectly, with a large, clear section at the bottom of their homepage with a range of different contact information with links that send the user straight to sending an email or calling their office. The footer of the page has all of this contact information again, and the header includes links to all of their social media profiles in a clear and understated way that fits perfectly with their brand identity.

Take Inspiration:

Divide your contact information info sections (address, email, phone number) to make each option clearer
Include links that let the user contact you immediately
Put your contact information and social media profiles in the header and footer of every page so that they can always be reached

Frazer Jones

6. Securely accept and process personal data

Recruitment websites often have to store a lot of personal information belonging to both clients and candidates, and it is the responsibility of your agency to make sure that this data remains secure. The best way to improve a website’s security is to configure it to an HTTPS site instead of HTTP one to ensure a direct and encrypted connection to the server, along with other safety measures to store data safely and allow access to the right people.

Since the new General Data Protection Regulations were established in 2018, organisations have to provide details of which of their user’s data will be stored, how long they will keep hold of it and what they are going to do with it. As well as making sure this data is secure, it’s a good idea to display this GDPR information and the privacy policy listed on your opt-in’s/contact forms and give users the option to check which of the data you are storing.

If you’d like more information on website security and how to correctly store and process personal data, you can check out our resource on GDPR for Recruitment Agencies.

7. Run a recruitment blog

Having a blog as part of your recruitment website has countless benefits, and is a feature that is found on the best agency sites out there. If you are consistently creating new and relevant content then you are giving users a reason to come back to your site, whether you are creating relevant recruitment resources, offering tips for clients or providing insight into the industry.

Creating recruitment content can also help to establish you as a leading expert in the field, which improves your reputation as a successful and trustworthy agency. 87% of consumers say that their feelings towards a brand are positively influenced when that brand is producing personally relevant content, so it’s a brilliant way to boost the affinity that your clients and candidates feel with you.

Research also shows that content marketing costs 62% less than other, traditional marketing strategies but actually generates up to 3 times as many leads.

That’s data you really can’t argue with.

Another benefit is that updating a blog regularly on your agency website is a big win for SEO, particularly if you are using keyword research to determine the content you are creating. You can reach a wider target audience with search engine optimised content, get your content ranking on page one for competitive phrases, target more keywords to create more leads and build more links to and from your site, all of which will improve your website’s ranking.

What’s not to like?

Finally, having blog content designed to convert leads into clients or candidates can be very useful for other marketing approaches that are targeting users of your website. Email marketing, for example, can make use of the content you offer by linking subscribers to different posts and then tracking what they engage with, providing you with incredibly useful data and helping to personalise their experience with your agency.

If you’re looking for content ideas for your recruitment blog, why not try:

Asking clients what they look for in potential employees and creating a job application guide based on this
Sharing insight on the latest trends in your industry
Creating resources for candidates to help them prepare for interviews
Reviewing tools, apps, training courses or screening software used in recruitment

If you’d like more inspiration, Recruitment Juice is an excellent recruitment blog that regularly updates with content responding to the latest trends in the industry.

8. Link to your social media (And vice versa)

Social media is playing a bigger part in the recruitment industry every year, and many agencies have created accounts on different platforms to reach a wider audience and incorporate social media marketing into their outreach campaigns.

Adding links to these channels on your website will improve the exposure that your LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram accounts get, and keep your target audience engaged and coming back to your site if they follow you.

Just as you should leave links to your social media accounts on your website, you should also use these accounts to direct people to your website. You can notify your followers when new jobs are being advertised, use hashtags to reach a wider audience and if you have a blog you can share new posts on your social media to create more traffic to your site.

It’s also worth offering incentives for users to follow your accounts on different social platforms to make it worth their while. You want every post on every account to provide value and ensure that your followers keep coming back to your content, so come up with different strategies for each platform and use the features of each to provide unique value.

An example of a recruitment agency that are killing it across all of their social media platforms is Hydrogen, which are active across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Their brand image is clear across all of the content they share, but each profile makes the most of the format of the channel, such as highlighting new vacancies as stories on Instagram instead of as feed posts.

Take Inspiration:

Take the time to learn how to use the unique features of each social media platform and think about how you can use these to engage your followers
Ensure that you’re providing value across each platform individually and not just sharing exactly the same content in each
Link back to your website wherever possible to maximise the users who end up there from your social media profiles

Hydrogen Recruitment Instagram

9. Optimise for mobile users

It’s impossible to avoid the impact that smartphones have had on our everyday life, and the recruitment industry has not escaped this influence. Mobile recruiting is a fast-growing trend that covers marketing and engagement strategies as well as mobile browsing experience, and it is this experience that can impact your website’s success.

Globally, 68.1% of web users visited websites from their phones or tablets instead of desktops in the past year. Recruitment agencies cannot afford to be losing such a high percentage of potential clients and candidates if their site isn’t optimised for these devices.

A mobile website needs to have all of its pages correctly scaled for both portrait and landscape orientation screens, ensuring that features and images are the right sizes for each of these options. Images, buttons and links will all need to be formatted for proper use, and the layout of some pages may have to be edited completely to accommodate for changes in size.

Whether a site is optimized for mobile is also an element that factors into how well it ranks on search engines. If your website isn’t suitable for mobile users then it’s much less likely to make it onto page 1, so there’s double the incentive to make sure you get this sorted for your website.

Summary

Recruitment is an industry with people at its heart, so your site should be designed first and foremost with people in mind. Attractive design elements and engaging copy on every page should communicate exactly why a potential candidate or client should choose your agency, along with an easy-to-use site structure that makes it simple to find what you are looking for. Combine this with outstanding marketing and SEO, and you’ll be on to a winning website.

If you’re a recruitment agency looking for help with your website, or just want to chat about the ways that things like SEO or content marketing can grow your client and candidate base, get in touch and speak to one of our team.

About the author

Tom Mcloughlin is the Director of Growth Recruits. A passionate marketer, he loves sharing his ideas with the industry and helping people take that knowledge and use it to get extraordinary results.