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Blogs Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO SERP Social Networks Social Recruitment Twitter

Recruitment SEO: How many web sites link to yours?

In the Links are the currency on the web we looked at the total number of links no the web that the Link Count tool from SEOmoz would show for our 20 recruitment agency web sites. But not all the links are equal. The more I think about it, it would be fair to say that no two links are the same. One (smart) way thinking about the links is to count just the web sites that link to your web site. So if there are 2 or 2 million links from some domain to your web site it would still count as one.

If we look at our 29 recruitment agency web sites list and www.JobsBlog.ie between them where is what we get:

URL

Sites Linking

http://www.cpl.ie

568

http://www.hays.ie

294

http://www.morganmckinley.ie

265

http://www.brightwater.ie

127

http://www.jobsblog.ie

126

http://www.hrm.ie

125

http://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie

100

http://www.eolas.ie

100

http://www.careerwise.ie

86

http://www.EdenRecruitment.ie

77

http://www.peoplegroup.ie

70

http://www.frsrecruitment.com

68

http://www.Vantage.ie

65

http://www.icds.ie

55

http://www.Sigmar.ie

51

http://www.3qrecruitment.ie

46

http://www.rftgroup.ie

44

http://www.Stelfox.ie

34

http://www.recruitmentplus.ie

32

http://www.accountancysolutions.ie

26

http://www.Recruiters.ie

19

http://www.MatrixRecruitment.ie

14

http://www.harmonics.ie

14

http://www.hudson.ie

13

http://www.gempool.ie

9

http://www.qedrecruitment.ie

7

http://www.Brompton.ie

5

http://www.placeme.ie

5

http://www.enterprisepeople.ie

5

http://www.solasconsulting.ie

4

The results show that only 5 Irish Recruitment agencies have more web sites linking to them than this blog. If you want your jobs to be seen by as many possible job seekers and as many possible clients (employers) it would be natural to want to bring visitors from as many sites to your site. Therefore having as many web sites linking to your site would help you get more candidates and clients. As simple as that. The above table show how good are you at that particular task. If your site is not on the list, you can get this figure for your site and compare yourself with the competition.

Even more important than this direct traffic of visitors that you get from other sites is the fact that from the perspective of the search engines like Google, your site the more “important” the more web sites link to your site. So the more links you have to your site – the more likely is that Google will display any content on your site above the similar content on any other web site. This is extremely important for the ranking of your jobs. When a similar job is advertised on many job boards and recruitment agency web sites, the site that will get listed on top is very often the one that has the most links from other web sites.

How to get more links to your web site?

Submitting your site to an online directory? – that is the most common answer I get when I do the Recruitment SEO Training. Unfortunately, the answer is always – no. Why not? The practise was abused and Google decides to in most cases ignore it, and in some cases even penalize it.

Just do not buy links. Please. – That is what Google would say, and in my experience, this is the best advice possible in most cases.

Spamming social media with your links. – Will make sure you get ignored, not followed by anyone but bots. Again the time and money the drain.

SO WHAT THEN?

Think about what links do you click at on the web.

You might click on a link in the article you are reading on some site. If you are reading a review on some blog, about the new tool the LinkedIn has launched, and there is a link to that tool within the article – you might click it. Ask yourself how did that article ended up on a publication you are reading? Can you submit your content there? With a link to something new and cool on your web site? If you are thinking of PR submissions at this stage, I can tell you, you are on the wrong track. Think of guest blog posts. Think of the places where different people publish content. You are probably getting where I am going with this… yes the combined name of all such sites is Social Media.

Categories
Internet Job Site Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO

Recruitment SEO: Links are the currency on the web!

Search engine optimisation is in essence a huge amount of statistical analysis and a lot of trials and errors. There is not book about it, since by the time it gets printed it is completely outdated. There are two SEO Rules:

Content is King
Links are the currency on the web

Nothing else matters as much to your web site ranking as the content you have on your site and the links from other web sites to your site. If you get those two things right – you will get the free traffic from the search engines. Relevant traffic – people searching for what your web site text copy is about.

We looked at the Google PR, MozRank and Alexa rank of the 29 recruitment agencies. Today we will look at the links towards those 29 web sites. The numbers next to each recruitment agency web site show the total number of links found on the web pointing to each domain. The more links to it – the more search engines ‘Like’ the domain, and hence show it’s web pages higher in the search engine results.

This site JobsBlog.ie is within them again as a tracker for performance.

URL

SEOmoz Link Count

www.hays.ie 117643
www.cpl.ie 59629
www.morganmckinley.ie 34688
www.eolas.ie 8333
www.brightwater.ie 6766
www.jobsblog.ie 6552
www.peoplegroup.ie 4235
www.hudson.ie 3357
www.careerwise.ie 2689
www.3qrecruitment.ie 1707
www.Sigmar.ie 1630
www.hrm.ie 1453
www.EdenRecruitment.ie 766
www.rftgroup.ie 580
www.collinsmcnicholas.ie 578
www.icds.ie 539
www.frsrecruitment.com 491
www.qedrecruitment.ie 358
www.accountancysolutions.ie 318
www.Recruiters.ie 305
www.gempool.ie 189
www.Stelfox.ie 187
www.recruitmentplus.ie 177
www.Vantage.ie 149
www.harmonics.ie 141
www.solasconsulting.ie 110
www.MatrixRecruitment.ie 92
www.placeme.ie 25
www.enterprisepeople.ie 23
www.Brompton.ie 12

Any surprises above?

Categories
Job Site Recruitment Recruitment Agency SEO

Recruitment SEO: Google PR

Working on the search engine optimization of the recruitment agency web site, the first thing one should look at is the competition. What other agencies are competing for the same keywords. One could widen the analysis further, and look at what other sites like job boards, recruitment social media sites, employer career pages or blogs are competing for the same keywords. The first task is checking your direct competitors. The quickest way to check ‘Who is Who’ in your industry is to check the Google PageRank (Google PR). There are million other things you should measure, but Google has done its best to measure it all for you, and give you a very simple score. Google PR number. From 0 to 10 (where 10 is the best).

Here is a list of randomly picked largest recruitment agencies in Ireland and their web site Google PR score.

Web Site

Google PR

http://www.cpl.ie

6

http://www.hudson.ie

6

http://www.brightwater.ie

5

http://www.hays.ie

5

http://www.Sigmar.ie

5

http://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie

5

http://www.eolas.ie

5

http://www.accountancysolutions.ie

5

http://www.morganmckinley.ie

4

http://www.hrm.ie

4

http://www.EdenRecruitment.ie

4

http://www.frsrecruitment.com

4

http://www.rftgroup.ie

4

http://www.recruitmentplus.ie

4

http://www.icds.ie

4

http://www.Vantage.ie

4

http://www.Brompton.ie

4

http://www.careerwise.ie

4

http://www.jobsblog.ie

4

http://www.Stelfox.ie

3

http://www.MatrixRecruitment.ie

3

http://www.gempool.ie

3

http://www.Recruiters.ie

3

http://www.qedrecruitment.ie

3

http://www.3qrecruitment.ie

3

http://www.placeme.ie

3

http://www.peoplegroup.ie

3

http://www.harmonics.ie

3

http://www.solasconsulting.ie

2

http://www.enterprisepeople.ie

2

Note I have also put this blog here in the mix. It is a benchmark really more than anything else. The rule of thumb could be here if you are above JobsBlog.ie you are OK. If you are below you should look into it since your SEO is obviously not really done right, hence no job applicants on your company web site.