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Smart Marketing Ideas for 2018 – Website/SEO Trends (part 1 of 4)

Website and SEO Trends
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“The only constant is change”

This quote is attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and it comes from around 500 B.C. More than two millennia later, it still rings true…especially if you work in marketing or recruiting!

To kick off 2018, we asked our team at Haley Marketing to look at the big trends going on in the marketing world and share a few insights about what they mean for staffing and recruiting companies. Buckle up…and get ready for lots of ideas to contemplate!

Staffing Website Trends

  • Mobile – more important than ever. We’ve been talking about mobile for years. But just last month, our clients’ web traffic crossed a big milestone – 51 percent was on mobile. If your website is not fully responsive…and specifically optimized for mobile job seekers, you’re losing candidates.
  • Kill the long application (or at least move it to step two). In October 2017, one of our clients contacted us about the lack of applications they were receiving from their website. We did some analysis and found they were getting tons of web traffic. The issue was the painful application process their ATS provided. As a solution, we replaced the application form with a simple “submit your resume” form, and in the first month, this company received 8,000 resumes.
  • Less copy. A visitor to your website has a 3 to 5 second attention span. Want someone to take action? Write less!
    Stronger, more prominent calls-to-action. Does every page on your website have a strong call to action? Do your CTAs stand out on the page? Banners, buttons, fly-ins, exit pop-ups and inline CTA images should all be part of your strategy to drive response. If possible, include a CTA “above the fold” in the top section of each page.
  • Is it a job board or a staffing website? Seventy percent or more of the traffic to a staffing website comes from job seekers. That’s why companies like Adecco and CyberCoders feature “search jobs” front and center on their home pages. They recognize that you need to make as easy as possible for visitors (job seekers) to access the information they want most (jobs!).

SEO Trends

  • Forget keywords, focus on relevance. Okay, this might be a little strong—keywords still matter, but the most successful staffing websites (from an SEO perspective) focus on creating content that is highly relevant to the needs of their clients and candidates. They provide blogs, videos and other long-format content centered around the questions their clients and candidates ask…and the topics they search on Google. And remember, jobs are highly relevant content.
  • User experience matters. How fast does your site load? How long do people stay? How many pages do they visit? Websites that are more engaging (i.e., those that get people to stay longer) will outrank those that are not.
  • Featured snippets and quick answers. Type a question into Google, what do you see? That Quick Answer box is a Google-featured designed to keep people from leaving Google. From an SEO perspective, that answer box is gold because it puts you on the top of page one results. So how do you get into the box? Offer lists, tables, and graphs in response to commonly asked questions. Also, provide content in a Q&A format. That old FAQ page may become more relevant in 2018.
  • Voice search. “Hey Google, find me a job.” Well, we’re not quite there yet, but voice search and digital search assistants are becoming increasingly important to search results. Does your website offer content that will come up in a voice search?
  • Link building. Inbound links are one of the most important SEO-ranking factors. if you want to dominate Google, you need more links to your website. How? Write guest posts for blogs in your industry, provide articles to trade associations, conduct market research that others can reference. More inbound links = better SEO!
  • Structured data. Google wants your website to be more organized! Google looks for structured data markup to analyze and categorize web page content. This is especially critical for job data. Haley Marketing was invited to be part of the Google for Jobs beta program…and our Google for Jobs integration goes live for all our Job Board clients in February 2018.

Want to know more about Google for Jobs and how we can help you?

Call us at 1.888.696.2900 or click here to email us!

Up Next:  What about Social Media Trends?  Find out about social media marketing trends for staffing companies for 2018.

My next installment will explain smart marketing trends for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat, as well as explain the importance of incorporating video and audio into your marketing.

Don’t have time to wait for the next post to publish?  Download the Idea Club article, “Smart Marketing-Trends to Watch in 2018” now!

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