Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques to increase rankings for your staffing company’s website. Two of those techniques are technical SEO and on-page SEO.
Technical SEO involves the technology behind your website that makes your site readable for search engines and allows Google to understand exactly what your site is. On-page SEO is the way you optimize content for search engine rankings and for users.
So which does your staffing firm need?
Why Technical SEO Matters
Technical SEO is all about what’s happening with your website behind the scenes. Your site must be coded well so that search engines can quickly “read” and understand it.
When it comes to technical SEO, there are some very important factors you should not ignore:
- Page Speed: Studies have shown that users abandon approximately 53% of webites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. This is an important aspect of technical SEO because the Google Page Experience update is being rolled out in the spring of 2021, and load speed will become a ranking factor.
- Mobile responsiveness: Responsive design is a web development technique that creates dynamic changes to a website’s appearance depending on the device that is being viewed on. Google crawls the mobile version of your staffing website first. If you don’t have a responsive design that loads and views cleanly on websites, you could be losing rankings.
- HTTPS: If your site does not have an SSL certificate, Google gives users a warning to let them know the site is not secure and asks how the user would like to proceed. Upon seeing this, many users will panic and back out and visit another site instead. An SSL certificate can capture more traffic by making users feel safe, keeping them on your site and indicating to Google that your site can be trusted.
- Structured Data: Also called schema markup, this is a type of code that makes it simpler for search engines to walk through your website and rank it appropriately.
Technical SEO is important because even if you get every other aspect of SEO correct, you still won’t rank well in search. Google doesn’t want to refer people to outdated websites, sites that provide a poor user experience and are not secure.
Why On-Page SEO Matters
Search engines don’t “read” pages the same way a human does. They process the source code of the page to determine what it is about. If you right-click on any web page and select “view source code,” you’ll see the HTML code for that page. This is what search engines read to understand what the purpose of that page is.
There are several important elements of on-page SEO:
- Targeted Keywords: Keyword development is one of the most important steps in on-page SEO because it influences every other step in the process. Each page should have a singular focus, and you should map 2-3 unique and targeted keywords onto the page.
- Optimized Titles: Header tags are elements of your HTML, from H1 indicating the most important (and typically largest headings on the visual page) to H6. Titles are important because they can help search engines understand what your page is about. They show how a page is organized, and allow readers to scan pages to find the most appropriate information. Whenever possible, incorporate keywords into your titles.
- Optimized Page Content: This is where the rubber meets the road. Quality content is Google’s number one ranking factor. It’s important to write content that is both highly readable and relevant to users but incorporates your target keywords and is well-organized for search engines.
- An SEO Optimized URL: Every page of your website has a URL. For good on-page SEO, it should be a very brief “summary” of what your page is about. It’s best to make it short and SEO-focused. For example, on your temporary services page, instead of www.abcstaffing.com/page#/ consider www.abcstaffing.com/temp-staffing.
- Optimized Meta Description: Meta descriptions are the summaries or a page that shows in search results. These descriptions help users determine which result is truly the best match. If you don’t add a meta description, Google will just pull copy from your site. That’s why it’s important to tell Google what you want to display. It should be concise, include a keyword or two and should compel users to click.
Which Does Your Staffing Website Need – Technical SEO or On-Page SEO?
The answer is simple: both. Good technical SEO means little if your pages are not well-organized and relevant. And good on-page SEO means little if Google can’t properly read your website. When you work with Haley Marketing to improve your site’s SEO, we focus on both technical and on-page SEO. If you want to improve your staffing website’s visibility and drive traffic, contact us today for a free consultation.