When you’re growing a staffing agency, you need every tool available in your toolbox to attract new clients and candidates. Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are two essential tools that can help you put your name in front of your target audience, helping to build awareness and capture conversion. Use this advice to leverage these critical tools for growing your staffing company.
What is SEO?
SEO is a set of techniques you use to increase search rankings and visibility for your staffing company’s website. Every time we type a query into Google, the results that kick back to us are no accident. Google crawls the web 24/7/365, “reading” and “learning” what every website is about, so it knows how to best generate responses to our questions.
SEO about providing Google with the technical and contextual clues to know how to rank a website for specific searches. If your staffing website does not provide Google with enough information to understand what you do, you won’t rank well in search.
A Three-Pronged Approach To SEO For Growing A Staffing Company
SEO isn’t a silver bullet for growing a staffing company, but when done correctly, it can increase your visibility in search for highly relevant terms, improving awareness, generating clicks and increasing conversions.
SEO Prong One: Technical SEO
Search Engine Optimizaiton involves three sets of tactics –technical SEO, on-page SEO and ongoing SEO. Technical SEO involves the technology on the back-end of your website and ensuring it is set up properly so that Google and other search engines can crawl it.
Technical SEO matters for growing a staffing agency because what happens behind the scenes on your site impacts your ability to get found. Your site must be coded well so that search engines like Google can crawl it quickly and “understand” what you do.
Technical SEO involves things like:
- Page Speed: Did you know that users are 53% more likely to abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load? If your home page has an auto-play, looping background video, too many elements that take too long to load, or simply isn’t coded cleanly, it will cost you users and will hurt your search rankings. The Google Page Experience update is being rolled this year, and load speed will become a ranking factor.
- Mobile responsiveness: This is a web development technique that instantly creates changes to your staffing website’s appearance depending on the device that is being viewed on. It looks one way on desktop and another way on mobile based on how the user found you. This matters because your users want a good mobile experience, and Google knows that. That’s why 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’re probably losing out on rankings.
- HTTPS: An SSL certificate indicates to users that your website is stable and safe. Google does not like to rank websites that do not have SSL certificates. In fact, if you don’t have an SSL certificate, Google gives users a warning to let them know the site is not secure and asks if they want to back out – which most people do upon seeing that warning. 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.
Without technical SEO, your website won’t be ranked well, no matter what else you do. Google wants to send people to websites that deliver not only the right information, but also a good user experience. If it’s been a while since you’ve updated your website, your technical SEO could be out of date.
SEO Prong Two: On-Page SEO
Technical SEO allows Google to read your website. However, you still have to tell search engines exactly what your staffing website is about. What do you do? Which industries do you serve? What markets are you located in? That’s where on-page SEO comes into play. This set of tactics provides context for Google, so it knows how to rank you:
- Targeted Keywords: Keyword development is arguably the most important step for SEO because it influences literally everything else you will do. Every page of your site should focus on 2-3 unique but related keyword phrases.
- Optimized Titles: Header tags (just another word for headlines and sub-headlines) are elements of your HTML, from H1 indicating the most important through H6. Titles show Google how a page is organized. They also allow readers to scan pages to find the most appropriate information. As often as possible, include your targeted keywords in headings (ensuring that the page still reads well).
- Optimized Page Content: Quality, fresh and relevant content is Google’s number one ranking factor. Your content should be readable and relevant to users but should also strategically incorporate your target keywords. If your keywords don’t physically show up on the page, you won’t rank well for those terms.
- SEO Optimized URLs: Every page of your website has a URL. It’s best to make it short and SEO-focused. For example, on your temporary services page, instead of www.abcstaffing.com/page#/, you should do something like www.abcstaffing.com/temp-staffing.
- Optimized Meta Description: Meta descriptions are the summaries or a page that shows in search results. It should be concise, include a keyword or two and should compel users to click.
When it comes to SEO technical and on-page SEO work hand-in-glove. You simply can’t have one without the other.
SEO Prong Three: Ongoing SEO
It is important to note that SEO is not a one-time event – especially when you’re actively growing a staffing agency. Remember, Google’s number one ranking factor is fresh-relevant content. Google’s primary goal is to provide relevant results for the problems that users are typing into search engines. As a result, Google tends to favor websites that are consistently adding fresh content that helps their users rather than sites that are simply trying to sell services.
Think of SEO as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. Google does not like websites that have a “set it and forget it” approach. In addition, consistently adding new content allows your site to rank for a wider array of keywords that your users are typing in. This means that the more content you have, the more opportunities you have to rank and build trust with Google.
Ongoing SEO and content development can include:
- Blogging regularly around targeted search queries and terms.
- Adding or enhancing specialty pages on your staffing website.
- Adding or enhancing location pages on your staffing website.
- Creating other types of optimized content to enhance user experience while capturing keyword rankings.
The more unique, relevant content you create for your website, the better your rankings will be over time.
Growing A Staffing Agency With PPC
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) can have a variety of meanings in online advertising. But essentially, it is an ad that you place online but only pay for when someone clicks on it. You pay a small amount of money for every click; hence the term pay-per-click.
PPC leverages targeting methods that make your ads appear where potential clients and job seekers spend time online. Including search engines, social media and even regular websites that are part of Google’s ad network.
When it comes to growing a staffing agency, the benefit of leveraging PPC is that it has instant results. SEO takes a lot longer to work but as soon as you start a PPC campaign, your ads will appear to your target audience.
Google AdWords PPC For Staffing
When you type a query into Google, the first results are often ads, and they are designated as such in those results. Buying ads for popular search queries can be a great way to hop to the top of the list. But it’s important to know that there are a number of factors that come into play when Google decides how to serve AdWords results.
Unfortunately, in staffing, this can be a tough place to rank (at least in the top spot). A local staffing agency wants to gain attention but very large corporations with deep pockets can outbid for the top spot almost every time. However, by going after longer-tail keyword terms, AdWords can often be a great place to grow a staffing agency.
What About Remarketing?
You know the ads that follow you around the internet. Like that one time you spent thirty minutes browsing for a fire ring, and now you see ads for fire rings every time you go online.
Remarketing is a very effective PPC strategy that shows online ads to people in that capacity. We visit a website, and later on, we see ads for that exact product or service. It’s the perfect strategy to create brand awareness and to always be present. When someone has a need for your business, you are right there.
Remarketing can be a great way to grow a staffing agency because it can help keep you top-of-mind for prospects that didn’t reach out the first time or candidates who didn’t apply for a job when they visited your site. Reminding those people you are there will encourage them to come back. And you want them to come back because visitors returning to a website are eight times more likely to convert than first-time visitors. (Now you see why companies spend so much time following you around online!)
Social Media Advertising
Advertising on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., is a valuable PPC tactic, especially for growing a staffing agency. Facebook advertising provides one of the best returns on investment for a PPC strategy for staffing agencies. It has excellent targeting capabilities, and well-placed, well-written ads can generate high levels of engagement.
Ready To Grow Your Staffing Agency With SEO and PPC?
If you are interested in learning more about how to grow a staffing agency, the experts at Haley Marketing Group are ready to help. Please feel free to contact us today to set up a time to learn more about the ways digital marketing strategies and building your marketing stack can help you achieve your growth goals.
