Together with our partners at Beamery, we’ve created a free tool, Job Page Grader, to make it easy to understand what makes a great job page, and how everyone can create one and find better candidates. If you pop in the URL of one of your job pages you’ll get a whole raft of information regarding the content and quality of your page. It’s like a recipe book for a great jobs page. Easy to follow, easy to understand, and free. Bargain.
One of the things that the tool examines is one of the most regularly asked questions in the world of job pages, “How do I get search engines to give me good rankings?" The audit that Job Page Grader will give you when you use it will provide lots of answers to that question, and in this blog, we’ll give you an overview of some of the things that absolutely must be in place for your job page to rank well with Google et al. So grab a coffee and let’s make a start on improving your rankings…
Google Jobs Ranking
It’s a fact that 7/10 job searches start in Google, with candidates checking out the careers sites of their potential employers. So it’s important to get your job pages Google-ready.
Pay close attention to schema markup. Sounds a bit techy, but it isn’t. Schema markup is simply adding in tags that provide the kind of detail that Google for Jobs likes to see so that it gets a picture of your website that’s as clear as crystal. What kind of detail? Well, things like the date the job was posted, the sector you operate in, whether the role is full-time, part-time, permanent or casual, the location of the job, the closing date - those kinds of details that candidates will thank you for just as much as Google will reward you with good rankings. In a nutshell, schema tags mean better visibility, more viewers, and more applications.
Metadata
Now, this does sound techy, we know. But again, this isn’t something to be scared of. Metadata is the information that sits quietly behind the scenes of your job page, efficiently providing search engines with all that they need to know to display your page correctly. This means things like a title that's less than 80 characters, a meta description under 400 characters, one main heading, descriptive text for your links, social links for sharing, and a few other totally not scary things like that. No sweat.
Responsiveness
Candidates are seeing your job pages on a variety of devices, and responsiveness is all about making sure the page looks at its best however it is viewed. So Job Page Grader will assess your page for elements such as a viewport tag, accelerated mobile pages content (AMP), correctly sized tap targets, and legible text, and make sure there are no nasty plugins.
If any of the topics above fill you with dread, don't hesitate to get in touch to learn more about our SEO services for career websites. We can’t stress enough the importance of SEO when it comes to your job pages and overall online talent attraction strategy. How do your pages measure up? Check their visibility right now over at Job Page Grader.