Recruitment agencies · SEO
SEO for recruitment agencies
Recruitment SEO has two jobs. Help candidates find your live roles. Help hiring managers find a specialist they trust. Arête plans both around the sectors, roles and locations you work in.
From £349 per month, fixed fee
The situation
Why your customers are searching.
Job boards and Google's job search features dominate candidate searches. Client searches, such as 'finance recruitment agency in [city]', are more winnable and, for most agencies, more valuable. Many agency sites also pile up expired vacancy pages that dilute everything else. Good recruitment SEO keeps vacancies in order and builds lasting pages around each specialism.
What sends them looking
- Rising job board and LinkedIn costs eating into placement margins.
- Launching a new specialist division or moving into a new sector.
- A consultant going independent who needs a credible brand, fast.
- Clients asking for evidence of specialism before agreeing terms.
- A switch to a new recruitment CRM or applicant tracking system that leaves the current site's job feed obsolete.
The problem
What costs recruitment agencies work.
Where the work slips away
- Generalist messaging makes you interchangeable with dozens of agencies chasing the same roles.
- Client and candidate content gets mixed together, and neither audience finds what it needs quickly.
- Vacancies open and close constantly. Unless the site handles them properly, it fills up with thin, outdated pages.
- CVs arrive in volume, and handling them has to meet UK GDPR expectations from the first upload.
- Much of your credibility sits with individual consultants. When one leaves, some of it can leave too.
What makes customers hesitate
- Clients wonder whether you know their sector or are just forwarding CVs.
- Candidates worry their CV will be sent to employers without their agreement.
- Job boards feel like a safer bet for applicants than an agency's own site.
- Clients hesitate over fees and terms, such as rebate periods, before sending a brief.
How it helps
What SEO changes.
- Marks up live vacancies with JobPosting structured data so they're eligible for Google's job search experience.
- Handles filled and expired roles cleanly, so old vacancies don't linger as thin or misleading pages.
- Builds specialism pages by sector, role and location that act as lasting landing pages for clients and candidates.
- Turns your consultants' knowledge into client-side content, such as hiring guides and market commentary.
What you get
JobPosting structured data
Markup for job title, description, date posted, closing date, hiring organisation, location, salary and employment type, generated from the job feed.
Vacancy lifecycle rules
Rules for publishing, updating and closing roles, including closing dates in the markup and removal or redirection once a role is filled.
Specialism landing pages
Pages for each sector and role family, written for hiring managers and candidates and linked to relevant live vacancies.
Client-side content plan
Hiring guides, salary context and market updates drawn from consultant knowledge, aimed at the searches hiring managers make.
Consultant and author profiles
Profiles showing each consultant's specialism, linked from their jobs and articles, so their expertise is on display.
Local and profile optimisation
Google Business Profile and location pages for each office, with consistent agency details across directories.
Measurement
The enquiries that count, tracked properly.
What counts as an enquiry
- A client brief or vacancy registration form.
- A candidate registration with CV upload and consent choices spelt out.
- A direct application from a vacancy page.
- A call or meeting request with a named consultant.
What gets tracked
- Impressions and clicks from Google's job search features, taken from Search Console.
- Organic candidate applications and registrations, by specialism.
- Organic client brief submissions and calls, by landing page.
- Indexed vacancy pages against live vacancies, to catch expired pages that linger.
Worth knowing
What customers check, and the rules to follow.
What customers look for before they call
- Specialism by sector, role type and location, made obvious through dedicated pages and content.
- Consultant profiles with sector experience and direct contact details.
- Live, well-written vacancies that show the level and type of roles you handle.
- Testimonials from your own clients and candidates, plus REC membership where held, described accurately.
- A plain-English privacy notice on how CVs are stored, shared with clients and deleted.
Rules worth knowing
- CVs contain personal data, so collection, storage, sharing with clients and deletion need a lawful basis and a clear privacy notice under UK GDPR.
- Vacancy adverts should avoid wording that could be discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010.
- Agencies placing job adverts have obligations under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, including naming the agency, so vacancy templates should be checked against current guidance.
- REC membership should only be claimed while current and described accurately, as membership of a trade body with a code of professional practice.
Straight answer
Is it right for you?
If you're a specialist with regular vacancies and a defined niche, yes. If nearly all your roles are confidential, there's less for SEO to work with.
Made for
- Specialist agencies with a steady flow of vacancies in defined sectors.
- Agencies whose CRM or applicant tracking system can feed jobs to the website with consistent fields.
- Agencies with consultants willing to share market knowledge for content.
Not for
- Agencies handling mainly confidential retained searches that are never advertised.
- Agencies expecting SEO to replace job boards within a few months.
Starting price
From £349
per month, fixed management fee
What moves the price
- How competitive the market is
- The current site's technical health
- How much content is planned each month
- Whether local search and maps are in scope
Your ad budget is separate. It goes straight to the platform and is never marked up.
Questions
SEO for recruitment agencies: your questions answered
What should happen to a vacancy page once the role is filled?
Mark it as closed, with the structured data removed or the closing date passed. Then remove it, or redirect it to a relevant specialism page. Leaving filled roles live frustrates candidates and can cause problems with Google's job search features. Arête sets the rules up once, and they apply automatically where the job feed allows.
Can client-facing content help win recruitment briefs?
It can. Many hiring managers research salaries, notice periods or market conditions before choosing an agency. Content drawn from your consultants' own knowledge shows specialism in a way a generic services page can't. It works alongside relationships and business development, and doesn't replace them.
Start a conversation
Tell Arête about the business and what currently feels missing.
You will receive a direct reply with the most sensible next step, even if that means recommending that nothing needs changing yet.
A direct reply
A personal reply, usually within one working day. No sales script, no chasing.
A short conversation
A look at the business, your current website and what a good result would look like for you.
A clear recommendation
The leanest sensible next step, with fixed scope and a fixed price. Sometimes that's nothing yet, and you'll be told so.
Prefer email? Write to info@aretemarketing.co.uk.