Classified ads? The recruiter’s “little black book”? The weekly “hot candidate” fax?

They’re marketing dinosaurs.

In truth, most aspects of staffing, marketing and technology have evolved dramatically in the past 20 years – and websites have experienced some of the most sweeping transformations. Years ago, Web 2.0 changed the game for our industry, and there’s no going back.

Fact: More people will now visit your website in a year than you talk to on the phone in your lifetime. 

Let that sink in for a minute. 

Whether you realize it or not, your website has truly become the foundation of your presence to most of your candidates and, to a large extent, your clients. So, is yours a powerful, dynamic platform for sales and recruiting – or is it little more than an online brochure?

If it’s the latter, investing in a modern staffing website – one that tells your story, ranks well in search, engages people and drives conversion – is a smart strategy to ensure your agency’s success in 2020 and beyond. If you want to build a website that attracts, engages and drives both employers and job seekers to take action, here are a few of the features it should include:

Information architecture. Information architecture is all about getting website visitors – your clients, prospects, candidates and temporary employees – where they want to go on your website as efficiently as possible, from any other page on your site (remember, visitors don’t only land on your home page). The more clicks it takes people to find what they need, the more they’re going to disappear.

Conversion paths. When you design your site, think of how you will drive action from visitors:

  • get a job seeker to apply
  • spur a prospect to request a workforce consultation
  • convince a passive candidate to complete a form to opt into your talent community
  • entice an employer to pick up the phone and place an order


One of your primary goals with your website is to generate a response: to make sure visitors take some sort of action to engage with you before they leave. As you’re planning each site page, think through those conversion paths – the steps each type of visitor should take when they land on a web page, find the information they need, and then (ideally) take the action you want them to take – so you’re not losing people. 

Speaking of which, the number-one place that staffing companies lose people is in the application process. To make yours more “leak-proof,” consider:

  • Is it easy enough for your candidates to apply from any device? (Your experience should be seamless – whether they’re applying from their desktop or their phone.)
  • How many fields do they have to fill in? (Completion rates drop precipitously after just a few fields.)
  • How many clicks does it take to apply to a job? (Hint: the goal is one!)

 

SmartSearch Career Portal for Jobs Website


Dynamic content.
Your business is continually changing. New people come into work through you or to be hired by your clients. You also regularly add new clients. With each new project or placement, you get new success stories to tell, new testimonials and fresh online reviews. New people join your team, and you may even change or add services.

Your website should be as dynamic as your business! Modern staffing websites offer tools that build and display dynamic content – things like testimonials, top talent profiles, your latest blog posts and more – so that your site is always fresh and always presenting your business in the best way possible.

Google for Jobs optimization. Google for Jobs is the first thing people see when they search for a job on Google. If you want Google to display your jobs in that cute little box at the top of their results page, your website code has to be optimized with something called schema markup. This tells Google how to understand and display the information in your job postings.

Visitor tracking. While IP (Internet Protocol) address software tracking is not perfect (at least not yet), consider adding technology to your website that tracks the address of each visitor to your website. On the client side, this tech can very often tell you what company an individual is from. If you’re trying to target large or mid-size employers, visitor tracking can provide information about who’s landed on your website – which can be extremely valuable for sales prospecting. 

ADA compliance. With litigation on the rise and first-time fines of up to $75,000, compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and related legislation and guidelines, is a huge concern for any staffing firm. If your site is like most, people with visual impairment and/or other disabilities may have a tough time viewing content and searching your jobs (either on their own or with the assistance of other technology) because of the way your site and/or job board is designed.

By making your staffing website ADA compliant and more inclusive, you will get more talent applying to your jobs, and protect yourself from wasting money defending yourself in the event of a lawsuit. 

Technical SEO. So much has changed with SEO in recent years, I could easily write a book just on this topic. It’s no secret that search engines give preferential treatment (i.e., higher rankings in search results) to websites that adhere to their guidelines. Technical SEO strategies and tactics ensure your site meets the algorithms’ expectations. That way, search engine spiders can find, interpret and correctly serve up your content to users. 

Instead of keyword-stuffing dense blocks of prose, or trying to rank #1 for “staffing agencies in [your market],” hire an expert to do the behind-the-scenes work you need, so you’ll rank well in the organic searches your ideal employers and job seekers are conducting.

Want more great ideas for optimizing your staffing website – and modernizing your marketing strategy?

Join me on Tuesday, March 31st for the Smart Practices Webinar: Optimizing Modern-day Marketing Techniques. I’ll present the trends and challenges of marketing in the staffing industry today, and share tools and strategies you should include in your marketing mix this year. Register here!

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