How To Make Your Staffing Agencies Jobs Appear In Google Search
Google now includes jobs in their search results which means you can have your jobs one step closer to job seekers, directly in Google’s search results (See what it looks like). If successful, your jobs will appear in a featured snippet type of search result featuring your logo, reviews, rating and job details. This prominent position is appearing in more and more Google searches, which is where most job seekers start their search for work. As Google Job Search Results become more familiar to applicants, inclusion in these search results will become vital to staffing agencies competing in the marketplace. By making your jobs findable in Google Search, you’re bypassing Indeed, Monster, and all the other job boards. Jobs listed in Googles Job Search Results are free (as of Jan 2018). There are two methods for getting your jobs included in Google Search Results, Direct Integration and Third Party Integration. Direct Integration is the most reliable method, but Third Party Integration is easy. If you have any trouble understanding all of this, don’t worry, we can help.
Direct Integration With Google
Direct Integration is by far the most reliable method of getting your jobs icluded in Googles Job Search Results. By choosing direct integration, you get more control over exactly how your job postings appear and how long they’re active for. To implement this you’ll need to be able to make modifications to your websites job board or at least have the ability to create new pages for the purpose of posting them to Google. Most staffing agencies have an ATS that integrates into a job board on their website and/or a CMS like WordPress that allows you to easily generate new pages. Ultimately, you don’t need to have a CMS on your site but you do need to be able to edit the HTML of your site. One or both of these will be needed to get your staffing agencies jobs listed on Google. The exact requirements cited by Google are that you have a website, publish job postings on that website and that you’re able to edit the HTML of the job detail pages. Below is a comprehensive guide that will enable your jobs to be picked up by Google.
1. Ensure Your Job Detail Pages Are Indexable
Webmasters will occasionally block web pages from being indexed for various reasons. The most common reason in the staffing industry is to avoid duplicate content penalties caused by numerous jobs sharing the same or similar job descriptions. There are several other reasons Google might have trouble indexing your job detail pages such as security functions and website errors. In order for your jobs to be included in Google job search results, job detail pages must be crawlable and indexable by Google.
2. Add job posting structured data to your job postings.
The required structured data is called Schema. There are a lot of different Schemas for different things, but the one needed for this task is called, you guessed it, JobPosting. This structured data, or Schema markup, is code that get’s added to the HTML of your job detail pages. If you use a CMS like WordPress there are plugins that you can use to implement Schema. That being said, they’re often not perfect and often require some configuring. Google has provided a detailed integration guide for developers.
3. Create A Jobs Sitemap & Add It To Search Console
If you’re not familiar with Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) you should familiarize yourself. This is a vital tool for optimizing your staffing website for search engines like Google. Among other things, Search Console will allow you to submit a sitemap to Google. This notifies them of all the pages on your website that you want indexed and included in search results. The same is true for job postings such as those you want to be included in their job search results. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress there are a lot of great plugins that can help you generate sitemaps. We recommend Yoast, as it provides a bunch of great search engine optimization (SEO) tools in addition to generating sitemaps. If you don’t use a CMS, Google has provided a guide to generating sitemaps including links to third-party tools that will help you generate them.
4. View Analytics In Google Search Console.
After implementation is complete, you should be able to see impressions and clicks in Search Console. If you don’t, check for errors in the sitemap. As you monitor traffic, try changing up your job titles and job descriptions to test their effectiveness.
Use A Third Party Job Site
Third party integration is far simpler than direct integration. However, it will cost you money every month and won’t give you the control or analytics that direct integration does. Here’s how it works. When you post jobs to job boards and job distribution networks like CareerBuilder or ZipRecruiter they directly integrate their jobs with Google and your job postings may be included. Some ATSs, such as iCIMS and JazzHR, integrate with Google Job Search as well. Google provides a list of job sites, networks, and ATSs that integrate, however, there are likely much more than what they list. As a staffing agency, chances are you’re already using at least one of them to promote your jobs. Below is a distilled list of third-party sites that can integrate your job postings into Google Jobs Search Results:
- Careerbuilder
- Glassdoor
- ZipRecruiter
- Snagajob
- Monster
