Are you aware that Google rewrites title tags? If you’ve spent a significant amount of time and effort crafting the best page titles for your recruitment site, you know how frustrating this can be. However, a recent study showed that the search giant is indeed tweaking page meta titles behind our backs. 

So what does this piece of information mean for your recruitment site? Is there a way to stop the automatic changes from occurring? 

Google’s Unwanted Modification of Page Titles

As you know, title tags are a crucial ingredient of on-page SEO. They help search engines and your target audience understand what your web pages are all about, thus, increasing your click-through rates. They are also a prime location to incorporate your focus keywords to make your recruitment site more relevant and visible on search result pages. 

However, a recent Zyppy.com study revealed that Google changed 61.6% of meta titles from 2,370 websites. The search giant’s modifications on these page titles ranged from a single-word edit to a rewrite of the entire title tag. What’s more, Google will likely rewrite your page titles if they fail to meet certain standards, which we will discuss later. 

How to Reduce the Likelihood of Google Rewriting Your Meta Titles

The search giant confirmed that it is indeed changing page titles without our consent. Google Search Advocate John Mueller revealed that there’s still no mechanism that would prevent Google’s algorithms from automatically changing page titles and descriptions they deem below-standard. 

However, you might be happy to learn that there are ways to minimise the risk of the search giant rewriting your page titles. While these strategies are not guaranteed to work all the time, they can at least help ensure that your page titles would remain as you intended them to be. 

1. Limit your page title length to 50-60 characters

Even before the Zyppy.com study, it is common knowledge that Google rewrites title tags that are either too long or too short. After all, if the title is short, it won’t provide users with enough information to determine if a webpage is useful. On the other hand, if it is too long, it will be truncated to ensure it will fit in search result pages. 

Data showed that Google changed 99.9% of page titles with more than 70 characters and 96.6% of those with only one to five characters. Meanwhile, 39% to 42% of page titles with 51-60 characters were rewritten, showing what could be Google’s preferred title tag length. 

2. Do not add brackets or parentheses

Indeed, brackets and parentheses make your page titles stand out on search result pages. However, they could also increase the risk of Google changing your title tags. The study revealed that the search giant rewrote 77.6% of meta titles with brackets. Also, it removed the words in between the brackets in 32.9% of page titles. In comparison, 61.9% of title tags with parenthesis are rewritten. 

To stay on the safe side, we at Recruitment Traffic recommend that you avoid using brackets, parentheses, and other special characters in your title tags. This way, you can help ensure that your page titles won’t be modified without your knowledge or consent. 

3. Use dashes to separate titles

If you’re using a pipe (|) to separate titles, there’s a significant chance Google would rewrite your title tags. The study showed that the search giant changed 41% of pages titles that used pipes as separators, replacing them with a dash (–) in many instances. On the other hand, Google changed only 19.7% of title tags with dashes as separators, indicating its preferred title separator. 

4. Avoid using too many keywords

Adding too many keywords to your content, including page titles, is bad SEO practice. Not only can it make your recruitment site look spammy, but it can also hurt user experience. Also, inserting too many keywords increases your risk of Google rewriting your title tags. 

Besides overstuffing your page titles with keywords, you should also avoid the unnecessary use of brand names and using the same title for multiple web pages. For better SEO rankings, you should create unique meta titles and descriptions for each page. 

5. Match your page titles to your H1 tags

Creating matching headings (H1) and page titles can reduce the likelihood of Google rewriting title tags by 20.6%. This strategy can still be effective even if your title tags have other risk factors, such as pipe title separators. Therefore, try to match your page titles to your H1 tags as much as possible to ensure that Google will retain them. 

Craft Better Title Tags for Your Recruitment Site

With proof of Google modifying page titles that aren’t up to its standards, crafting better ones has become more challenging than ever. However, this doesn’t mean you should skip this SEO task entirely. Having unique page titles makes your web pages more visible while boosting your conversion rates. Therefore, continue crafting better title tags and consider the pointers mentioned above to minimise the risk of Google rewriting them. 

At Recruitment Traffic, we can help you with title tag creation and other crucial SEO tasks so you can benefit the most from the opportunities search engines can offer. Please speak with us, and our team of recruitment SEO specialists will create a plan tailored for your firm.

Did you know that you can leverage Google Image Search to drive organic traffic to your recruitment site? You might be delighted to learn that attracting Google Image Search traffic is not rocket science and the gains you can earn for minimal effort are pretty substantial. Also, if done correctly, you can generate more visits and leads to your site.

However, take note that traffic from this platform comes with specific problems. For starters, they might be irrelevant. Second, some visitors would just want to steal your images and put them on their respective websites. Either way, they could increase your site’s bounce rates.

To get the best results from this strategy, your goal is to build a strong relationship with the visitors you’ve obtained via Google Image Search. Then, you should take the steps needed to convince them to enlist your recruitment services. 

How to Generate Traffic with Google Image Search

To generate traffic via Google Image Search, you will need to optimise every picture posted on your website. Here are some pointers you should consider:

1. Add your content to Google’s Knowledge Graph

Research showed that you’re more likely to appear in search result pages for competitive keywords if your content is in Google’s Knowledge Graph. That being said, you should claim your business’s knowledge panel so you can submit info and images to the Knowledge Graph.

2. Make your own images

Consider creating original images for your website instead of using stock photos you’ve obtained from somewhere else. For example, you can take pictures of your staff and use them on your “Meet the Team” page.
Similarly, it’s a good idea to post original photos on your blog. However, make sure that they are relevant to the blog’s topic or have an illustrative purpose.

 3. Optimise your images

If you don’t have the time to create original images, don’t despair. You can still use non-original pictures for your recruitment site without resorting to stock images. But no matter what kind of pictures you’ll use, whether they are original or not, always make sure to optimise them before uploading them online.

a. Always use the correct filename

Ensure that the image file name is not just a string of random numbers or letters. Always add your target keywords to the image file name to let Google know what the picture is about. For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “finance jobs” with your webpage, the accompanying image should be named “finance-jobs.jpeg.”

b. Choose the best image format

The best image format will depend on the type of photo you have and how you want to use it on your recruitment site. Here are a few examples:
JPEG – highly recommended for larger pictures with lots of colours.
PNG – best for maintaining the transparency of your background images.
SVG – recommended for logos and icons as they allow you to resize them without losing quality through CSS or JavaScript.
GIF – used for moving images.

4. Ensure that your images are of high quality

To attract more Google Image Search traffic, always use high-quality pictures on your recruitment site. High-quality and clear images will look better when they show up as thumbnails on search results. This will enable them to attract more clicks from users. Also, other websites are more likely to link to your web pages and give you referral traffic if you have high-quality images.

5. Define image dimensions

Always indicate the height and width of your images. Web browsers can start loading a web page even before the images are downloaded, provided that they know the pictures’ dimensions. Therefore, defining image dimensions in advance can improve user experience and speed up page loading times.

6. Use alt tags

The alt tag shows up when the image fails to load. It also helps visitors who are visually impaired as it tells them what the picture is all about. SEO-wise, alt tags help make your web images more searchable. When you add keywords to them, people looking for images similar or relevant to yours will see them on Google Image Search results.

7. Resize the images

Ensure that your web images won’t hurt your page loading speed, which is a vital Google ranking factor. Pictures have a massive impact on your site loading times, especially if you’re trying to upload a large image. For this reason, you should always resize the images for how you want to display them. You can use editing tools, such as Adobe Photoshop, to resize your pictures and ensure that they will bring you significant Google Image Search traffic.

Take Advantage of Google Image Search

Google Image Search can be an excellent source of organic traffic for your recruitment site. Just make sure to have a sound SEO strategy in place to attract candidates and potential clients instead of random web visitors. Consider the pointers discussed above to obtain quality traffic for your site.

Do you want to drive more high-quality traffic and lead to your recruitment site? We can help. Please speak with us at Recruitment Traffic today, and our team of digital marketing experts will create an SEO plan tailored just for you.

The last few years have been a huge challenge for many businesses because of the global pandemic. Closures imposed by the government to prevent the spread of Covid-19 were particularly hard on them because no customers meant no sources of income. But despite this, many persevered and even found ways to take their businesses and enterprises to the next level. And for that, they earned accolades from one of the most prestigious award-giving bodies in the world.

The Global Excellence Awards are AI Global Media’s flagship programme covering a wide variety of sectors and countries. Now in its sixth year, the awards have recognised and rewarded firms and individuals from different parts of the world who are top performers and leaders of innovation in their respective industries. This year, the Recruitment Marketing Specialist award goes to our company. We are so happy and honoured to get recognised.

Choosing the Best of the Best

While it is true that entering the awards programme is free, past nominees would agree that the process of securing an award from AI Global Media is not a walk in the park. Because award recipients are selected through a merit-based system, they must consistently demonstrate an excellent track record and a clear commitment to innovation. More importantly, they must go through an extensive and rigorous selection and judging process from AI Global Media’s in-house awards specialists to become a finalist.

The Global Excellence Awards’ meticulous and in-depth selection process ensures the winners are chosen according to their achievements and capabilities based on their proven performance over the last 12 months. This enables them to take pride in the knowledge that they rightfully deserve a place amongst the best of the best in the world.
While securing a Global Excellence award (or two) is a reward itself, award recipients can enjoy extra perks that go along with their victory. They can benefit from the massive exposure and marketing opportunities AI Global Media can offer.

AI Global Media’s Worldwide Reach

AI Global Media knows and understands how challenging it can be to create a thriving business and ensure its continued growth and success amidst these trying times. Because they themselves have worked hard to provide their clients with the best products and services, they found it prudent to honour and showcase firms and individuals who are doing their best despite the ongoing challenges.

For more than ten years, AI Global Media has been providing highly engaging and informative B2B content for and about businesses and individuals from a wide range of industries. Currently, they have 12 unique brands, each serving a specific region or sector. Their flagship brand, Acquisition International, is a monthly digital magazine with over 108,000 readers worldwide and covers the latest news and feature stories about the global corporate market.

Besides Acquisition International, AI Global Media is also home to LUXlife. LUXlife is a luxury-lifestyle magazine that provides high-net-worth individuals with the latest insights into products, innovations, and experiences that would enable them to enjoy the “high-life” to the fullest.

Are You the Next Global Excellence Awards Winner?

Indeed, the global pandemic and the challenges it brings has made running a business these days more challenging. But with programmes like AI Global Media’s Global Excellence Awards serving as a great source of inspiration, businesses and individuals would be more motivated to continue doing their best and finding ways to stay ahead.

So, do you have what it takes to be the next Global Excellence Awards winner?  

Candidate personas are merely fictional representations of job seekers. However, many recruiters use them to select the right person for the job. Personas can also lead you to the right keywords for your SEO and paid ads strategy. 

First, take the time to create a candidate persona since it can help you:

• Create an SEO strategy that will attract and engage the right candidates.
•  Craft digital ads that will appeal to suitable candidates.
•  Understand what your clients require.

Creating a candidate persona

A candidate persona is a representation of your ideal candidate for a vacant position. You need this person to create a method of obtaining the most suitable person for your client’s vacancy. Here’s a guide for creating a candidate persona.

Three parties involved in creating a candidate persona

Gather information by interviewing:

1. Stakeholders 

Before posting the vacancy, try talking with stakeholders to determine the qualities they are looking for in a candidate. You can ask the company’s hiring manager or interviewers about the:

a. Job Title – Not all companies use the same job titles for the same role. For example, a person in charge of growth can be called:

•  Customer Acquisition Manager
•  Growth Hacker
•  Growth Ninja 

However, make sure the client’s job title is SEO friendly so it can appear on search results, job boards or LinkedIn.

b. The company where the perfect candidate works – Your clients may have a list of preferred companies where the candidates could be working.

The most likely demographic of the candidate – You can also ask them about:

•  The ideal location of the prospective candidate
•  Their age and level of experience
•  The expected salary for such a position

c. Skills – What are the different abilities the client expects from a candidate? Finding the answer to this question will help make your search criteria more specific.

d. Education, qualifications, and certifications – Does the client require the candidate to have a particular college degree? Do they prefer graduates from certain universities? What educational background or certification do they need? Such information will help you focus on the right candidates. 

f. The candidate’s driving factor – What makes the prospective employee excited about their role in the company? Are they drawn to the position because it offers the use of certain technologies? You need to know why a job is attracting or driving away candidates.

2. Team members 

The common trait of the client’s team members is an excellent indicator of a candidate persona. It can help you understand what an ideal candidate should have to be successful in the vacant position. You may need to interview at least two to three people to know what those traits are. You can ask questions about their:

Goals – What are their career and even personal goals, and where do they want to be after a certain number of years? Does it include things, such as:

•  Marriage
•  Mortgage
•  Children’s education 

b. Interests – What do the candidates do in their spare time? Do they visit a specific place or website? What kind of reading material do they enjoy?

c. Motivation – What motivates people to work for the client’s company? Why did they apply to the company and made them stay? 

3.  Candidates 

Interviewing the stakeholders and team members can help you create the client’s version of a perfect candidate. However, their description may not be realistic. You need to verify their assumptions by talking to the candidates.

You can ask the same questions to the prospective employees, including those who seem unsuitable for the job.  You can also ask them the following:

•  What’s the reason they applied?
•  Do they feel there’s something different with the vacant position compared to their previous one? 
• You should also list down responses of the unsuitable candidates for comparison.

Use the candidate personas in your keyword research 

You’ve gathered all the relevant information from the stakeholders, employees, and candidates. Now you’re ready to apply the persona to your keyword research.  When you’re gathering keywords, check if they accurately describe your candidate persona.

Consider using an Excel sheet or a similar tool for processing the keywords you can use. Remove from your list search terms that are:

•  Too low with regards to search volume
•  Too competitive
•  Not relevant enough

You can now use the remaining keywords on your job posts and web pages. Incorporate those words and phrases in the various page elements, such as:

•  Title
•  Meta descriptions
•  H1 and other tags

You may even have to rewrite the page content to make the search terms more relevant to your target readers.

Incorporate the persona in your content

Make sure that you include the candidate personas when creating and promoting content to your audience. Consider what will likely stir the interest of your target audience. Can your content encourage candidates to apply even if they are currently employed? How can you help them achieve their goals? Also, don’t forget to communicate in their language.

Conclusion 

 A candidate persona is useful in your SEO and paid ads campaign. Start and fill out the essential details, such as their current employer, demographics, educational background, job designation, skills and qualifications. Talk to the client, employees, and candidates to gather relevant keywords to describe the ideal employee.

Creating a candidate persona for SEO and digital ad purposes requires careful planning and a significant amount of time and resources. If you need additional input and advice on making one, reach out and give us at Recruitment Traffic a call.

These days, getting scathing reviews from disgruntled clients can be a death sentence, especially for fledgling recruitment agencies. With many people relying on the Internet to find the products and services they need, negative feedback can prevent them from finding more potential clients. Good thing you can always obtain an online reputation management service and employ the right strategies to ensure that negative reviews and lousy press won’t stop your recruitment business from attracting more candidates and potential clients. 

How to Eliminate Negative Press with Online Reputation Management

Also known as ORM, online reputation management combines traditional and search marketing to help brands and businesses build and maintain an excellent reputation online. A vital aspect of ORM is monitoring and managing search engine results to safeguard one’s reputation and credibility against negative press and online exposure. 

 ORM can be quite handy when dealing with bad online publicity. As many ORM service providers like us at Recruitment Traffic would tell you, there’s a simple yet effective way to prevent a bad review from showing up alongside your recruitment company on search results. You should create enough content so the negative reviews will be pushed down until they are no longer visible on the first page of Google. 

To ensure that your strategy will be effective, make sure to take the following preliminary steps: 

1. See where the negative reviews are coming from

First, you should determine where the negative reviews are located, whether they are coming from a third-party review site, posted on your GMB page, or published on someone else’s blog. 

2. Find out if it’s just a single review

Note that one person can create several negative reviews about your recruitment business and post them on various websites or platforms. As such, verify if you’re dealing with single negative feedback or multiple reviews from single/different individuals. 

3. Contact the review sites

If the reviews are published on a third-party site, you can contact and ask them to remove the unfavourable client feedback about your business. Most review sites would be willing to accommodate your request, as long as the negative reviews meet the following requirements: 

• A fake account created the reviews.
• The reviews use profanities.
• The reviews are utilised as a negative marketing strategy to promote another recruitment site.
• Personal information is included in the reviews. 

Removing Bad Press with the Help of Online Reputation Management Service Provider

What if the bad review you received doesn’t meet the requirements stated above? What if there’s also an article critical of your business and it’s published on a news site? If this is the case, it certainly helps to seek expert assistance. 

Online reputation management experts can employ a wide range of strategies to ensure that people looking for your services won’t see the negative press about your recruitment site on search results. Here are some of them: 

1. Optimising your website

If your recruitment site has thin content, your online reputation managers will likely improve the content of your web pages, particularly your “About Us” page. It is also common for them to add an organisation and address schema to your About Us page and point it to your social profiles. 

2. Optimising your GMB listing

An optimised Google My Business (GMB) listing can help you get on top of local search results, especially if you’re keen on attracting more candidates and employers from a specific location. There are many ways to optimise your GMB page. You can post photos of your recruitment company and create write-ups about your services. 

But most importantly, your online reputation managers will ensure that your GMB listing contains your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP). They will also ensure that your NAP details are consistent throughout your main site and social media pages to tie all of your web properties together. This way, when a potential client searches for you online, one of your web properties will show up on top of search result pages instead of the negative review. 

3. Ensuring that you have plenty of positive GMB reviews

Google will always show its review stars on search results before those from other review sites. Therefore, your online reputation managers will help you obtain more customer reviews on your GMB listing to bury the negative ones you received. 

4. Optimising your social media pages

Optimising your social profiles by updating relevant details about your business and ensuring that they are consistent throughout will help boost their chances of appearing on top of search result pages. 

5. Claiming the video carousel

Your online reputation managers may also suggest that you create a YouTube account and post at least three videos about your recruitment business. Because of how popular videos are, they are more likely to show up on search result pages. Also, they can take advantage of the video carousel on top of search results. 

6. Optimising other web properties

If you have other online assets, such as related websites, it is an excellent idea to let your SEO team optimise them and add more relevant details to their About Us page. This will help ensure that the updated information about your business will appear on top of search results rather than the negative review. 

7. Publish guest posts on your behalf

Google often prioritises content from trustworthy and popular websites and gives them a higher search ranking. Therefore, your online reputation management team may also do guest posts on authority sites to help you get rid of the negative review from the first page of Google. 

8. Obtaining business citations

Acquiring business citations is an effective link building strategy that lets you improve your recruitment site’s authority and allows you to attract referral traffic. At the same time, it may also help eliminate negative press about your recruitment agency from search results. If your SEO proposes this strategy, ensure that they will acquire business citations only from the most prominent online business directories. 

9.  Helping you attract good reviews on authority sites

As you may know, Google values quality more than quantity. This is why your online reputation managers may use strategies that will enable you to attract positive feedback on review websites with more authority than the one where the negative review is published. 

10. Link building

Many online reputation management service providers utilise link building because it is an effective way to prevent lousy press against your business from appearing on top of search result pages. What’s more, building quality backlinks can also add more authority to your site and enable you to generate more referral traffic. 

Always Seek Professional Help

With many job seekers and employers using the Internet to find the job opportunities or talents they need, building a solid online presence is vital to your recruitment business. However, an excellent online presence is not enough to guarantee continuous success. You should also manage your online reputation carefully to prevent negative press and unfavourable client reviews from hurting your image and credibility. 

At Recruitment Traffic, we can help you build a robust online presence while ensuring that your reputation remains flawless. Please get in touch with us and let us create a bespoke plan for your recruitment company.