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Today we’re continuing our Q&A series, and this blog is all about websites.
Over the past few months, several of our Superfast Circle clients decided to up-level their brand presence, get new websites built, current websites improved, and optimise their lead attraction strategies through their online brand.
Getting your website right is critical for any recruitment company. In our training programme, the Superfast Circle, we have a whole module dedicated to your authority recruitment website. We answer many of these questions around what you need on your website, plus a website checklist. There is also a whole module on writing website content and also on SEO.
In today’s blog, I will touch on some of the critical questions that we get asked about recruitment websites.
1. Do I Need a New Website?
The first question we get asked is, “Do I need a new website, or can I update my current one?”.
The answer is both. Yes, you can create a brand new website, or you can update your existing one. Bear in mind that sometimes updating a website, depending on its age, can cost you more than having a new website created.
Our recommendation is if your website is more than four or five years old, the way it’s designed, it’s likely that its functionality might be starting to break around the edges.
The first thing you need to make sure of is that it is possible to update your website. If your website hasn’t been touched for years, the code might have started to break. In this case, your website might need a complete overhaul.
Aim to update your website every three to four years because the cost of doing that in today’s marketplace is inexpensive.
You must have a website today with the functionality that is mobile responsive and can be seen on an iPad, can be seen everywhere.
Often, you will see that many ‘bespoke’ websites can look the same or very similar, so you want your website to stand out – look at your competitor’s websites and avoid looking like them.
You will be in a much more competitive market since COVID, which will continue to be the case. People are looking at different suppliers, and sometimes, unfortunately, people judge books by their covers.
If you’ve got an outdated website, you may think it’s okay for you. If someone is trying to choose between a recruitment supplier and they’ve got an old antiquated website with no job board, no blog, no nothing. Then they look at a different company with an excellent website, including a resources page and areas where you can download content, that’s going to make a massive difference to them.
Is it worth spending a few grand to get yourself a good website and a strong brand presence out into the market? I would strongly suggest that it is.
2. Should I Have a Job Board on My Website?
The second question we’re often asked is, “Should I have a job board on my website?”.
Again, the answer would be yes, unless you’re a specific, very niche search consultancy. When your goal is to attract candidates, they want to know what roles you have available, so they will go to your website and use the search function.
For what it costs to put a job board on a website, it’s well worth it because this is your presence on the market.
Things have changed in the last 12 months; you need to have that real statement piece online when it comes to your website, and, of course, you want people to be able to search on your particular site for the jobs they want.
Now, what particular job board software would I recommend? I wouldn’t necessarily recommend any specific one, as there are plenty of good ones, and it will depend on your particular website and your designer.
You can use Firefox, or there are others such as JobAdder that you can add to your website. Work with your designer, see what they recommend, and then you can take it from there.
3. Should We Design a New Logo?
Another question we get asked is, “Should we design a new logo, Denise?” Again, it can depend.
If you’ve had your logo for many, many years, it might be that you need to refresh it; and there are so many places online now that you can get a good logo created.
Depending on their skill level, your website designer may be able to do it for you. Brief a designer by saying, “This is my current design. I’d like it to be refreshed. These are the sorts of logos that I like. Can you create this for me?”
A current modern trend in the market is to have all uppercase writing and for it to be blocky and a square type of font and logo.
Most designers will give you some suggestions, and you can get a perfect logo created relatively inexpensively. There are multiple places online that you can do this; there is a great place called 99 Designs, you might pay £200 or £300 for a logo there.
Then you can also go and use places like Fiverr. This website started a few years ago where everything was £5, but you will pay slightly more than that now. You’ll pay more depending on the level of expertise, but generally, and we’ve had a couple of logos there that’s cost us less than a hundred pound, and they have been exceptional.
4. What Pages Should I Include on My Website?
Now, one of the other questions that we are asked is, “What should I have on my website? What are the ideal pages?”.
Remember that people like familiarity. If you have a page that’s listed as something a bit obtuse, people will struggle to navigate your website.
You want all the classic pages to help people on either their talent journey or from a career perspective.
You will need your homepage, which explains what you do. You will also need an ‘About Us’ page, and I would suggest having ‘About Our Team’. I know some recruiters get defensive about having their consultants on their website, but I think you need to get all of your team on there.
Because we spend so much time online, we are used to visually seeing different people. That is a lot of how our experience is going to be. Rather than having several faceless consultants, you need to make that impact and be transparent with people.
It would be best if you also had-
- Careers page
- Job seekers page
- Employer’s page
- ‘Why People Work With Us’ page (testimonials and case studies
- Contact Us page
- A blog page
We write content for our clients and when we look at their websites, the most visited apart from the job functionality page is often their blog.
Having a blog brands you as an authority. Additionally, people are more likely to visit your website from a search engine when you have many website pages, including blog posts.
I would also have a ‘Resources’ page because people want value in advance in today’s market.
What’s great about the recruitment sector is it’s straightforward to give a lot of value in advance. As a recruiter, you already have so much knowledge you can share to help people either with their careers or building their talent pipelines.
This will help attract them towards you so that when they finally decide that they want to develop their career or move, or they’re going to build a new team or a new division, you are the people they come to and have that conversation with.
5. What About Search Engine Optimisation?
Another question we get asked is about SEO and search engine optimisation.
It is essential to have your website optimised so that people can find you. The next question people ask is whether to bring in an external SEO company or do this yourself.
The answer is that both could be right for you, depending on your budget.
Remember, you need to compete with the likes of Michael Page, Adecco, Monster, CareerBuilder; you’re going to have to spend a lot of money to get your website to rank in that area.
However, you can do a lot of good SEO yourself without going out into the market and spending £2,000 or £3,000 a month on link-building activities, and this can be done quite easily, depending on the type of functionality of your website.
I recommend WordPress; I’ve been using it for years, and many designers use WordPress on their own proprietary software. With WordPress, you can learn the basic skills quite quickly and teach somebody in the team to do it, and it seems to rank very well. We come on the first page of Google for many of our key terms, and that’s because we have implemented our own SEO strategies.
From an SEO perspective, you need to know what your clients and candidates are searching for and have those elements added to your website. You need good titles, you need descriptions, and you need keyword tags, and you can do this all on WordPress. There are also many WordPress plugins that you can use; these are special pieces of code that help you.
There’s something called the Yoast SEO plugin, which works well, plus Rank Math.
I would also make sure that you try and capture people’s name and email details before leaving your website, which is relatively easy to do with an opt-in box.
You’ll notice that we have them on our website, they give you the name and email address, and they can download a recruitment checklist or a career checklist or one of our reports on how to build a career or how to build a team.
Always make sure that you have something to offer in exchange for a client or candidate’s email address. We provide these in the Superfast Circle; if you want to know more about that, get in touch by clicking here.
Next Steps to Bettering Your Recruitment Website?
Having a unique website will always serve you well because you want to create an impact on social media, but also, the key thing is you want to build your authority presence online. For this, your website is your real estate in today’s market.
If you would like more information on any of the topics I have covered here or to discuss how to take your website and your marketing strategy to the next level, contact us on +44(0) 1524 784 331 or click here to book a call with our marketing experts.
This is Denise saying bye for now.
