optimizing your job descriptions for kickass rankings and serious traffic on indeed.com
December 11th, 2006
Looking to drive some serious traffic to your jobs via Indeed? Consider the following, next time you’re posting a job:
- Job title. Perhaps the most important ranking variable is your job title. There’s also a bias toward titles that are exact matches or have the keyphrase sooner in the title rather than later.
- Location, location, location. Indeed’s listings are geo-centric. Make sure all appropriate zip codes, cities and states are represented in your listings.
- Keyword density. The higher the percentage of your content that is your primary keyphrase, the better (although there’s probably a spam trigger). In other words, if your description has the word “nursing” in it 5 times out of 100 words, than your keyword density is 5 percent. I’d recommend aiming for 5-10 percent.
- Freshness. The newer your job postings, the better your chances of ranking better than your competition. I recommend uploading your jobs a minimum of every 8-10 days.
- Header tags. This is a tad geeky, but job descriptions with what’s called a header tag (sort of like a mini headline) seem to do well. HotJobs is the only major job board I noticed where this is automatically part of each listing.
- Emphasize. If you can bold, italicize or underline your targeted keyphrases, do it. Any job board with a WYSIWYG editor should empower you to do this easily.
- Repeat. Job descriptions that repeat their targeted keyphrase do pretty well. So, if you are hiring “inside sales,” make sure you repeat that term a good, yet sensible number of times.
- Follow the money. Stuck between choosing competing job boards? Checkout who’s advertising on Indeed from its Sponsored Links and Sponsored Job area. No reason not to piggyback on their ad dollars.
- Refinements. Do a search on Indeed and checkout the Refinements on the left, specifically Title. This will give you an idea of other popular job titles and keyphrases you might want to target.
- Variables. Make sure you use all variations of the job you’re trying to fill. For example, if you’re recruiting an HR professional, make sure both “human resources” and “HR” are in the job description, because you might lose a potential prospect if they’re searching “HR” and you use “human resources” only.
Follow these guidelines when posting a job that ends up on Indeed and it should be well worth your time.
Want more? Sign-up for my complimentary, spam-free e-mail list today (if you haven’t already). I’ll be sending members a more thorough analysis soon for the holidays. Ho, ho, SEO!
