Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

search spending increases

A new report from Econsultancy and Guava finds that marketers will be devoting more money to search engine optimization and paid search this year.

google hates your lil’ job board

By Joel Cheesman - SEO expert Aaron Wall recently said in a blog post, when talking about a Google algorithm change, "The January 18th Google update was bigger than 'Florida,' but few people noticed it ... the trend is clear - Google is promoting brands for big money core category keywords." Clear indeed. And the employment space is no different. Well-known brands like Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo! HotJobs are seeing some nice gains in search rankings across Google. In contrast, the change is pushing lesser known, wannabe sites and companies out of the rankings picture. These landscape changes are sure to push more marketers to alternatives like social media and vertical search engines, such as Indeed.com and Simply Hired, in order to drive traffic and awareness. It also offers an opportunity for big brand employers to crack the SERPs, where they haven't in the past.

bruce clay on seo: “ranking is dead”

how a john mccain video got ranked for ‘ohio jobs’

By Joel Cheesman - How did a John McCain for President video on YouTube get a high rank for the keyphrase "Ohio Jobs" on Google? We go digging for some insight into how it happened. Hint: Links were really important.

hitwise paints ugly pic for big 3

By Joel Cheesman - Life is getting pretty tough for the likes of Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo! HotJobs, according to recent traffic data by HitWise. Aggregation solutions like Indeed and Simply Hired, in contrast, are gaining significant traction. Moreover, Google, it turns out, is a more important driver of traffic than brand awareness. As numbers reveal, "Search is a key driver of traffic, with the majority coming from organic results, paid search is currently not broadly used within the Employment category." Job seekers are able to canvas thousands of Web sites rather than depend solely on a small number of destinations.

confessions of a former careerbuilder sales guy

By Joel Cheesman - The following e-mail was sent to me by a former CareerBuilder sales rep. The locations and names have been changed to protect the innocent. They discuss how "selling to HR" is a no-no when trying to make the sale.

hrmarketer on seo, search marketing

An interesting tidbit for you search marketers out there: Search Engine Advertising: To Click or Not to Click Forty-six percent of HR buyers who use an Internet search engine rarely click a vendor’s sponsored ad, while 33% are somewhat likely to click a sponsored ad. When we asked this same question in 2007, 56% said they rarely [...]