HR And Search Engine Optimization
HR and
Search Engine
Optimization
Ten practical tips to improving
the visibility and usability of your
company’s career section
April 2009
Prepared By
Contents
General Information
Purpose of the whitepaper and what to expect...........................................3
10 Essential Tips
Tip #1: Label the section “Careers” and include it on your homepage......4
Tip #2: Visitor should be able to skim all
openings and get to any specific job in 2 clicks.................................5
Tip #3: All job openings should have
their own unique pages and be bookmarkable................................6
Tip #4: Your jobs should be in HTML - not PDF nor DOC nor AJK…...........7
Tip #5: To view your openings, registration should not be required...........8
Tip #6: Each listing should tie directly
into your applicant tracking system.................................................9
Tip #7: Each webpage should be print-friendly...........................................10
Tip #8: The order of the job information and what is included matters.........11
Tip #9: Frames are your worst enemy...........................................................12
Tip #10: All job information should be in text, not graphics......................13
Bonus Tip: Use popular terms.......................................................................13
HR-XML technology........................................................................................14
About LinkUp.................................................................................................15
Glossary of useful terms and abbreviations................................................16
Before You Panic About Having 10 Tips - Don’t worry!!
These tips are in no specific order. Plus you do not have to do
!them all at once. Think of them like eating healthy: every bit helps.
Purpose of the whitepaper
and what to expect
The purpose of this whitepaper is to help you improve your career section.
Having analyzed thousands of company websites and all of their career
sections, we have found certain trends that set the successful career
sections apart from the rest – simple features and functions that all
companies can implement without losing their brand integrity. When your
career section is set up well, it reduces your administrative duties, helps
maintain your recruitment message and delivers jobseekers.
Here is what you can expect to learn from this whitepaper:
n Why your jobs may not be on search engines and how to get them
included
n The hurdles jobseekers face in finding your jobs and how to remove those
hurdles
n What terms people are using and which ones are worth remembering
n The worst ways to present your jobs and what you should be doing
This is all assuming that you have a career section and post your job
openings on your site. If you are not doing that yet, put this down and
!take care of that first…
3
TIP #1: Label the section “Careers”
and include it on your homepage
BAD LINK:
GOOD LINK:
Our Company
Our Company
Your Future With Us
Careers
Company Information
Company Information
Investor Relations
Investor Relations
Press Room
Press Room
The best thing to always remember about improving the traffic to your
career section is to make everything blatantly obvious. The fewer clicks it
takes to get to your jobs, the faster jobseekers and search engines will find
it. And the most obvious spot to put it is on your home page! Jobseekers
get frustrated when they have to guess its location, and search engines
sometimes just give up. Some companies include it in their “About Us”
section, others put the link in “Contact Us”, and for whatever reason
some sites only list it in their sitemap. Granted, ideal candidates have the
dedication to find the section, but there is no need to make them work for it.
As one of the most crucial parts to any growing business, the career section
deserves a link on your homepage.
Marketing probably is not going to like this advice – in all honesty market-
ing practices commonly clash with search engine optimization. Online,
people search for “online camping equipment store,” but marketing would
prefer call it “digital wilderness outfitter.” When promoting your career
section use common terms. This is exactly what you need to keep in mind
for your career section. If you label the link “Careers,” people will find it.
4
TIP #2: Visitor should be able
to skim all openings, and get to
any specific job in 2 clicks
Many career sections require
a form to be filled out
before jobs can be viewed.
Though jobseekers have
little difficulty filling out
simple forms, most search
engines have no idea how
to complete your form to
get to your jobs. This is why
a “Browse All Jobs” link is
very important – so search
engines can find your jobs!
Another frustration, felt by
jobseekers and search engines, is when the form options do not accurately
represent the job openings. For example, if a company only has openings
in two states, yet the form on their career section lists all fifty states, the
jobseeker is more likely to leave the site before guessing what state has
job openings. Additionally, by providing a direct link to the listing of all job
openings, you improve the PageRank of your site and all your jobs.
To quickly explain what PageRank is, think of your homepage as a big
smiley face. The bigger the smiley, the higher the page shows up on search
engines. Then each page your homepage links to is, say, 10% less important.
Each page those pages link to is 10% less important, and so on. This is what
PageRank means and why it is crucial that your pages are quick to access –
both for your visitors and for search engines. Since PageRank is logarithmic,
you want search engines to reach your jobs in as few jumps as possible.
This is also why it should never take more than 2 clicks to reach a job.
30% of visitors who go to your website looking for your career section
aren’t randomly searching for a job that suits them, they’re searching for
a job with your company. By giving them options where all your pages
can be skimmed, you’re making it easier for your jobs to appear on search
engines and for the company “players” to find a position on the team.
5
TIP #3: Each job openings
should have its own pages
and be bookmarkable
One of the worst possible design mistakes for a career section is to have
all of your jobs on the exact same page. Even in the situation where your
designer charges you per page, the improved usability of your site makes
jobseekers and search engines happier.
Think of it from the end user’s perspective. Lumping all the jobs together
on the same page gives the appearance that the listed positions are less
important. There is an excellent reason why major job boards give each job
its own page – and you should too!
Despite your hopes, barely 1 out of 100
To really be helpful to your
jobseekers is only actively considering one
applicants, each job webpage
job. This means that you want the jobseeker
should stay on the site at least
until the position is filled, even
to be able to quickly return to your listing
if no additional applicants are
at their leisure. The more jobs they are
being accepted.
considering and the more openings on
your website, the less likely they are to be
While you don’t have to show
able to reproduce the steps they took to
the link to these webpages
find your job in the first place. And with the
in your listings, leaving the
page up ensures that your
increasingly popular tools like del.icio.us,
applicants are able to review
savvy applicants are relying on bookmarks
all the details before any in-
to remember your company. That is why it is
terview – and better informed
absolutely essential that all your jobs have
applicants create more mean-
the ability to be bookmarked. Here is a quick
ingful interviews.
way for you to test this:
1. Find a job on your website and bookmark it
2. Close your browser
3. Reopen your browser and open that job from your bookmarks
4. If the job loaded –fantastic!
5. If it did not, then talk to your web designers. If you are unable to
bookmark your job, neither can your visitors or the search engines.
Approximately 20% of jobseekers have friends that are also job hunting –
and they share relevant jobs with each other. Providing simple tools so your
visitors can quickly tell friends and family about a career with your company
gives you a free advertising tool. So even when the person on your site is
not a good fit for your company, giving them a “Tell A Friend” feature helps
you find someone who is.
!FACT: LinkUp’s search engine is completely capable of handling career
sections where all job information for all jobs is listed on one page. This
tip is solely for the benefit of your site and your visitors.
6
TIP #4: Your jobs should be in
HTML – not PDF nor DOC nor AJK…
HTML is the universal language of webpages. All browsers can read it and
search engines are built to search it. To make your listings as accessible
as possible, they need to be provided in HTML – not a file that needs to
be downloaded to be viewed. Granted, search engines like Google and
Yahoo are increasing their support in reading non-HTML files, but for your
visitors, it is just a headache. If your jobs are not in HTML, they cannot be
bookmarked. So how do the non-technical-elite tell if they are in HTML or
some other format?
When the internet was young, most webpages ended in .html or .htm. But
with the ever-present programming languages that help companies deploy
websites faster, it is not possible to rely on the address to tell if a page is
HTML. There is an easy way to test if what you’re seeing is a HTML file,
right-click on the text – if you see “View Source” in the menu, it is HTML. If
you are not able to find the “View Source” option, your site is probably not
using HTML.
You might say “my jobs are PDFs but I tell people they can download a free
program to read them” or “my listings are all Word documents because
that’s what I use and everyone has Microsoft Office.” It is important to
remember that what is easiest for you in the short-term might actually
be costing you in the long run. Obviously, not everyone has Microsoft
Office, and you probably do not enjoy having to download a program to
read a file that someone sent you. Even more, if the visitor is on a public
computer or an older model, they might not be able to install that program,
so they cannot view your jobs at all! Artistically speaking, PDFs and Word
documents have more design capabilities and typically look better than
most webpages. If this is the case, then offer both the enhanced version and
the HTML.
In the title, we mention AJK files. Don’t know what kind of file an AJK is?
Well, we don’t either. In all likelihood it does not exist… yet. But it is quite
frustrating to be sent a file and not know how to open it. The best reason
to show your listings online in standard HTML is that everyone, i.e. search
engines and visitors, can read it. Granted, it may take some time, either
yours or your IT staff’s to convert it from your company-native format
to HTML, but that is a price worth paying for greater visibility and more
applicants.
7
TIP #5: To view your openings,
registration should not be required
We all love metrics. Knowing who is looking at what is an incredibly
important part of understanding your candidates and your traffic. That is
why a lot of websites, including LinkUp, offer registration options so visitors
can create accounts on a website. If you do offer registration, one crucial
point is registration should be optional. If you are forcing people to register
in order to view your jobs, you may be turning away passive jobseekers
and blocking search engines. Also, when you force people to register, you
are probably preventing people from bookmarking your jobs.
We are not saying that you should not offer registration on your site.
Registration is a very important feature that many jobseekers look for
and utilize. Once you are at the point where the jobseeker fills out an
application, it makes perfect sense to require registration. Since it is useless
to have search engines spider your application forms, there is no harm in
keeping them out. Remember, you can always entice people to register by
offering additional features and functionality.
Passive jobseekers like lurking around and not being seen. They are
sometimes afraid that registering on a site will alert their current employer
and create turmoil in their current job. With 60% of people actively
employed considering themselves passive jobseekers, this is not a market
segment you should alienate.
Think requiring registration
will tell you who’s visiting
your site? Think again. There
are plenty of resources on the
web, like BugMeNot.com, that
provide a thorough directory
of usernames and passwords
to websites, like the New York
Times, so users are able to
login without having to actually create an account and share their personal information.
There’s a good reason why “compulsory registration” has such an ugly feel to it.
8
TIP #6: Each listing
should tie directly into your
applicant tracking system
Going back to the PageRank
concept, the more pages that
What is an Applicant
exist on your website, the
greater visibility it will have.
Tracking System?
Unfortunately, this is all the SEO
benefit that you would gain by
Also called a Candidate Management
having an ATS tied into your jobs.
System, an ATS is a software application
designed to help an organization recruit
There are tremendous benefits
employees more efficiently. An ATS
to the jobseeker when your jobs
can be used to post job openings on a
are all connected to a method for
corporate website or job board, screen
receiving applications. Jobseekers
resumes, and generate interview requests
to potential candidates by email. Other
find career sections offering
features may include individual applicant
online applications to be more
tracking, requisition tracking, automated
trustworthy. They are also more
resume ranking, customized input forms,
willing to send an application,
pre-screening questions and response
seeing the company as more
tracking, and multilingual capabilities. It
likely to be listing real jobs that
is estimated that roughly 50% of all mid-
are actively open as opposed to
sized companies and almost all large
jobs without application tie-ins,
corporations use some type of applicant
where the jobseeker wonders
tracking system.
if the company is still actively
seeking applicants.
If you do not utilize an ATS, perhaps it is time to consider one. There are
dozens of capable vendors out there, with solutions for every size company
and every size budget. They are typically fast to implement, easy to use,
and tie into most existing solutions. And by having your own, you will also
reduce any reliance on using application systems that other job boards
force you to use.
IMPORTANT: LinkUp does not offer an ATS nor do we have any affiliations
with any ATS programs. We simply have found that companies receive
!applicants by channeling people through an integrated ATS solution than
by having applicants email/fax applications.
9
TIP #7: Each webpage
should be print-friendly
Make sure that it is easy to print out your job openings. There are huge
benefits to this, both to jobseekers and to search engines. When your
website prints out cleanly, and does not get chopped up nor distorted, it is
an excellent sign that your code is well written and search engine friendly.
Search engines love big blocks of text and hate when it is choppy and
poorly aligned. Your printed page will give good insight into how the search
engine sees your website.
Jobseekers frequently print off the listings that they’re interested in, and
bring them along to interviews. By putting a bit of one-time effort into the
print-version of your website, you can ensure that jobseekers are able to
cleanly see all the information on your opening in a very reader-friendly
fashion.
Think of this as a good chance to “be green.” There is no advantage for the
printout to be cluttered with big graphics or lots of blocks that are irrelevant
to the actual page. It is very frustrating to print a page, expecting 1 page,
and getting 6 because the designers did not test it on a printer. If your
layout does look less than ideal, have your web staff investigate “print css”
and start saving those trees.
This opening printed nicely on 1 page.
This printed across 3 pages
and some text didn’t print.
10
TIP #8: The order of your
information and what you’re
including on each page matters
The goal of the job opening page is to share what information the jobseeker
will find valuable and bury (in size and in position) information that they will
find less useful. By staying focused on putting everything where it logically
makes sense for the jobseeker and mimicking the layouts that other
companies use to list their jobs, your job becomes more search engine and
jobseeker friendly.
There is little reason for your job posting to be more
complex than this. By keeping it clearly sorted, you al-
Position Title
low search engines to give your phrases their proper
Description:
level of importance, and speed up the jobseeker’s abil-
ity to analyze your opening. Clearly labeling sections
Duties:
reduces guesswork and cuts back on the number of
Requirements:
questions you’ll be asked about an opening. Note the
lack of company information on this simple example.
Opening Information:
When the person wants to learn about your company,
Location Information:
they’ll visit the “About Us” section. On the job’s page
Contact Information:
their primary interest is to discover if they’re right for
the job and if the job is right for them.
There are books that could be written on this tip alone, but here are some
short pointers for you to follow to improve your listings:
n Even if you only have one office, you should list the position location on the
page. It is risky and frustrating to have a potential jobseeker guess where they
might be working.
n Order the information in a way that is logical for the jobseeker. Put the title first
and largest, the description second, the requirements third, and the application
information fourth. Since that is the order they would look for information, it
makes sense for you to list that way. Also, using the job’s title in the title tag
makes it easier for the jobseeker to track the job.
n Clearly separate the description, the duties, the requirements, etc. You will filter
out more unsuitable applicants by clearly separating the sections as opposed to
making them guess, and possibly missing the fields that would rule them out.
n Do not clutter the page with irrelevant information. Each job’s page should be
solely dedicated to that job. If the candidate needs other information (such as
directions), they will know enough to find that elsewhere on your site.
n Put all your internal information in its own section, do not intermix it with other
sections (such as the frequent “let’s put it at the end of the job title”). A well
organized page helps the search engines know what is important, it makes more
sense to the jobseeker and yet it still provides you with all the right information
in a consistent place for your internal needs.
11
TIP #9: Frames are your worst enemy
Frames, a way of splitting the browser window into several independent
parts, came into being in the 90’s. It was briefly popular, but even as early as
1996 people started screaming what a horrible idea it was and how greatly
frames could hurt a website when used as a primary method of navigation.
Search engines give up when it comes to frames and typically just ignore
the site. They simply cannot send a visitor to your site in the way you meant
them to see it, with the navigation pane and the content pane. The search
engine would probably just send the visitor to the content pane and since
they lose your navigation, they will probably leave your site altogether.
Hoping your site will work on that sleek new iPhone? If you are using
frames, think again. Mobile browsers don’t work with frames.
Frames also render bookmarks useless, how’s that for frustrating? And try
printing out a website that uses frames; its not pretty.
How do you know if your site is using frames? Since it is not always visually
obvious, we were not able to find a 2-step method to show you if your site
uses frames. Instead, we made one. Simply copy the URL from one of your
jobs and paste it into the form at http://framecheck.linkup.com. Within
seconds, our system will tell you whether your website uses frames. If you
are not, consider this tip done! If you are using frames, now would be a
good time to start talking with the people responsible for your website and
planning how to remove the dependency on frames. By getting rid of those
frames, the search engines and jobseekers will certainly thank you.
One of these sites is using a frame, the other isn’t.
With so many reasons against using frames, why would you?
FACT: If you’re looking for some material to prepare you for that
meeting, search for “who framed the web” and “jakob nielsen frames”
!and you’ll find two exceptional articles that more thoroughly explain the
drawbacks of using this outdated technology.
12
TIP #10: All job information
should be in text – no graphics
Either for speed of development or lack of knowledge, sometimes websites
use a graphic of text rather than the actual text. Search engines and screen
readers cannot understand words in a picture. Say you want a pretty font to
list the job title, by using a graphic to represent that title instead of text, you
greatly diminish the likelihood of a search engine finding that position and
sharing it with potential jobseekers.
Sometimes it can be hard to recognize if your website is designed with
graphics to represent the text. Fortunately, there is a fast way to find out.
For any text in question, which will standout by having a non-matching font
or otherwise not match, right-click on it. If in the menu you see options that
say “Save Image,” then it is time to get that fixed and start showing your
valuable keywords to the search engines!
The lower “Personal Banker” shows a graphic taken
Text:
from a website, while the upper one is text shown by
Personal Banker a browser. Though the lower one is more cosmetically
appealing, it is never read by search engines and
Graphic:
therefore is never shared with jobseekers. So it comes
Personal Banker down to what is more important - aesthetics or traffic?
Bonus TIP: Use popular terms
This is where the marketing stuff comes into play again – fortunately there are
tons of resources at your disposal to help you find the best of both worlds.
By using popular terms, you’ll have phrases that people will be looking for
and understand. Despite “Junior Associate Of Contact Relations” sounding
quite glamorous, people understand “Executive Assistant” and are far more
likely to search for that title.
For an incredibly complete list of commonly
Despite the negative cliché
used titles, go to www.occupationalinfo.org
that buzzwords typically
carry with them, in titles and descriptions – this is the perfect time to use
them. Popular phrases, semi-popular phrases and niche phrases are great
to use and what the cutting-edge performers are searching for. Want a
great way to see terms necessary and under used by industry? Go to
www.linkup.com/jobcloud and view 100s of keywords across dozens of
categories.
13
HR-XML technology
Don’t you just love getting something extra? Like when the waitress
accidentally leaves two dinner mints and everyone else just got one? In the
spirit of that, we wanted to shed some light on a fantastic technology that
is really going to change the way the HR industry works. The technology is
HR-XML, and it has the potential to make everyone’s job a whole lot easier.
(This is completely unsolicited and unpaid for, we just think it is really cool!)
Taken from their website…
The mission of the HR-XML Consortium is to spare employers and vendors the risk
and expense of having to negotiate and agree upon data interchange mechanisms
on an ad-hoc basis. By developing and publishing open data exchange standards
based on Extensible Markup Language (“XML”), the Consortium provides the
means for any company to transact with other companies without having to
establish, engineer, and implement many separate interchange mechanisms.
Despite the dryness of that explanation, there is one incredible bit that
would revolutionize our industry – “interchange mechanisms on an ad-hoc
basis.” In plain English, that means a standard format for all HR information
so all systems can talk to each other. No more having to copy-and-paste
data from your ATS onto a job board just to post a listing – you just upload
your opening and the job board would immediately know the title, the
category, the description, and the hiring timeline.
Imagine getting a resume that would be uploaded into your system and all
the fields would be 100% accurate. Ditching the headache of “Oh, there’s
the education information, I’ll just retype that into our database since their
Word resume isn’t easy to copy” would be a dream, wouldn’t it? That’s what
HR-XML data offers. A concrete uniform format, without any licensing fees,
where all systems could inter-connect and reduce the burden of retyping
the same information over and over. Told you it was cool.
Learn more at www.hr-xml.org or hr.xml.org
14
About LinkUp
LinkUp is a leading job search engine that adds value and exposure to jobs
found on company websites. We help active and passive jobseekers find the
jobs on your website by aggregating thousands of jobs from small, mid-
sized, and large companies. With LinkUp, you will gain maximum exposure
to jobseekers while maintaining control of your recruitment message.
Learn more about us at www.linkup.com
15
Glossary of useful terms
and abbreviations
AJAX / Web 2.0
Newer technologies, pioneered by Google, that is essentially a “bells and whistles”
approach. Though certainly not required in your website, they do tend to improve the
end-user’s experience.
Blogs / RSS / Feeds
Webjournals (weblogs) have become the modern form of journalism. Using
feeds, sometimes referred to as RSS, people are able to be instantly notified when
webpages, typically blogs, have been updated.
HTML – HyperText Markup Language
(XHTML is the same thing, just with a Year-2000 feel) The language that webpages are
in. If you think of a webpage as a house, then HTML is the wood.
Javascript / CSS / Flash / GIF / PNG/ JPG
The technologies and formats that make webpages pretty and useful. If you think of a
webpage as a house, then these are the paint on the walls and decorations.
PHP / ASP/ .NET / ColdFusion / Java / Ruby On Rails
Programming languages that help to automatically generate content, like HTML.
These are to webpages as the factory line was to producing cars. Having your website
written in one of these languages (some are free, some aren’t) is almost essential
when you have more than 5 pages.
PPC / PPA – Pay Per Click / Pay Per Action
Methods of being charged for website advertising. PPC means paying whenever
someone clicks your ad, PPA is when they click your ad and perform an action – like
buying your product. Because PPAs have a higher return on investment, they typically
cost substantially more than PPCs.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Techniques and strategies used to improve the ranking of websites in search engines.
A billion-dollar industry is built around this concept.
SERP – Search Engine Results Page
Simply the results that are displayed after a search is performed.
Social Networking / Social Bookmarking
Websites, like delicious.com and digg.com, that visitors use to store bookmarks and
recommended websites to each other.
Web Standards Compliance
(or using words like “Valid” or “Standard” or “WAI” or “Section 508”) Sets of
guidelines, setup either by independent groups or government agencies, that
websites should follow. Originally seen as non-critical, recent events1 have shown
this to be increasingly important. By having your webpages valid (or WAI Accessible
or Section 508 compliant), you’re ensuring that your content is handicap accessible,
search engine friendly, and works on all browsers & operating systems.
1 A large retailer was recently sued for not having a handicap accessible website.
16
