SEO Tips for Staffing Agencies in 2022

January 11, 2022

2021 has taught us a thing or two about finding talent in a job-seeker’s market and a rapidly changing workforce during COVID. And with employers reeling from The Great Resignation, staffing firms are positioned for immense growth.

One of the hard truths of the industry going into the new year is your business is going to struggle if it can’t be found online.

Search engine optimization is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase brand awareness, web traffic, and conversion rates for your agency. With 2022 right around the corner, it’s time to solidify your SEO strategy and set your agency up for success. Here are just a few SEO tips you’ll want to try in the coming year.

Use Google Business Profile

Another way to leverage local SEO is by using Google Business Profile. This free platform, formerly known as Google My Business, is an indispensable tool for local business owners of all kinds. Staffing agencies are no exception.

GBP allows you to enter a wealth of information about your organization, including your physical address, contact information, services or products, images, and pertinent updates, as well as customer reviews.

Best of all, it can help you appear more frequently in relevant search results. Although these optimizations are done off-site, they can drive traffic to your own website and increase your overall brand awareness without much effort or financial investment.

Focus on UX

User experience, known as UX, is crucial. Having a website isn’t enough; your site also needs to provide a positive experience for all visitors.

What does that have to do with SEO? There’s a distinct connection between web design and search rankings. Both Google and web users value sites that are fast, secure, and easy to navigate on any device. Websites that don’t meet this criteria will have a tougher time ranking in search results because, simply put, they aren’t perceived as valuable.

In other words, your website needs to be designed with UX in mind. If it’s been years since you updated your site, you’re dealing with sluggish speeds, or it’s tough for visitors to find what they’re looking for, you should consider working with a web design professional to ensure you’re meeting expectations.

Google recently launched its Core Web Vitals, which are newer metrics used to measure page experience and site performance. Make sure that your web designer is well-versed in these metrics and that your site is mobile-friendly, secure, free of intrusive interstitials (e.g., full-screen pop-ups), and generally easy to navigate.

If you take care of web design issues first, your other optimizations will be much more effective. After all, no one wants to deal with a frustrating website – no matter how frequently that site appears in SERPs.

Don’t Sleep on SEO in 2022

Some may think that SEO is dead, but nothing could be further from the truth. Search engine optimization plays a crucial role in any digital marketing strategy. By using these tips to promote your staffing agency online, you’ll more effectively reach your audience and amplify your online presence.

Is Your Website Holding You Back?

August 6, 2019

About the Webinar

For most staffing and recruiting firm owners, the question is not if they need a new website, but when? Discovering when the time is right for a website tune up is a multi-faceted process that requires thorough exploration. New websites require a significant investment of time and resources, so you’ll naturally want to be certain that your website in need.

Here at Parqa Marketing, we deliver digital marketing solutions that are custom-built to serve the modern needs of staffing and recruiting firms—including website design, development, and management.

To help your firm determine when to pull the trigger on a new site, we’re hosting a webinar to comprehensively discuss the topic. Hosted by our Vice President Karen Feder, we will show you how to diagnose the current state of your site’s design, functionality, and content.

Some of the elements of your website that this webinar will cover include:

Responsiveness
Site speed
The performance and quality of your content
The user experience of your visitors
Technical SEO
And more!

Who Should Watch This Webinar?

Staffing and Recruiting leaders looking to leverage their website as a sales tool
Teams without internal website development resources
Sales leaders who think their website could be doing more for their team
Staffing and Recruiting firms ready to kick-start their online presence

Presenter:

Karen Feder

VICE PRESIDENT, PARQA

Karen brings nearly a decade of tactical and strategic marketing experience to the Parqa digital marketing team. As the VP, Karen acts as an idea hub within the agency to provide clients with innovative digital approaches and solutions for their websites and marketing campaigns.

Keyword Research: The Basic Steps to Take

March 27, 2019

Prior to building an effective content strategy, one of the first things you must tackle is keyword research. With the continuous evolution of search engines, it’s crucial to consider the approach to keyword research differently than in the past to ensure a solid content strategy now and going forward. Here are the basic steps to take when developing keyword research to set your content strategy up for success.

Think About Your Buyer Personas

Before you dive into your computer to do a little research, you should always begin with finalizing your buyer personas. Who is visiting your site? Where are your leads coming from? These are questions you need to ask yourself to specify their goals, needs, challenges, etc. Putting yourself in their shoes is a great way to get a better understanding of what they’re searching for and answer any questions you may have. Keep in mind, you can have as many buyer personas as you’d like, just don’t overdo it.

Do Research

Once you have built out your buyer personas, start researching other top-ranking blogs within your industry. This will give you a better idea of what other businesses and competitors are talking about, which will help you produce a few topic ideas, ultimately providing you with a good bucket of keywords to use going forward.

Don’t Shy Away from Keyword Tools

If you’re feeling stuck and are having trouble brainstorming more keywords, I highly recommend using a keyword generation tool. There are several tools out there to give your keyword pool a boost. I find Google’s Keyword Planner tool to be the most effective and user-friendly. Inside, you can view the search volumes of your keywords to narrow down the terms most applicable and worth your time.

To get a better look at what keywords are attracting visitors to your site, use Google Analytics. By being able to see specific queries individuals are using to get to your site, you can efficiently plan the content you create.

Take Some Time to Analyze

Finally, spend time going through your keywords to decide what terms you have the opportunity to rank for. The more you build-up the Domain Authority for certain terms, the higher the likeliness you will rank for competitor terms. Only a select number of your keywords are likely to rank if domain authority is closer to 100, so the more keywords you have the better.

As you can see, keyword research is a necessary part of building an effective content marketing strategy. Content is what helps your business grow, therefore the more time and effort you throw into keyword research the better.

4 Tips to Optimize Your Business for Local SEO

October 24, 2018

Local SEO uses a variety of strategies — getting your site ranked on search engines like Google, business directories such as Yelp, Foursquare, Yellowbook, Google My Business listing, Bing Places for Business page, localized content on your website, online reviews and other strategies.

Below you’ll learn 4 of the most important strategies to improve your local SEO presence.

1. Optimize your Website’s ‘Localization’ Information

This means you should be including your address, city, county or region name naturally throughout your site (with schema markup). For businesses with several locations, this may involve creating individual pages for each location and optimizing those pages with location-specific content and keywords about your various services or offerings.

2. Claim your Google My Business Page

This should be the first online directory you take ownership of and is a first step towards helping your business display on important Google services (i.e. Maps and Google+). Only 44% of businesses have claimed their Google My Business listing, which means by starting/investing in local SEO already puts you ahead of your competition.

3. Create/Claim your Business on Trusted Online Directories

Reliable and trustworthy online directories also play a big role in the impact of your local SEO efforts. By creating/ claiming your business listing in these types of directories you accomplish a number of things including showing Google that your business services and information are present and consistent across the web, and you open your business up to being seen by more potential customers utilizing those online directories. Examples of these trustworthy directories include Yellowbook, Best of the Web, Yelp, Foursquare, etc.

Note: it’s important that your citations (address, phone number, website, etc.) are consistent across the various online directories. If there are any discrepancies Google will most likely avoid listing your business in the local 3-pack.

4. Get Reviews and Ratings

Reviews are critical for two main reasons, they:

1.) Portray the quality of your service

2.) Send signals to search engines telling that your site and services are trusted (yes, they are a ranking factor Google utilizes)

88% of local consumers trust online business reviews. The number of reviews you receive, the overall quality of the reviews and the authority of the review sites themselves are all important factors for local search rankings.

Why Use Parqa Marketing

Local SEO companies help you to position your business on search engines and other digital marketing platforms/directories so you’re seen by potential customers — on their terms.

Parqa is a Digital Marketing Agency that specializes in SEO, SEM, Local Search Optimization, Marketing Automation, Social Media and content creation. We help grow your brand and drive leads through a variety of inbound marketing tactics. See how our experts can help your business grow through search engine optimization.

man typing on tablet and reviewing graphs

PPC Match Types for Recruiters

September 27, 2018

As any recruiter knows, generating leads online has become more and more critical. Mobile web traffic is integral, we rarely go very far without our handy-dandy smartphone nowadays. People are more attached to their phone than their wallets. How crazy is that?

Today I wanted to talk about match types and the importance of utilizing the right set up. Match types in the PPC world allow you to cast a small or large net depending on your traffic goals.

Google has 4 match types for recruiters using PPC:

Broad match:

Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned. Ads may show on searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations. So, if your keyword is “women’s hats,” someone searching for “buy ladies hats” might see your ad.

Broad match modifier:

Similar to broad match, the broad match modifier option only shows ads in searches including the words designated with a plus sign (+women’s hats) or close variations of them.

Phrase match:

Ads may show on searches that match a phrase or are close variations of that phrase, with additional words before or after. Ads won’t show, however, if a word is added to the middle of the words, or if words in the phrase are reordered in any way. Designated with quotation marks (“women’s hats”).

Exact match:

Ads may show on searches that match the exact term or are close variations of that exact term. Close variations here may also include a reordering of words if it doesn’t change the meaning, and the addition or removal of function words (prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and other words that don’t impact the intent of a search). Designated with brackets, the keyword [women’s hats] could show when someone searches on Google for “hats for women.”

How to Use Match Types

Here is an example using the keyword example finance recruiter:

Broad: finance recruiter

Broad Match Modified: +finance +recruiter

Phrase: “finance recruiter”

Exact: [finance recruiter]

The match type I really like to play with when optimizing is the broad match modified. This match type allows you to modify a specific keyword to make sure that it is in place, followed by other keywords the searcher is searching for. All while simultaneously minimizing the junk traffic to your website.

Example: +finance +recruiter

These keywords tell the system that as long (finance) & (recruiter) is in the search query, show the ad. If someone searched IT recruiter, the keywords would not match and your ad would not show up. This will help your ad reach a highly relevant audience, which in turn helps out your CTR and conversion rates.

Related Post: New Site Launch SEO Checklist ➢

Integrating BMM Keywords [Broad Match Modified]

One method we recommend and prioritize is different variations of Broad Match Modified (BMM) keywords. For example, you could run keyword with this match type:

+finance +recruiter

And then the next month or a certain time period run this match type:

+finance recruiter

This match will allow for more traffic but not necessarily the most relevant traffic because you can potentially pull up for tons of searches that have finance in them relating to something else other than just recruiter searches.

You really want to open up to broad matches when you feel you are not getting enough search traffic on the BMM types. If you do open up to broad matches, make sure you have a vast negative keyword list so that you limit the amount of needless spend. We recommend avoiding broad match for extended periods of time and watch your account like a hawk if you do so.

So, the next time someone tells you that you have an opportunity to increase overall organic visibility on your site, hear them out. Ask them pointed questions about how they plan to drive marketing success.

And if you do find yourself starting a partnership with a marketing agency, here are four ways to build an effective relationship.

macbook air on desk with phone and mini cannon

Google Reviews: How to Get Rid of an Inaccurate Google Review?

August 30, 2018

So, you’ve been given a bad Google review. Most companies have, and sometimes it’s something you simply can’t avoid. But what happens if the review is wrong? What if the review is misleading, the wrong location, or even the wrong company? Each of these can be very damaging to your brand. Let’s break down a few simple tips on how to get rid of inaccurate Google reviews.

Types of Reviews Google Will Remove

While there’s no recourse for having Google delete a bad review, they will intervene and remove damaging reviews that are inaccurate. There are a number of different types of inaccurate reviews Google will remove, including:

1. Fake Accounts

If a user creates multiple accounts and leaves similar reviews in a short amount of time, you can ask Google to look into the activity. This could be five, 1-star reviews in under an hour, or something along those lines.

2. Incorrect Location

If a review is posted under the wrong location. This is most common with franchise locations such as restaurants or shops. While they all share the same brand, it doesn’t necessarily mean a location should be hit for the experience someone received at a different location. Google will remove these reviews if you contact them.

Along those lines, Google will also remove a review if the same user leaves the review for all locations. For example, if you have 15 locations in 1 state, the bad experience may have happened at 1 location, but all 15 reviews can be removed if it is not defined which one should truly have the bad review.

3. Disgruntled Employee

If a former or current employee leaves a bad review, this can be removed. Reviews of this nature violate Google’s guidelines.

4. Incorrect Company

Sometimes people leave a review for the wrong company altogether There are many companies out there with similar names, or a customer could have forgotten the actual name. If you’re a recruiting firm, but someone left a bad review about your cheeseburgers, Google will also remove that!

Steps to take if you have a review to remove

If you’re sure your review reflects one of the above issues, then it’s time to flag the review for Google to take care of. Here are the steps to take according to Google:

How to Flag Reviews on Desktop

Sign in to Google My Business.
If you have multiple listings, open the location you’d like to manage.
Click Reviews from the menu.
Find the review you’d like to flag, click the three-dot menu, then click Flag as inappropriate.

How to Flag Reviews on Mobile

Open the Google My Business app.
Tap the menu, then tap Reviews.
Find the review you’d like to flag, tap the three-dot menu, then tap Flag review.

Respond to Bad Reviews

If none of these tips are consistent with the bad review you’re dealing with, at a minimum, just respond. There is a spot on a Google review where you can hit ‘Reply’ and this comment will be made public. When people are looking at your business on Google and they see a bad review that has gone unanswered, it resembles something the company has ignored or could be true.

Respond with clear & concise sentences recognizing their concerns, but also offering a solution to the issue they had with your business. Do not engage with arguments but offer solutions where they can reach out to you individually or let them know you emailed them personally to help resolve the issue.

The Importance of Local SEO and Why You Should be Investing There

August 21, 2018

More than 50 percent of search queries globally now come from mobile devices. As a result, more and more searchers are looking for local businesses when they’re on the go.

Local SEO can help your business stand out in search results, increasing your chance of being seen by potential customers. In this article you’ll learn about what Local SEO is, why it’s important, and how to use those local ranking factors to rise to the top of organic results.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is SEO for location-based searches. This means a physical address or location is a required for a business to show up in a local search as a result. It helps businesses promote their products and services to local customers at the exact time they’re looking for them.

Local SEO strategies range from including your website and business information on your website to claiming your Google My Business listing to creating/claiming your business in various online directories (i.e. Yelp, Yellowpages, HotFrog, etc.)

NOTE: There are some local SEO ranking factors and optimizations tactics that are universal across all types of businesses/ organizations, however, there are also ones that vary based on business type.

Why is Local SEO Important?

Millions of customers conduct local searches every day to find the top local businesses in their area (both services and products). By investing in Local SEO you can help increase your chances of being seen by potential customers.

Highly Targeted and Timely

There are two main reasons why users do local searches, to:

1.) Find a specific business

2.) Find a local service or product at a local store

Local SEO provides potential customers the information that they want (targeted), when they want it (timely), and where they want it (within SERPs), making Local SEO both efficient and extremely cost-effective.

There are also many users who don’t have a specific business in mind when they execute their search for local services and products. Local SEO helps better position your business and promote your services/ product offerings to local customers when they’re looking for your type of business.

Mobile Searches Continue to Grow

According to official Google statements, “more than 50 percent of search queries globally now come from mobile devices, however it could be as high as 60 percent.”

As more and more customers use their mobile phones to find the best local businesses while they’re on the go, showing up in the ‘local 3-pack’ (we’ll talk about this more later) and having relevant business/location information within search results has become even more important.

On average, 61% of people doing a local search on their phone end up calling the business.

It’s a free Source of Advertisement

It’s free to claim your listing on Google My Business, Bing Places for Business, Yahoo Local and hundreds of other online business directories, but that may not be the case forever. While it is a somewhat time consuming process, it’s worth it to reach highly targeted, high converting in-market prospects.

Drop in ‘near me’/ Geographic Modifiers in Searches

“Over the last two years, comparable searches WITHOUT ‘near me’ have grown by 150 percent” – Google, June 2017

This shift towards dropping location modifiers is “because people know and expect Google to deliver results that will be relevant to their location.” They assume that Google now knows when a search has local intent. This further emphasizes the importance of claiming your Google My Business page, and other alike online directory listings.

Rank Higher in Search Engine Results

Have you ever done a google search and seen this (see right). This is known as the “local pack”, it showcases local businesses and stores relevant to the search query/term you entered, in this case it’s “barbershops.”

The goal behind the ‘local pack’ is to provide users with better information about the top local search results (i.e. images, photos, reviews, prices, etc.)

In 2015, Google cut the number of ‘local pack’ results from seven to three. While this change benefited those businesses 1.) with multiple stores across the world 2.) businesses that were already ranking in the first three spots within the ‘local pack’, it made local SEO even more important.

Today, local SEO can help your business appear in Google’s local 3-pack, which is one of the most coveted spots when it comes to search engine results.

“44% of people who performed a local search clicked on a local 3-pack listing, while only 8% chose to load more local results” – MOZ

“95% of smartphone users have used their device to perform local searches, out of which 61% called the business and 59% visited” – Forbes

“70% of mobile users click to call a business directly from Google search results using their mobile phones”
– Search Engine Watch

Adding an SEO company to your marketing team will not only boost your local SEO but also increase your organic search engine rankings for your site. Every small business or multi-location company can benefit greatly from using Local SEO optimization strategies.

“Only about 44% of businesses have claimed their Google My Business listing”
– Local Marketing Institute

Have you claimed your Google My Business? If not, this means you as a business/company have the opportunity to jump ahead of your competition and take advantage of local SEO services and boost your businesses local online presence, before competitors catch on. No matter what type of business you own/work for, from recruiting firms and plumbers to accountants and construction workers, Local SEO can improve business. Set up your company and website for easy sales with Local SEO, opening conversion opportunities to eager customers, helping you make more money.

Why Use Parqa Marketing

Local SEO companies help you to position your business on search engines and other digital marketing platforms/directories so you’re seen by potential customers — on their terms.

Parqa is a Digital Marketing Agency that specializes in SEO, SEM, Local Search Optimization, Marketing Automation, Social Media and Content Marketing. We build strategy to grow your brand and drive leads through a variety of inbound marketing tactics. See how our experts can help your business grow through search engine optimization.

How Your Recruiting Firm Should Approach Competitor Negative Keywords

August 8, 2018

As a recruiting firm, you want to make sure you’re not spending your marketing budget on the wrong keywords or unintentional calls. Recruiting firms using PPC have to really look at the negative keywords they are using, as well as the competitors they are showing up for, to ensure they’re not wasting valuable ad spend on false conversions.

For example, if you’re a staffing firm and you want to show up for the keyword staffing agency near me, you want to make sure you have all the major competitor names in your area as negative keywords.

Related Post: What is SEO? Beyond the Keywords ➢

What are Negative Keywords for Recruiting Firms?

Negative keywords are a type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a precise word or phrase. When deployed, anyone searching for that precise word or phrase will not be shown in your ads. But if you don’t utilize negative keywords, your ads will show up in inefficient searches.

Let’s use an example of Robert Half, a well-known staffing agency. If someone types in Robert Half staffing as a search term and you have staffing as a broad term in your keyword list you are bidding on, you will show up for that search.

You might be thinking, that’s great, my firm can be positioned to compete with them! But it’s not like that at all.

It has been tested and tested and no matter how many times your upper management “thinks” that your team can steal that lead…the answer is NO. If someone is looking for your competitor with a branded searched, they are almost certainly so deep into the sales funnel that you have little-to-no hope at stealing the lead.

Now I know you are thinking: “Well if the searcher reads the ad copy and URL in my ad they will see that I am not Robert Half.” The trouble is, people don’t pay as much attention to the ad as you WANT to believe they do. A lot of people just click on the first option that pulls up on their phone or desktop after typing in their search query.

Now, I am not saying that ad copy is not important because it definitely is. I’m saying that putting all of your trust, and ad spend, on the low-percentage chance that the searcher diligently reads the ad copy is not a prudent idea.

Related Post: New Site Launch SEO Checklist ➢

The Danger of Neglecting Negative Keywords

So, if your company is using staffing as a general keyword in your keyword list, you would show up for the search term Robert Half staffing. When the searcher inevitably doesn’t catch that you’re not Robert Half, here’s what’s going to happen.

The searcher is going to click to call the agency and your office answers:

“Hello this is ABC Staffing. How can I help you?”

The searcher will rightly be confused and disoriented not to hear Robert Half, and either hang up or ask for Robert Half. Once the searcher clicked call, you lost a good amount of money based on the keyword cost of each click. If you don’t use negative keywords for your competitor names, you will continue to cost yourself money and fail to get the conversions you’re expecting. Not to mention you’ll skew your analytics and metrics in the process, making it difficult to forge a future PPC strategy.

How many Competitor Recruiting Firms Should I Have in my Negative Keyword List?

The more the merrier. Having a large number of competitors in your negative keyword list will get you more accurate conversion data, better click-through rates, and greater return on your ad spend. In the end, every staffing agency monitors marketing budget and specifically paid media/PPC very closely, so you want to make sure you’re optimizing and structuring your campaigns the best you can. Using negative keywords and specifically, competitor negative keywords is a big part of budget savings.

In closing, negative keywords will help you save budget and give you the ability to get in front of the exact client/candidate you are looking for. Make sure you are continually monitoring and adding negative keywords to your list. It’s wise to set aside time to go through your search query reports to see where you are potentially losing money on unneeded clicks.

And if you do find yourself starting a partnership with a marketing agency, here are four ways to build an effective relationship.

Schema Structured Data: What It Is and How to Implement It on Your Website

July 30, 2018

Structured data is a way for search engines to organize the content in your HTML by providing explicit clues about the meaning of the page using semantic vocabulary.

Google and other search engines created a structured data standard called Schema.org. Google recommends using JSON LD and schema.org.

Here is an example of ATT and Verizon using reviews and price schema:

Schema.org (often called Schema) was launched by Bing, Google and Yahoo! to create and support common schemas. Schemas are a semantic vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that you can add to your HTML source code to improve the way Google reads and represents your page in search engine results pages (SERPs).

For example, here is a JSON-LD structured data snippet that appears on Parqa’s website:

Schema.org markup is becoming more important in voice search, acting as a suggestion that points digital assistants towards the information to correctly answer a voice query. Voice queries depend heavily on implied context, and Schema markup can help give that context to an otherwise unclear page of text.

There are clear advantages of using Schema.org, but actually implementing it can be more challenging. Because of this challenge, only a small number of websites make use of Schema.org. If you use schema markup, you’ll automatically have an advantage over the majority of your competition.

How Do I Add Schema to My Website?

Option 1

Hall Analysis has created the JSON-LD Schema Generator. It allows you to pick from a group of popular types, but instead of outputting microdata, it generates JSON-LD. Google also has a JSON-LD tool. These tools only produce the code and you will have to manually add the html to the individual page’s source code.

Option 2

WP SEO Structure Data Schema is my preferred plugin for WordPress websites. This plugin allows you to insert the information and not only creates the JSON-LD, but also adds the code into the source code.

Testing your Schema Structured Data

Option 1

Use the Google Structured Data Testing Tool. This is the most reliable way of testing your schema markup. However, I have had issues with this tool timing out and not providing any answers.

Option 2

Add Structured Data Testing Tool to your Google Chrome browser. I rely on this tool more than the one provided by Google. One click on the icon and you are provided with the type of schema found on the page with an accordion tab to view what is being pulled and any possible errors.

What Schema Structured Data Should I Use?

Organization Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

The organization schema markup helps enhance your Knowledge Graph entry and website snippet presence. Remember to Insert your logo, social profile links, and corporate contact information.

WebSite Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

The WebSite schema markup helps generate the Sitelinks Search Box feature for brand searches. You need to have an existing site search on your website to enable the Sitelinks Search Box element.

Breadcrumbs Markup (can be implemented through Yoast)

The BreadcrumbList schema allows you generate breadcrumb rich snippets for your pages in the SERPs. This also helps improve the crawlability of your site.

Site Navigation Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

The SiteNavigationElement markup helps produce organic site links.

Schema Product Markup

The Product markups can help product information including price and status information to appear in SERPS.

Schema Article Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

If you are producing articles or blogs, the NewsArticle or BlogPosting schemas are for you.

Recipe Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

Recipe websites leverage Recipe schema markup to enable recipe rich snippets.

Next Steps for your Online Presence

Schema markup is one of those SEO best practices that will be around for a long time. Google is finding you additional avenues to provide the end user with detailed information before they even land on your site. You might as well stay ahead of the curve and have an instant leg up on the competition by implementing schema on your site today.

What is SEO? – Beyond the Keywords

June 29, 2018

More times that I can count, I hear people say things like “I don’t need SEO services because my site already has keywords included.” What I love to do is help people learn and understand that SEO isn’t just about the keywords on the page, but about the overall experience search engine crawlers have on the site and, in turn, how consumers see and interact with the site.

It’s true. SEO used to be about things like keyword stuffing, link farms, etc. We all remember the black-hat days of SEO, where a few timely keywords could shoot a page up the rankings. Luckily, today’s search environment is much more sophisticated.

As search engines have evolved and become more knowledgeable on how consumers search as well as what consumers want to see. SEO has become much more about finding the relevant content for the consumer based on the intent of their search, and much less about sleezy tactics that once dominated the industry.

What does that mean for my business?

It means you have more opportunity!

Search engines are evaluating your web pages with a much broader scoring rubric. Think about it like the SAT. If your SEO strategy is focused exclusively on keywords, it would be like only studying for the math portion of the SAT. While you may crush that portion and yield an outstanding math score, you’re going to have your overall score get dramatically dinged when you tank your reading, writing, and language portions of the exam.

Yes, like math, keywords are still important, but so too is the other vital components of SEO like the readability of your content, how easy your site is to navigate, the internal and external linking maps your site is deploying, and the overall user experience your site is providing readers. Each of these areas presents your business with opportunity to increase your organic traffic and capture the eyes of more prospective customers.

So, the next time someone tells you that you have opportunity to increase overall organic visibility on your site, hear them out. Ask them pointed questions about how they plan to drive marketing success.

And if you do find yourself starting a partnership with a marketing agency, here are four ways to build an effective relationship.

SEO Tips

Use Google Business Profile

Focus on UX

Don’t Sleep on SEO in 2022

About the Webinar

Who Should Watch This Webinar?

Presenter:

Karen Feder

Think About Your Buyer Personas

Do Research

Don’t Shy Away from Keyword Tools

Take Some Time to Analyze

1. Optimize your Website’s ‘Localization’ Information

2. Claim your Google My Business Page

3. Create/Claim your Business on Trusted Online Directories

4. Get Reviews and Ratings

Why Use Parqa Marketing

Google has 4 match types for recruiters using PPC:

Broad match:

Broad match modifier:

Phrase match:

Exact match:

How to Use Match Types

Broad: finance recruiter

Broad Match Modified: +finance +recruiter

Phrase: “finance recruiter”

Exact: [finance recruiter]

Example: +finance +recruiter

Integrating BMM Keywords [Broad Match Modified]

+finance +recruiter

+finance recruiter

Types of Reviews Google Will Remove

1. Fake Accounts

2. Incorrect Location

3. Disgruntled Employee

4. Incorrect Company

Steps to take if you have a review to remove

How to Flag Reviews on Desktop

How to Flag Reviews on Mobile

Respond to Bad Reviews

What is Local SEO?

Why is Local SEO Important?

Highly Targeted and Timely

Mobile Searches Continue to Grow

It’s a free Source of Advertisement

Drop in ‘near me’/ Geographic Modifiers in Searches

Rank Higher in Search Engine Results

Why Use Parqa Marketing

What are Negative Keywords for Recruiting Firms?

The Danger of Neglecting Negative Keywords

How many Competitor Recruiting Firms Should I Have in my Negative Keyword List?

Here is an example of ATT and Verizon using reviews and price schema:

How Do I Add Schema to My Website?

Option 1

Option 2

Testing your Schema Structured Data

Option 1

Option 2

What Schema Structured Data Should I Use?

Organization Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

WebSite Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

Breadcrumbs Markup (can be implemented through Yoast)

Site Navigation Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

Schema Product Markup

Schema Article Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

Recipe Schema Markup (included in WP SEO Structure Data Schema plugin)

Next Steps for your Online Presence

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