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If you’re familiar with inbound marketing for recruitment agencies, you’ll know that creating relevant, engaging content is key if you’re going to attract high-quality candidates to your website.
However, as a recruitment agency, you’re probably also aware that the UK recruitment market is more competitive than ever before - which means that if you’re going to win the war on talent, your content needs to work harder than ever before.
So, how can you ensure that your content packs a punch and attracts candidates to your website rather than your competitors? We’re glad you asked!
With that in mind, read on to find out how to create candidate-generating content that delivers results. Let’s dive in!
5 steps to writing clever candidate-generating content
Step 1: Choose a topic
As the most competitive market in the world, there will definitely be plenty of different recruitment topics that you can write content about.
However, the key here is to choose something that is current, relevant to your particular sector, and provides added value to your candidates. Basically, you want to be creating and sharing content that enhances their knowledge in a way that will benefit them.
For example, if your agency specialises in education recruitment, you could write about how to nail teaching interviews or how to put together a teaching CV that gets noticed.
Alternatively, with work/life balance being so important to candidates today, you could choose to write about employee wellbeing or share top tips on how to maintain emotional health whilst job seeking.
Step 2: Pick a persona
As you think about structuring your content, it’s essential that you keep your buyer personas in mind. Essentially, by putting yourself in the shoes of your persona, you can make sure you write in a way that really appeals to them.
For example, if you’re looking to hire students that have just graduated, make sure you refer back to their goals, challenges and worries, and be sure to keep these at the forefront of your mind when writing your content.
Not entirely sure who your recruitment agency’s buyer personas are? No problem - we’ve got a handy guide about creating your own buyer personas which you can download for free here.
Step 3: Select a keyword
Once you’ve got a grasp on what you want to write about and who you want to write for, it’s time to choose a keyword.
Keywords are phrases that people type into search engines, such as Google, to find the information they need.
It’s essential that you include keywords in your content, as this helps communicate to search engines what your content is about and means that your content is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Software such as SEMrush and Moz have excellent keyword search tools that will help you find relevant and high-performing keywords to use in your content.
When it comes to writing your content, be sure to include your keyword at least three times (once in the first 100 words), however be careful to avoid “keyword stuffing” which is when you use a lot of different keywords repetitively in one piece of content.
Stuffing your keywords means that Google will register your content as spammy, and then send it down the SERPs.
Finally, you should also be sure to include the keyword in your content’s title tag and meta description for even greater visibility.
Step 4: Use the topic cluster methodology
Topic clusters are a content organisation strategy that revolves around a core topic and its related subtopics.
Topic clusters help search engines to recognise the relevance of your content, which in turn boost your website’s visibility and ranking - enabling you to ensure your content is seen by high-quality candidates.
The topic cluster model essentially involves creating pieces of content that are grouped by a core pillar topic, and then regularly publishing blog posts relating to that topic targeting relevant keywords.
For example, if your agency specialises in education recruitment and you have decided to focus on early years recruitment, you would start by creating a pillar page about early years recruitment mapping out relevant blog posts that link back to the pillar page.
By aligning your blog topics with your topic clusters, you can create a powerful content strategy that boosts your SEO and also provides value to your potential candidates.
Step 5: Research
Research also plays a particularly important role in your content creation. Google your topic, have a read of the most relevant search results, and gather the most relevant and interesting information you can.
Also, don’t be afraid to have a look at what your competitors are writing about and ways they are engaging with potential prospects.
See whether they’ve written anything on your current topic - if they haven’t, fantastic! If they have, don’t despair - see how you can write about it better or come at it from a different angle with all the research you’ve done.
Of course, you should also make sure you add in your own nuggets of knowledge and expertise to give your content an even bigger boost!
Not only can analysing high performing recruitment websites give you some ideas on what to write about, but by looking at their digital strategies, website optimisation, and back-link building, you can identify what sets them apart from the competitions and helps them maintain their SEO rankings.
Step 6: Start writing
Now that you’ve chosen your topic and keyword, you know who you’re writing your content for, and you’ve done your research, it’s time to put pen to paper. Some essential things to keep in mind include:
Word count
At Angelfish Marketing, we find that somewhere between 600 and 800 words is about right for blog post, whereas pillar pages should be more than 1500 words long. However, research around how long blog and web content should be leaves the answer very much up for debate.
The Write Practice suggests that if you’re looking to drive traffic to your website from Google, you need to be looking at around 2,450 words, whereas B2C found that the average word count for top ten ranked Google posts rose to between 1,140 and 1285 words.
However, on the other hand, snap suggests that, in today’s fast-paced society where consumers want information as quickly as possible, people are less likely to want to read longer, more detailed content.
So, what’s the sweet spot? When it comes to inbound marketing for recruitment agencies, we’d recommend writing as much as is absolutely necessary; long enough to give your prospective candidates the information they need and to include your chosen keyword, but not so long that candidates feel overwhelmed and walk away.
Brand Voice
As you write, it’s important to keep your recruitment agency’s brand voice at the forefront to make sure your content is unique, memorable and as appealing and engaging to prospective candidates as possible.
Title
The title of your content is going to be the first thing your candidates see when they commence their search, so make sure you write one that is eye-catching, intriguing, and offers a benefit or added value to your candidates.
Internal Linking
As you write, you should also be sure to hyperlink text to other relevant content and pages on your website.
This is particularly useful as it will help to establish the structure of your website for Google, which in turn boosts your SEO. As a general rule, we’d recommend linking to at least five internal pages.
Outbound Linking
Outbound linking means including links in your content to other websites. For example, if you find some interesting statistics on a website, be sure to link out to this. Yoast are particularly strong advocates for outbound linking, saying that:
“Websites need to connect to each other to be found, by search engines and users…It’ll make it easier for search engines to find websites, but also gain insight in how pages relate to each other. We can build a better web, together.”
Backlinking/External Linking
Once your blog is published, it’s also worth getting in touch with the companies whose websites you have linked your content to, to ask if they will link back to you in return.
According to Moz.com, “External links are one of the hardest metrics to manipulate and thus, one of the best ways for search engines to determine the popularity of a given web page.”
Essentially, backlinks will help search engines to see that your recruitment website is high quality and relevant in your field, which will subsequently result in your content ranking higher in SERPs.
Offering to write a guest blog for a site that relates to your recruitment agency that contains well-placed backlinks to your site is a great way to get your content noticed by potential candidates in a way that draws them back to your website.
Additionally, engaging with influencers in your field is also a great way to draw in candidates. One way to do this is by asking an influencer to write content that links back to you whilst simultaneously referencing and linking your own content to them too.
According to HubSpot, 71% of marketers say that quality of customers and traffic from influencer marketing is better than other kinds, so it’s certainly worth investigating as a recruitment agency!
Imagery
Finally, be sure to break up your content with some eye-catching and relevant imagery.
The more personalised to your recruitment agency you can make this, the better - particularly as search engines like Google are now starting to recognise images as part of SEO as well as words.
Plus, don’t forget to change your images’ alt text to your content’s keyword for maximum impact, and ensure they are accessibility friendly, too.
What next?
So, your content is written, optimised for search engines, and uploaded ready for prospective candidates to find - but this is only the beginning.
Now it’s time to start sharing your content. The more you can share it, the more traction it is likely to receive, and the higher up SERPs it will get! Some of the best ways to share your content include:
Social Media
Share your content via short and sweet social media posts on all your recruitment agency’s profiles, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Don’t forget to include a couple of relevant #hashtags for maximum impact!
Paid Social
This is a fantastic way of focussing on a range of demographics to display sponsored ads and content in your target audience’s feeds and can be especially helpful considering the current competitiveness of the market.
Plus, paid social will also give you the opportunity to break through the crowds by targeting your ideal candidates’ social media news feeds with your content.
Email Marketing
Finally, as part of your inbound marketing strategy, you can also use email marketing and newsletters to share your latest content with your current candidates.
As a result of them clicking through to read this content, you will soar up SERPs, ensuring that new potential candidates will also be able to find and read your content, too!
Ready to start creating candidate generating content?
By following the above steps, you’ll be on the right track to creating content that truly stands out from your competitors and converts prospective candidates into committed ones.
So, if you’re looking to improve your current content, or are interested in finding other means of boosting your website traffic and attracting new candidates, you can also download our free Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide for Recruitment Agencies here.
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