People often talk about “optimising” websites, adverts or even profiles, and it’s all for the benefit of “SEO”, and these things often sound like a completely made up language. So here I am! I’m going to tell you what these things mean and why they matter in my guide to SEO.

What is it?

Optimisation is “making the best or most effective use of a situation or resource,” so SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is where you make the most of your website, advert or profile – depending on what your focus is. By focusing on SEO, you can ensure you get the most organic traffic as possible on search engines such as Google. Organic traffic – another made up word – means people who naturally come across your website/advert/profile through a web search and your ranking on a search engine.

 

Why do we do it?
Once your website is optimised enough to get lots of organic traffic, you end up paying less for paid advertising – saving you money! This also applies to job adverts and LinkedIn profiles, if more people are being brought to them, then it’s worth focussing on the thing that is bringing them there.

As well as this, SEO is quite easy to understand once you get the hang of it, meaning that a few simple changes can bring a great change to your organic traffic.

Does it work?
By using SEO in the right way, you can change the amount of traffic you generate and increase your ranking on search engines. This change may be small, and will often take a while to happen, but with patience you should see a gradual increase.

 

How is it done?
The first step to nailing SEO is to have some web analytics in place, so that you can track your progress and keep on top of what is and isn’t working. You will also need to decide on the keywords that you want to rank for on search engines, and ensure that you focus on these words from the start.

Secondly, put effort into the title and meta description of each page, as the title is the most crucial thing in terms of your SEO ranking, and your meta description is important in enticing people to visit your site or advert over the other options.

Repetition of keywords is important to SEO, but you have to be careful you don’t use too many or too few (the right amount tends to be around 5 or 6 per page) – too many and search engines will think you are spamming.

 

Hopefully after reading this guide to SEO, you can better understand what SEO is and how it can help with your website/recruitment process. If you need help writing your job adverts, check out our great guide on how to optimise your advert.