When someone runs a search on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing, the search engine consults its index of pages on the World Wide Web and returns a list of results that it thinks best addresses the goals of the search. The way it builds that index is by sending out "spiders" that crawl along all the links of the Web, reading the various web pages and sending their findings back to the index.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of ensuring that when a spider crawls across one your pages, both the page and the spider speak the same language.
Of course, there's a more to it than that. If everyone used SEO techniques on their web pages, there'd be no way for the search engines to know which pages provide better results for a given search. It was this realization that made Google so powerful in the realm of search.
Instead of taking the web page's word for what it is all about, Google (and now the other search engines) look to see what other web pages say about your site. When another website, outside of your control, links to your page, that link tells the search engines that someone else trusts you. And when that other website is a highly trusted site, the fact that they linked to you increases your trust even more. Some people call this Google Juice. When a site with a lot of Google Juice links to you, they give you a bit of their Google Juice, increasing your own store of the stuff. The more Google Juice you have, the more the search engines perceive you as a trusted site, and the more they trust you, the higher they place you in their rankings.
The effect of Google Juice on search rankings is no secret, and it has spawned an entire market of SEO companies who promise to get you more Google Juice than your competitors. Of course, as soon as the market was created, a black market arose to scam those who didn't know any better. Black market SEO companies (called Black Hat SEO) break the rules and regulations that govern the search engine market. They're more focused on creating content for search engines than they are for real users, and they don't mind tricking both users and search engines with all kinds of programmatic deceptions. The penalty they face for such techniques is complete banishment from the search engines.
At RCI Recruitment Solutions, we will not only ensure that your recruitment site and job postings speak the same language as the spiders, but that you have an above-board, White Hat, link-building strategy that will dramatically and ethically increase your career pages' Google Juice.
With these two SEO tactics in place, you'll improve the position of your online career center in the search engines' list of results and attract more active and excited candidates to your job postings than ever before.
For more information on how SEO works, attend our free webinar or contact us today.