Marketing a staffing agency can be quite difficult due to the amount of competition out there. In the U.S. alone the industry does more than $150 billion in annual revenue. There are a handful of industry giants that command a majority share of the market, making the competition for the remaining business extremely competitive.
Today, the internet is the first place people go when searching for a job – whether it’s an individual looking for available opportunities or a company looking to find the best talent for their available position.
For a staffing company to make it in today’s digital-forward world, it must be found online. This includes their company name when clients are specifically searching for them, and keywords and search terms relevant to their specialty and location.
The only way a staffing agency will be found online is by creating a well-designed online marketing plan. To help you understand what this involves, we have put together a list of five beginner tips that can help staffing agencies improve their digital footprint and attract more qualified clients to their websites.
1. Optimize Your Website’s On-Page Elements
The basic on-page optimization elements must be addressed if you want to get the maximum visibility for your staffing company’s website in the search results. Making sure the little details are perfect can be the difference between not being found and showing up at the top of Google when someone types in “staffing company in [your location].”
Consumers naturally click on the top results, so the difference between being number eight and number two on Google can be huge in terms of website traffic volume. Google’s search algorithm isn’t publicly available, so a lot of what works is based on a combination of speculation and testing.
However, there are some on-page optimization strategies that 100 percent contribute to ranking well on Google. These little details, like optimizing your page titles, headings, image alt-tags, and page content for one keyword per page are often overlooked and outright ignored.
Some areas to address on each page to give you the best foundation for SEO include:
- Targeting one keyword per page or blog post
- Including the target keyword in the title as close to the beginning as possible
- Using the main keyword in the first sentence of the content
- Writing long-form content that exceeds 1,000 words
- Including the keyword in heading text (H2 and H3)
- Including the keyword in the URL
- Adding the keyword as the alt-tag on one image
- Mixing in long-tail variations of the keyword throughout the content
2. List Your Staffing Company in Local Online Business Directories
Listing your staffing agency on relevant online business directories can help you get found by individuals that actively use them to search for local businesses, while also providing an SEO boost.
Google uses information found on top directories as a trust signal, so it’s important to be sure your staffing agency is listed and its contact information is uniform across all listings. Your address, contact numbers, etc. must remain the same in terms of formatting in every occurrence.
You should have your address on your website in the footer, and that should be the exact format you copy across your Google My Business profile and any other online directory submission your business is found on, from national staffing agency directories to your local Better Business Bureau.
Many directories allow you to include a link to your website, and while most are no-follow links, they still provide an SEO benefit and contribute to your domain’s authority. The key is to only list your staffing agency on trustworthy directories that are actively used and not abandoned spammy link farms.
Some directory listings that you will want to be sure to get listed on include:
- Better Business Bureau
- Chamber of Commerce
- ASA (American Staffing Association)
- Google My Business
- Bing Local
- YellowPages
- Recruiter
- Foursquare
- Yelp
- WhitePages
3. Guest Blog on Local Media Sites and Industry Publications
Guest blogging has long been a very effective online marketing strategy, and it’s something your staffing agency should consider as it delivers incredible PR and SEO value. Being published on staffing industry blogs and websites is a great way to position yourself and your company as a leading expert.
This leads to brand awareness as well as allowing you to earn highly relevant links, which helps your SEO tremendously. Links have always been the top-ranking signal that Google used, but over the years there was a major shift from quantity to links to quality in terms of authority and relevance.
When you approach your guest blogging strategy correctly you will identify websites and publications that you want to be seen on, as they are considered authoritative and trustworthy. The PR and exposure are a major benefit, and the link if given is a bonus.
Spend some time each week identifying guest blogging targets and sending pitches. Understand that many of the top publications receive hundreds of pitches, so be sure to use a very unique angle to get their attention and secure a guest post opportunity. It’s a numbers game, so don’t get discouraged if your pitch acceptance rate is very low at the beginning. As you secure posts and get more published work out there it gives you more bargaining leverage.
4. Start a Blog and Publish Optimized Content to Attract Organic Traffic
Blogging is something every staffing agency should participate in, as it’s a great opportunity to attract quality website visitors by targeting specific keywords and search phrases potential clients use when looking to hire a staffing agency.
The best strategy is to create blog content that is optimized to target keywords with low competition. Many businesses focus on trying to rank for highly competitive terms because they see they have high search volume.
Not only are these terms extremely difficult to rank for, but the traffic they attract is not always targeted, and looking to make a hiring decision. It’s much better to go after terms that you know will bring quality traffic, even if it’s just a few visitors a day.
When you scale your blogging effort and publish more content your traffic exponentially increases over time. Your blog then becomes an asset, attracting more traffic each time new content is published.
5. Optimize Your Google My Business Profile
For local searches, your staffing company must have a Google My Business profile and it needs to be optimized specifically for your location. This is what Google usees when displaying the Maps results.
So, if someone is searching “staffing agency near me” Google will use the individual’s location data and best match it with local staffing agencies within proximity to that individual. The contact information located within your GMB profile is used, along with the information in your description to help Google understand where you are located and what services you provide.
It also considers your business category as well as things like your reviews, which is why it’s so important to ask all previous and current staffing clients to leave a review. It’s the little extra effort like this that can make the difference and put your business in front of more potential clients.
Final Thoughts
To market a staffing company online, you need to first have the fundamentals covered. As mentioned above, things like making sure your website is technically sound and that your Google My Business profile is optimized correctly ensures that you have a strong foundation.
Then, when you add a second layer to your staffing company marketing strategy that involves blogging and link building on local business directories those efforts make a more substantial impact on your results. You have to learn to crawl before you can walk, and many businesses skip the basics and want the top Google rankings and traffic volume immediately.
It doesn’t work that way. It takes a lot of time, ground-level work, and a long-term plan to achieve optimal results. If you don’t have the time to dedicate to learning and executing an online marketing campaign for your staffing company don’t worry – that is where we come in.
Our team of staffing and corporate recruitment marketing specialists can help position your business in front of your target client across all digital platforms. If you would like to learn more about the fully managed staffing company marketing services we offer please contact us today for a free consultation and online visibility audit.
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