Recruiter SEO is an unusual discipline because a recruitment site has two audiences with opposite needs. Candidates search for roles, which means thousands of short-lived pages that must be found fast and removed cleanly. Employers search for a recruitment partner, which means a small number of durable pages that have to compete with every other agency in the sector. Most recruitment websites are built for one of those audiences and accidentally sabotage the other. This page sets out both jobs, the technical rules Google publishes for job postings, and how to test a provider before it touches your job board.
The two search jobs on one recruitment site
The candidate side is an inventory problem. Job pages appear and expire constantly, and search performance depends on how quickly Google discovers a new posting and how cleanly an old one leaves the index. The employer side is a classic competitive content problem: a handful of pages about your sectors, your process and your fee structure, aimed at hiring managers who are comparing agencies rather than browsing roles. The two rarely compete for the same queries, but they do compete for the same budget and the same technical attention, and an agency that treats a recruitment site as one project usually starves the employer side. Ask a provider to price the two workstreams separately, because that is the only way to see which one it actually intends to work on.
What Google requires of job postings
Google publishes explicit documentation for job posting structured data, and following it is the difference between a job board that appears in the job search experience on Google and one that is simply a set of pages. The documentation notes that eligible postings can be displayed with the employer's logo, reviews, ratings and job details, and that the filtering experience lets job seekers narrow by criteria such as location or job title. It is equally explicit about removal: jobs no longer open for applications must be expired, either by populating the validThrough property with a past date, removing the page so it returns a 404 or 410 status code, or removing the JobPosting structured data, and it warns that failure to take timely action on expired jobs may result in a manual action. For discovery, Google recommends using the Indexing API for job posting URLs rather than relying on sitemaps, because the Indexing API prompts Googlebot to crawl the page sooner, while still submitting a sitemap for whole-site coverage.
The employer-facing content most agencies skip
The pages that win employer enquiries are the ones recruitment marketers find least interesting to write: what your fee model actually is, how long your placements take in this sector, what your replacement guarantee covers, what a hiring manager should expect in week one. Google's guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content is the right lens here, because these are exactly the questions a person would ask a human recruiter and exactly the questions most agency websites answer with adjectives. A recruitment firm that publishes its process and its terms in plain language differentiates itself in a market where almost nobody does. This is usually where a general digital marketing and SEO services engagement earns its fee for a recruiter, since the work is ordinary competitive SEO once the job board plumbing is right.
How to vet a provider for a recruitment site
Ask three questions and listen for specifics. First, how will expired jobs be removed, and can they name the three methods Google's documentation accepts? A provider that has not read that page will build an indexing liability into your site. Second, how will new postings be surfaced to Google, and do they know the Indexing API recommendation for job URLs? Third, what happens to the employer-facing pages, and can they show comparable work for a recruitment client? Beyond that, apply Google's general hiring guidance: ask for examples of previous work, ask what results to expect and in what timeframe, and treat any guaranteed ranking as a warning sign, because Google states that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking.
Questions people ask about recruiter seo
Does structured data actually help job listings rank?
It makes them eligible for Google's job search experience, which is a different thing from a ranking boost. Google's documentation describes eligible postings appearing with logo, reviews, ratings and job details, and job seekers filtering by criteria such as location or job title. Without the markup, a posting simply competes as an ordinary page.
What happens if we leave expired jobs online?
Google's documentation says jobs no longer open for applications must be expired, by setting validThrough in the past, removing the page so it returns 404 or 410, or removing the JobPosting structured data, and warns that failing to take timely action on expired jobs may result in a manual action. It also frustrates candidates, which costs you applications either way.
How do we get new roles indexed quickly?
Google recommends using the Indexing API for job posting URLs instead of relying on sitemaps, because it prompts Googlebot to crawl the page sooner, while still submitting a sitemap for coverage of the whole site. Build that into the posting workflow so it happens automatically rather than manually.
Should a recruiter prioritise candidate or employer search?
Whichever side is the bottleneck. Agencies short of roles need employer-facing content; agencies short of candidates need the job board working properly. Price and report the two workstreams separately so the answer stays visible as the constraint moves.