The other day I was sent a video titled 5 Secrets to Researching SEO Keywords Like a Pro. The video was really well done and I would encourage anybody doing SEO (search engine optimization) to watch the video. The part that I found to be the most interesting in the video was the first secret where he talks about deciding whether the keywords you are targeting are informational or transactional. To summarize his point, he said to better do SEO you have to understand the intent of the people searching the keywords on Google. He said that keyword searches could be broken down into two buckets, an informational bucket and a transactional bucket. Informational keywords are searches done with the intent of researching a particular word or learning some facts about that keyword phrase. Transactional keywords are searches done with the intent of purchasing something. I found this idea of looking at searches for whether they are transactional or informational very interesting, because it became completely clear why job SEO is different from other SEO endeavors. Job SEO searches are both informational and transactional in their intent.
I believe this is where a lot of companies go wrong with Career Site SEO. They decide that the keyword phrases they are trying to win are purely informational and they fill their sites with well built out pages around the company and what it is like to work there. They forget that a lot of job searches could be viewed as transactional. Instead of adding stuff to a cart and checking out, job seekers are adding jobs to their profile and applying to them. This lack of focus on the transactional aspect of job keywords enables job boards and job aggregators to do the transactional part of internet recruitment.
This idea of transactional vs. informational is one of the reasons I believe the .JOBS platform is so powerful. It’s main goal is to help companies make their jobs visible in new and highly targeted ways. We focus more on the transactional aspect of job SEO and make the jobs invisible behind your ATS visible and able to be purchased or applied to. To state this more bluntly, traditional career site SEO is built around the informational aspects of your company and what it is like to work there. The .JOBS SEO platform is built around the transactional aspect of internet recruitment and the secondary focus of the site is informational about the company.
Search Engine Optimization for Talent Acquisition is some of the hardest SEO to do, because you can’t be singled minded when it comes to the goal of the site. Job SEO is hard and challenging, because job seeekers are both transactional and informational in their keyword choices.
- Mobile vs. Tablet, Which is More Popular for Job Searching? - October 8, 2014
- My.jobs Microsite Branding of the Week (P66onCampus.jobs) - August 13, 2014
- My.jobs Microsite Design Guidelines – Get them to the Jobs - June 18, 2014
