The growth in niche job boards, jobsites and recruitment
websites in 2008 is staggering. with many new sites coming
online every week. Whilst the cost of designing and
constructing a jobsite has fallen considerably in the past
few years, making that site visible and attracting a high
volume of quality candidates is getting tougher by the day.
To reach the top 10 on Google for a key phrase such as
Sales Jobs is a mammoth challenge and one which may take
years to achieve.
There is however a new route to maximising quality traffic
to the vacancies on a job board and that is the use of rss
feeds and xml feeds, particularly when migrating the data
to one of the many vertical job search engines, examples
include, Job Rapido, Career Jet, Simply Hired and Jobster
to name but a few. There are dual benefits to having your
vacancies on this type of site; one great benefit is that
the jobseeker can easily find results on the major search
engines for the specific vacancy that they are looking for
with a link to the vertical job search engine and a further
link directly to the vacancy URL on the respective jobsite.
The secondary benefit is the number of additional links
generated by all of the vacancies linking back to the
jobsite. Many of these sites are still free of charge and
for much lower cost that typical search engine pay per
click schemes sites benefit from highly targeted traffic,
this in turn gives a much better ROI.
Other means of distributing job vacancies and high quality
targeted traffic that should be considered are Google Base
and Feedburner, tests carried out using an XML feed and rss
feeds have shown a rapid increase in traffic from blogs,
forums, Yahoo and Google, all for a few minutes work and
zero cost.
The conclusion has to be that if you are currently one of
the hundreds of jobsite owners struggling to commercialise
your site or you are rapidly running out of money through
expensive PPC systems and online advertising, it would be
advisable to investigate these alternative sources of
website traffic and if you do not have the technical
understanding or expertise to carry out this work yourself,
speak to an SEO or Internet marketing expert.
To quote the Google Wemaster Guide "Quality guidelines
These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of
deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond
negatively to other misleading practices not listed here
(e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of
well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just
because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on
this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend
their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles
will provide a much better user experience and subsequently
enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time
looking for loopholes they can exploit.
If you believe that another site is abusing Google's
quality guidelines, please report that site. Google prefers
developing scalable and automated solutions to problems, so
we attempt to minimize hand-to-hand spam fighting. The spam
reports we receive are used to create scalable algorithms
that recognize and block future spam attempts.
Quality guidelines - basic principles
Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
Don't deceive your users or present different content to
search engines than you display to users, which is commonly
referred to as "cloaking." Avoid tricks intended to improve
search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether
you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a
website that competes with you. Another useful test is to
ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search
engines didn't exist?" Don't participate in link schemes
designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In
particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad
neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be
affected adversely by those links. Don't use unauthorized
computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc.
Such programs consume computing resources and violate our
Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of
products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send
automatic or programmatic queries to Google. Quality
guidelines - specific guidelines
Avoid hidden text or hidden links. Don't use cloaking or
sneaky redirects. Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords. Don't create
multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially
duplicate content. Don't create pages with malicious
behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans,
or other badware. Avoid "doorway" pages created just for
search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as
affiliate programs with little or no original content. If
your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure
that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant
content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
If you determine that your site doesn't meet these
guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and
then submit your site for reconsideration."
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Louise G is the Managing Director of Ianson Internet
Markekting and an expert in SEO and Internet Marketing for
Jobsites and Recruitment Websites. Find out more about
Internet marketing and SEO at
http://www.internet-marketing-ianson.com
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