Recruitment Agency SEO
Recruitment agency SEO has to serve two audiences who want opposite things, on one website. That is the whole problem, and almost no agency site solves it.
The problem nobody names
The client has a vacancy and wants to know you can fill it. The candidate wants a job and wants to know you are worth registering with.
They search in opposite directions. The client types engineering recruitment agency Brisbane, and the candidate types engineering jobs Brisbane.
Most agency sites are built entirely for the client, then wonder why the candidate pipeline is dry. Everything below follows from that split.
A warning about this search term
Search SEO for recruitment agencies and half the results are recruiters who place SEO staff. The query is ambiguous, so Google hedges and serves both readings.
It matters for you too. If you recruit in a field with a name that means something else, check what is ranking before you build a page for a term.
Build for the client
The client is searching for a specialist, not a generalist. Civil engineering recruitment Brisbane beats recruitment services every time, because the person searching has a specific hole to fill.
Build one page per discipline, per city. List the roles you place, give a typical time to fill and a typical salary band, and say what your fee model is.
Every agency claims a deep talent pool. Roles filled last year, average time to fill and named client logos with permission are the only version of that claim anyone believes.
Build for the candidate
Most agency job boards are invisible to Google. Roles load through JavaScript, each listing has no unique URL, and expired roles 404 into nothing.
Fixed properly, each live role is a page that can rank for the job title plus city. Give every role a real URL and add JobPosting structured data so it can appear in Google's jobs experience.
When a role closes, do not delete the page. Redirect it to the discipline page or keep it up marked as filled, because deleting is how agencies bleed their own rankings every month.
A salary guide built on your own placement data is the best link magnet in this industry. It doubles as the credibility the client half of the site needs.
The keywords worth chasing
Client-side searches have lower volume and high value, because one conversion is a placement fee. Candidate-side searches have far higher volume and feed the pool that makes the client half possible.
Salary queries are the standout. You are one of the few businesses that can answer from real data instead of a survey.
- Client-side: discipline plus recruitment agency plus city, hire plus role, staffing agency plus city, executive search plus discipline.
- Candidate-side: job title plus jobs plus city, graduate plus discipline plus jobs.
- Salary: role plus salary plus city, discipline salary guide, how much does a role earn.
- Skip: how to write a resume, interview tips. Generic career content a thousand sites already own.
The technical floor is bigger here than in other trades
Your job board is a database pretending to be a website. Every live role needs its own crawlable URL, with the listing content in the HTML and readable without running scripts.
Add JobPosting structured data with valid dates to every role. Expired roles redirect rather than 404, and pagination on the board must be crawlable.
Get the job board right and you have often doubled the number of pages Google can see, without writing a word.
Getting named when someone asks AI for a recruiter
People now ask ChatGPT and Gemini for a recommendation instead of scrolling a map. The body of the answer names businesses and the footnotes cite sources, and they are not the same list.
Lily Ray's testing found Google appears to have decoupled what it cites from who it recommends. What moves the naming is being talked about somewhere other than your own site, plus a page one rank that feeds the source list.
An llms.txt file does not move it, because two studies looked for an effect and found none. Schema on its own helps machines read a page without making an assistant recommend you.
How to know if it is working
One number will lie to you here, because you run two funnels. Track client enquiries and candidate registrations separately, because a great month for candidates and a dead month for clients averages out to steady.
Search Console will tell you how many role pages Google has indexed against how many you have live. That ratio is the most useful number on this list.
Ignore total traffic. Candidate traffic will always dwarf client traffic, so a rising total can hide a collapsing client funnel.
Where this page's claims come from
- Savvy Search Marketing, published local service SEO rate ranges
- Google Search Central, JobPosting structured data documentation
- Google Business Profile Help, how to improve your local ranking on Google
- Google Search Essentials, spam policies including scaled content abuse
- Lily Ray, on citation and recommendation being decoupled
- ALLMO, LLMs.txt for AI Search Report 2026
- SE Ranking, LLMs.txt: Why Brands Rely On It and Why It Doesn't Work
One path, four steps
Start with a free scan, add a Blueprint if you need the map. Run a Sprint when you are ready to build.
Free AI Visibility Check
One visibility gap, one commercial opportunity, one recommended next step. Written or on a short Loom, inside three business days.
FreeSearch Growth Blueprint
The full Google and AI baseline, a commercial query map, money-page architecture and a 90-day roadmap. Ten real findings or you do not pay.
$1,497 once90 Day Search Growth Sprint
The core engagement. Commercial pages built, trust layer fixed, AI search optimised, tracking wired, milestones agreed in writing.
$3,000 a month, 3 monthsSearch Growth Retainer
After the Sprint, if the economics justify it. Expansion, citation monitoring, authority and reporting against leads, not just rankings.
From $3,000 a monthThe 30-Day Implementation Guarantee
Before a Sprint starts, we agree the first 30 days of implementation milestones and acceptance criteria in writing. If I miss an agreed milestone for a reason inside my control, the management fee stops accruing from Day 31 until that work is complete, and I keep working on it.
Prepaid fees are credited pro rata against the next invoice, or refunded if there is no next invoice. Delays from missing access, late approvals, scope changes or third parties move the dates by agreement, and the milestone document names who signs off on each item.
This guarantee covers what I do. It does not promise rankings, traffic, AI citations, leads or revenue.
Questions I get asked first
Should I build for clients or candidates first?
Fix the job board first, because it is usually broken and it serves candidates for free. Then build the client-side discipline pages, because that is where the fee is.
Why is my job board not ranking?
Usually three reasons. Roles load through JavaScript, listings have no unique URL, or expired roles get deleted instead of redirected.
Do I need JobPosting schema?
Yes. It is how a role becomes eligible for Google's jobs experience, and one of the few places where markup changes what a page can do.
What do I do with filled roles?
Redirect to the discipline page, or keep the page up marked as filled with links to similar roles. Deleting throws away the ranking you paid to build.
Is a salary guide worth the effort?
It is the best asset in this industry. You have real placement data, which almost nobody else can claim, and it earns links while proving expertise to clients.
How long does recruitment agency SEO take?
Months for rankings to move. Job board fixes can show results faster because you are exposing pages that already existed.
Shane Hellmrich
I designed the methodology and I review every client's strategy myself. Twelve years in YMYL search, twenty-five years around health, and a habit of reading the FDA list before writing a headline.
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Nothing on this site is medical advice. Rankings and leads are not guaranteed. The work is.