13 Job posting Tactics for “Google for Jobs” to attract top talent

Getting your job posting listed on Google for Jobs is a great way to reach job seekers looking for opportunities. But a lot of recruitment websites find it difficult to do so, despite having well-written job descriptions and balanced usage of keywords in the content.

The key is to properly optimize your structured data for job posting so that potential applicants can easily navigate through the opening and make a decision based on the published information.

The structured data for a job listing consists of many mandatory fields like Job Title, Job Description, Salary, Location, etc as well as various recommended fields like Employment Type, Posted Date, Job benefits, etc.

Having well-optimized and balanced structured data consisting of an optimum number of sections from both the mandatory and recommended fields can result in your job posting being categorized as a ‘rich result’ by Google.

Once this happens your listing is seen as important for job seekers to find opportunities and is thus valued by Google. Based on the information you put out, an applicant judges the quality of the job that your website has published.

If all the information is relevant for the applicant to make a decision, he/she takes the next step and clicks on the listing for more information, otherwise, the listing doesn’t intrigue them as the information at times is haphazard or irrelevant

Here are thirteen sure-shot tips to efficiently optimize your job posting data to attract top talent and get noticed by Google.

1. Showing Job Title

One of the most important segments in the job posting structured data, the title of the position should aptly describe the functionality associated with the job. Irrelevant or complex job titles will not engage users as they would not understand the role by looking at the title.

If the title is altogether missing, the job posting schema will not apply to your listing as it is a mandatory field in every posting.

• Your job title should be neat and precise and should not contain any extra or confusing information like address, salary, etc with itself. It should be a proper disclosure of the position that the user is likely to search on Google.
• While special characters like (*) or (!) are good for attention baiting, overusing the same can result in rendering your job posting structured data as Spammy Structured Markup.
• For third-party websites that post jobs for various employers, tampering with the title can make it vague or unreadable. It’s better to stay away from these practices and mention the job title as you receive it from the employer.

2. Giving the proper Job Description

Job Description as a compound word speaks for itself. You need to properly describe your job in the job description structured data segment. You would be including a brief, roles and responsibilities, eligibility criteria, required skills, shifts, required experience, and education in your description.

• Google doesn’t allow vague or incomplete descriptions, therefore, make sure you have included everything that is essential for a user to make a decision.
• Your job description cannot have a prior login or sign-up for the user to view the full description. Do away with these before posting your job listing.
• Also, don’t use descriptions as a means to peddle keywords as a shortcut to rank on Google because that won’t happen. Google has a strong scrutiny mechanism for malpractices like these.
• Job descriptions cannot be formatted by using header tags like <h1> or character tags like <strong> or <em>.
• You will use HTML tags like <p>, <ul>, and <li> tags as the description would be formatted in HTML.

3. Mentioning the Job Location

Since location is one of the most effective data that can attract users searching for jobs in a particular location, as a recruitment website you would want to keep this information visible in your job posting to attract target users in an area for better results.

A lot of websites do conform to loosely structured data, i.e inefficient codes, making it difficult for curated job posts to rank on Google. The goal should be to properly optimize information such as the location of a particular job and clasp it with the relevant code format to communicate to Google that the structured data, in this case for location, accurately describes the data on the job posting.

4. Spotlighting the Company Name

This shouldn’t seem that complex of a task to figure out your own organization’s name, right? Obviously, it doesn’t apply to cases where you are running your own recruitment company and posting jobs having vacancies in your own organization.

But if yours is a platform acting as a connecting bridge between job seekers and various employers, you would need to solicit the help of third-party vendors. Owing to this, various recruitment platforms have a lot of companies to process, therefore, having a higher chance of spelling company names incorrectly.

• This not only is an apprehension to your own reputation but also risks your potential user coverage that could have been easily averted by paying attention.
• This can be avoided by running manual research about all the company names if you are just starting out. If you are a seasoned website, you can help yourself by collaborating with an AI-based machine-learning platform that automates the process for you.
• Also, while structuring your company name data, pay close attention to the type of code you are using. Using the appropriate code can heavily result in a net positive for your job postings.

5. Making visible, the category for Occupation

This may come as a surprise that most job postings on Google are missing this crucial piece of information. As a recruitment website, you need to make it a habit of displaying ‘Occupation’ in your job postings. Since most of your users would be searching for jobs by occupation, having this category and the data for it well structured increases your chances of getting categorized as a rich result by Google.

You can also add the company logo and have a separate category for it when you are structuring your job post data. The goal should be to make the user familiar with all the relevant information at first glance.

• Doing this makes your job posting become the exact depiction of a user’s expectations when they set themselves to searching for jobs online.
• The more organized your job post is, the more likely it is to get ranked as well as clicked. Many job posts on Google, though having all the relevant information don’t provide a good user experience, thus lacking professionalism.

6. Disclosing Salary Information

There seems to be an ongoing discourse as to whether or not an organization indulged in recruitment, should disclose salaries for various positions they are advertising on their platforms.

It is very favorable for a recruitment platform to add the salary section to its structured data. Transcending the narrative that salaries can put potential users off, it needs to be considered that monetary remuneration is the most significant selling point for a job posting to get ranked and clicked.

Google requires a recruitment platform to show the same base pay as provided by the employer and not indulge in showing the estimated payments. The following is the best way to structure the salary data in a job posting.

7. Stating Job benefits

This shouldn’t come as a surprise that today’s user is an intelligent one and is always looking for benefits in employment. Having this category visible by structuring data accordingly in your job posting increases your chances of attracting a reputation on Google.

Google appreciates websites that provide relevant information for a better user experience. It solely depends upon how well you structure your job posting data, the easier it is for a user to navigate their requirement, the more your chances to rank on Google for Jobs.

8. Conveying the Type of Employment

This section in your job posting should include information regarding the nature of the advertised job posting. It should specifically mention whether it is a full-time or part-time opportunity.

Many recruiters believe that this practice is not helpful as it puts off various potential users that could have otherwise clicked. But on the other hand, it actually acts as a user filter and attracts specific users that are looking for specific employment types, therefore increasing user engagement and eventually helping your job posting rank on google.

Having this category visible makes a user more prone to inspect further as it gives them additional incentives and options to explore what the opportunity is about.

9. Updating the Posted Date

This is the best way to maintain the relevancy of your job posting. Mentioning the posted date of your job listing enables you to convey to the user how recently the job has been posted. The more recent the date is the more likely it is to garner Google’s attention.

Google prefers job postings that are recent, therefore make sure you update the job posting date in the required structured data segment. Recent dates on job postings convey a sense of hope to the user as they take it for less competition since not many would have applied to the posted job yet.

You can also add another segment known as Valid Through Date. This will indicate the relevancy of your job posting as to how long the position is open for application. Though it is not a mandatory field, in the case of a job posting this is a very crucial piece of information as these are short-span posts, therefore telling the user about the post’s relevancy for better navigation.

10. Updating Sitemap regularly

Whenever you are optimizing your job posting, you first need to segment all the information and structure it accordingly for it to be eligible to appear on Google for Jobs. But for that to happen you need to make sure that the respective posting gets indexed by google.

To get your postings indexed by Google you need to add all your job listings to your website’s sitemap. Your sitemap coveys all your relevant pages to Google for it to crawl them and accordingly place your pages on the search engine.

It also tells you about your 404 pages. Removing them from your sitemap can help google crawl your website efficiently, thereby increasing the chances for your job posting to rank on google.

The key is to regularly update your sitemap for the best results.

11. Utilizing Google’s Indexing API

This is the most tried and tested way to rank your job postings quickly on google. You can use Google’s Indexing Application Programming Interface (API) to inform the search engine about recently added URLs so that they get crawled as soon as possible.

Also, developers use the Indexing API for short-lived pages like job postings as it allows for individual updates, thus ensuring that your job postings get categorized as rich results and served accordingly.

You can even notify Google about any pages you have removed from your sitemap. It conveys the same to Google and the removed pages are quickly de-indexed thereby saving your crawl budget and increasing your chances to rank your job postings on Google.

12. Running the Job Posting through the Rich Result Test

This is probably the most important step before your job posting goes live. Google Search Console’s Rich Result Test is a way to determine whether or not your job posting will be served as a rich result on Google for Jobs, i.e whether or not it contains the relevant structured data for google to classify it as rich result.

The test is very simple, you just need to copy your job posting URL and paste it into the search section (if you have a code, paste the same in the code section). Subsequently, you will run your URL by clicking on the Test URL button for results.

Based on the test’s suggestions, you need to make edits to your job posting to make it easy for Google to understand the page’s purpose. If your job posting gets qualified as a rich result after the test, you can move forward with making it live on the search engine.

13. Analyzing Job Post activity

After your job posting goes live, you can analyze its activity on Google through its Search Console. It helps you monitor how your website is performing by displaying the status of the posting with recommended changes if any.

It also tests the job posting schema applied to your listing and runs it for code errors and possible fixes.

If it finds anything untoward on your website or on the specific job posting, it will generate a warning or a message to fix the error.

Fixing these errors prevents your websites from violating schema guidelines and saves you from a penalty from Google’s end.

Conclusion

If you want your job postings to get ranked in google you need to understand and comprehend the importance of structured data format. In plain words, you want your user base to get attracted to and engage with your job postings. This can easily be achieved by optimizing your job postings in a way that adds some value to the user experience.

As said earlier, the information in a job posting should be as conspicuous and as useful as possible. You would want to have your market research done before structuring data for job postings. Learn about different selling points like location, occupation, salary, company, etc, and their significance in job postings. Structure your data accordingly, and voila! The next thing you have to worry about is the traffic and engagement your job posts generate.