SEO for Recruitment Agencies

A hiring manager with an open role looks for a specialist: “accounting and finance recruiters Dallas”, “construction recruitment agency Phoenix”, “cybersecurity headhunters”. A page that ranks for such a search answers what that person wants to know before picking up the phone:

• the roles you fill in that sector and the seniority levels you cover
• salary ranges and typical time to fill, taken from your own placements
• how you work — contingent, retained or contract — and what the fee depends on, in general terms
• the recruiter who runs the desk, with a photo and a direct line
• short placement stories, with the client’s permission or without names

How many sector and city pages a recruitment agency needs

One for each pair you can back with a real desk and real placements. An accounting team covering Dallas and Houston means two pages. Fifty city pages that differ only in the city name fall under Google’s rules on doorway pages and get filtered, and they tell a hiring manager that nobody local wrote them. Start with the sectors that bring the highest fees and add a city once you have a recruiter and placements there.

For many job searches Google shows its own jobs block above the regular results. A listing gets into it through JobPosting structured data on the job page, and agencies lose this traffic mostly through small errors in that data:

• the title is a real job title, without “URGENT”, reference codes or pay in it
• datePosted and validThrough come from your ATS, so closing dates are true
• baseSalary carries a real range and unit — hourly for temp roles, yearly for permanent ones
• jobLocation has a full address, and remote roles are marked as such, with the states or countries candidates may work from
• hiringOrganization is filled the same way on every job, confidential searches included

Job pages usually come from an ATS plugin or a feed, so I check what Google receives in the Search Console job posting report and fix the template once. Google’s Indexing API, accepted for job pages, then reports new and removed jobs without waiting for a crawl.

Every closed job leaves a URL behind. Left alone, those pages still say “Apply now” for a role filled in March, still carry markup and send candidates to a dead end. I set up one rule for the whole site:

• the JobPosting markup goes, or validThrough moves into the past, the day the role closes
• the page either returns 404 or 410, or stays live with “this position has been filled” and links to similar open roles
• the URL leaves the sitemap and the Indexing API gets a removal notice
• roles you hire for again and again — forklift operators in Columbus, registered nurses in Tampa — get a permanent category page that lists current openings and keeps its links between hires

For broad searches like “jobs in Houston” or “marketing jobs”, Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter will stay above any agency site. An agency wins where it knows more than a board — a narrow specialism, a city, a type of contract — and in every search an employer makes. Boards remain a distribution channel, and the two work together when:

• a job goes live on your site first, with fuller text than the board version
• your LinkedIn company page and Glassdoor profile carry the same sectors, offices and details as the site, because candidates and AI assistants read them when they check you
• reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed get the same calm answers as reviews on Google

Searches such as “staffing agency near me” or “recruitment agency in Columbus” are answered by the map, and they come both from candidates who want to walk in and from local employers. Each staffed office gets its own profile:

• the primary category that matches the office — Employment agency, Temp agency, Executive search firm or Recruiter
• the office’s own page on the site as the profile link, with its sectors and its team
• hours for walk-in registration where you offer it
• reviews requested from placed candidates and from clients, each answered without personal details

Categories, listings and review work in more depth are on the local SEO services page.

Clients hire a recruiter, not a logo. A profile page for each consultant ranks for that person’s name and shows Google and AI assistants the experience behind your content — what Google calls E-E-A-T. Each profile carries:

• the sectors, seniority levels and locations the recruiter covers, and years in the field
• a LinkedIn link and Person structured data that ties the two together
• articles and salary commentary signed with their name
• a plan for when someone leaves: the page is redirected to the desk or sector page, never simply deleted

A salary guide is the content that earns links for a recruitment agency: HR blogs, local business press and job seekers cite it, and AI assistants quote it when someone asks what a role pays in a city. It works only when the numbers are yours — accepted offers, agreed rates, time to hire — with the method, the number of placements behind each figure and the period stated next to the table. Where the sample for a role is too small, the role is left out. Each guide keeps one permanent page, refreshed every year or quarter, with a one-sentence summary on top that a journalist or an assistant can repeat.

US staffing firms are searched for differently from permanent recruiters. Volume roles, many branches and shift work change the job:

• candidate searches carry pay and urgency — “warehouse jobs hiring immediately”, “weekly pay jobs near me”, “night shift CNA jobs” — so pay rate, shift and start date go into the first lines of the job page and into the markup
• branch pages matter more than sector pages: one per branch, with its open roles, hours and directions
• employer pages answer “light industrial staffing [city]”, “temp to hire agency” or “healthcare staffing agency” with service levels, onboarding and safety written as text
• in healthcare staffing, license and credential requirements are described per role and state in general terms and checked by your compliance team

Hiring managers now ask ChatGPT or Perplexity “which recruitment agencies in Boston specialize in biotech” or “retained or contingent search for a CFO”, and candidates ask “are staffing agencies worth it for nurses in Texas”. The assistant names a few agencies and gives its reasons. Getting into those lists is what generative engine optimization (GEO), also called answer engine optimization (AEO), is about. For a recruitment agency it involves:

• sectors, cities, fee models and the roles you fill written as plain sentences on sector and office pages
• recruiter profiles and salary guides with named authors and dates
• the same agency details on the site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Glassdoor and industry directories
• Organization, EmploymentAgency and Person structured data linked to one another

Before the work and a few months into it, I record which agencies the assistants name for your sectors and cities. More on the AI SEO and GEO optimization page.

A report that mixes both audiences hides the result, so in GA4 each conversion is labeled by audience: applications and CV uploads by job, sector and office on one side; client inquiries, “submit a vacancy” forms and calls to the business line on the other. If your ATS or recruitment CRM records the source, we follow clients who found you through search on to jobs registered and placements made. Rankings sit next to these numbers as a means, not as the result. First results usually show after about a month and a half, and steady growth takes three to six months.

• Recruitment agency SEO audit — employer pages, job markup, expired vacancies, office profiles, competitors and AI answers: from 250 €, one-off.
• One-off work — sector and city pages, JobPosting template fixes, recruiter profiles, a salary guide page, tracking by audience: 250–700 €.
• Monthly SEO for a recruitment or staffing agency — new employer pages, job-page upkeep, offices, AI visibility and reports: from 800 € per month; for agencies competing in big cities such as New York, Chicago or London from 1,300 € per month.

If the site itself needs rebuilding — job board, application flow, candidate registration — that is described on the recruitment agency website page. How monthly work runs is on the SEO optimization and strategy page, the audit on the SEO audit page, and all prices on the pricing page.