Most recruitment agency websites have the same problems. They were built to look good, not to rank. They have one page per vertical instead of dozens. No schema markup. A half-finished Google Business Profile. A blog that hasn't been updated since 2022.
This checklist covers the 27 most common SEO issues we find when auditing recruitment agency websites in Australia. Work through it and you'll have a clear picture of what's holding your organic growth back — and what to fix first.
Type site:yourwebsite.com.au into Google. If fewer pages appear than you have on your site, Google isn't indexing everything. Unindexed pages generate zero organic traffic.
Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check. Slow sites rank lower and lose candidates before the page finishes loading. Most recruitment agency websites fail this test.
Google uses mobile-first indexing. If your site doesn't work perfectly on a phone, you're penalised in rankings. Check using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test.
Your sitemap tells Google what pages to crawl. Without one, Google may miss important pages entirely.
If not, you're flying completely blind. It's free, takes 15 minutes to set up, and shows you exactly what searches are bringing people to your site.
Broken links waste crawl budget and frustrate candidates. Use a free tool like Screaming Frog to identify and fix them.
Many recruitment agency websites have hundreds of near-identical job listing pages. Without proper canonical tags, these cannibalise each other's rankings.
One generic "we recruit in healthcare" page cannot rank for 20 different healthcare specialties. You need individual pages for each.
"We recruit nationally" on your homepage will not rank for "recruitment agency Sydney." You need location-specific pages.
Combining specialty and location — "locum psychiatrist Sydney," "finance recruiter Melbourne" — targets the highest-intent searches. Most agencies don't have a single one of these pages.
Your title tag is the blue headline that appears in Google search results. Every page needs a unique, keyword-rich title tag.
Meta descriptions appear below your title in search results. They significantly affect click-through rate.
Google pays attention to where keywords appear on a page. Your primary keyword should appear naturally in the opening paragraph.
One H1 per page containing the primary keyword. Multiple H2s covering the main topics. This structure helps Google understand your content hierarchy.
Thin content — a few sentences describing your services — doesn't rank. Pages need to be comprehensive enough that a candidate or client would bookmark them.
Salary guides and rate information are among the most searched content in recruitment. Pages that include this data get significantly more traffic and time-on-page.
A quarterly blog post won't move the needle. A consistent weekly or fortnightly publishing schedule compounds over time.
Use Google's "People Also Ask" feature to find the questions candidates in your vertical are searching for, then build content that answers them directly.
If your profile is unclaimed, a competitor can claim it. Verification takes 15 minutes and is one of the fastest wins available.
Business name, address, phone, website, opening hours, services, photos, description. Most agency profiles are 40% complete. Get to 100%.
Name, Address, Phone needs to be identical on your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, and any directory listings. Inconsistencies hurt local rankings.
Reviews are a significant local ranking factor. Agencies with 20+ reviews consistently outrank those with fewer. Build a process for asking placed candidates for Google reviews.
Organisation schema tells Google your business name, location, contact details and website. It takes 30 minutes to implement and improves how Google displays your business.
Job posting schema enables Google to display your roles in the Google Jobs feature — a significant source of candidate traffic most agencies miss entirely.
Local business schema reinforces your location signals and helps you appear in local search results for your city.
Backlinks are one of Google's most important ranking signals. Most recruitment agency websites have almost none. Industry associations, media mentions, directories and partnerships are all link opportunities.
Internal links help Google understand your site structure. Your specialty pages should link to relevant blog posts. Your blog posts should link back to specialty pages and to your audit CTA.
Also worth reading: the complete guide to recruitment agency SEO and why your agency isn't ranking on Google.
We audit Australian recruitment agency websites for free. 30 minutes. Prioritised fix list you can act on immediately.
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