You've got a website. It looks decent. You've maybe even done some SEO work in the past — an agency audit, some blog posts, a few changes to your meta descriptions. But when you search for terms that matter to your business, you're nowhere.
This is one of the most common frustrations we hear from Australian recruitment agency owners. And in almost every case, the reasons are the same.
Most recruitment agency websites were built by a web designer whose job was to make it look good. SEO was an afterthought — or not a thought at all. The result is a site that looks professional but gives Google almost nothing to work with. Generic page titles. No heading structure. No keyword strategy. No schema markup.
What to fix: Start with a technical audit. Google Search Console (free) will show you indexing issues. PageSpeed Insights will show you load time problems. Each page needs a clear keyword target, proper title tag, heading structure and internal links.
Most agency websites have a handful of pages: Home, About, Services, Jobs, Contact. Google ranks individual pages for individual searches. If you want to rank for "locum GP jobs Queensland," you need a page specifically about locum GP jobs in Queensland. One generic Services page cannot rank for 40 different specialty-location combinations.
What to fix: Build specialty-location pages for every combination you recruit in, starting with your highest-margin verticals. This is the single highest-impact change most recruitment agencies can make.
A page with 150 words describing your services in vague terms won't rank. Google's quality guidelines are clear — content needs to be comprehensive, useful and demonstrate genuine expertise. For a specialty-location page to rank, it typically needs 600 to 1,500 words covering the specialty, the location market, typical roles, salary information, and a clear call to action.
What to fix: Audit your most important pages and identify which ones have thin content. Add substantive, useful content including salary data, market insights, specific role types and FAQs.
When someone searches "recruitment agency Sydney," Google often shows a local pack of three businesses at the top of the page. Appearing there requires a verified, complete and active Google Business Profile. Most recruitment agencies have an unclaimed profile or one with outdated information and no reviews.
What to fix: Claim your profile. Complete every field. Then build a process for collecting Google reviews from placed candidates and satisfied clients.
Page speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor. A site that loads in 5 or 6 seconds consistently ranks below a site that loads in 1 or 2 seconds. Many recruitment agency websites have large uncompressed images, bloated plugins, slow hosting, or all three.
What to fix: Run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights. The most common fixes are compressing images, removing unnecessary plugins, and switching to faster hosting.
Backlinks are one of Google's most important ranking signals. Most recruitment agency websites have almost none — they were built, launched and forgotten. No PR, no industry directory listings, no media mentions, no partnerships that generated inbound links.
What to fix: Start building links systematically. Industry association memberships, media quotes, LinkedIn articles that link back to your site, job board profiles that include your website link, local business directories.
Agencies that started doing the right things but abandoned the program before the compound effect kicked in. Most agencies see their first meaningful ranking movements in weeks 6 to 8. Real candidate pipeline from organic typically appears around month 3. The compound effect starts around month 4 to 6. Agencies that stop at month 2 are like farmers who plant seeds in spring and dig them up in summer because nothing has grown yet.
What to fix: Commit to a minimum of 6 months before evaluating results. Track candidate registrations and client enquiries from organic — not impressions and sessions.
A generalist SEO agency doesn't know your market. They don't know the difference between a locum and a contractor. They don't know what a hiring manager types into Google at 11pm. The result is a strategy built around high-volume keywords you'll never rank for, content that doesn't match how candidates and clients actually search, and reporting that looks impressive but doesn't connect to actual business outcomes.
What to fix: Work with an SEO agency that specialises in recruitment. Ask them to walk you through their keyword strategy for a recruitment client — if they can't speak fluently about specialty pages and candidate intent, they've never done this before.
Also worth reading: our 27-point recruitment agency SEO checklist and the complete guide to recruitment agency SEO in Australia.
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