On this blog, I’ve been a proponent of making SEO at least a part of your overall recruitment strategy by ensuring your job ads and recruiting content are SEO friendly. In order to do this, however, you need technology to consistently make sure that this is happening.

There are a lot of options out there including ATS career sites, Recruitment SEO solutions and non-recruiting specific options such Content Management Systems (CMS) that enable you to control the content and keywords for your Career / Jobs site.

No matter what technology you decide to use (or are currently using) it’s important to make sure that it provides a few important things in terms of functionality.

Here are 4 that are important:

Customizable Keywords: No matter the solution you use, you should have the ability to determine the keywords that are associated with a given webpage / content. This includes determining the “page title”, “meta tag description” and “alt text” (which are explained in more detail here.)

Setting up basic page title and description for new job distribution campaigns is fine but you should have the ability to also go in and update any keywords for single pages.

Create new content on the fly: Not only should your solution enable you to easily add a new page for every new job you have but you should be able to create new content whenever you want. Whether it’s a new site for Marketing candidates that includes information specific to them or a new page with all your employer branding videos you should be able to create content on the fly that is SEO keyword friendly and simple to publish.

Also important is that these pages should enable you to include interactive content such as Video, Audio, Images, etc. in addition to text while providing you with the ability to add significant keyword tags to these content formats.

Compatible with Social Networks: To create a successful social recruiting strategy you need to include access to your social media profiles on every piece of recruiting content you produce. Whatever your solution, make sure that you prominently provide links to your social profiles so candidates can join and begin engaging with you.

Also make sharing your content on social channels easy by including simple share buttons on all your content. It should be a simple thing to set up and can have a great impact on how many candidates will view your content. In addition, also make sure you enable candidates to join your Talent Network and can opt-in to receive communications for future job openings / recruitment content.

Keyword Metrics: Any good technology will be able to provide you with the keywords that are driving candidates from search engines like Google to your SEO optimize pages. It’s important to look at this data and determine what keywords perform the best for your organization (which you may want to use more often) and compare them against the other important recruiting metrics you capture.

If you are going to make Recruitment SEO a strategic part of your recruitment marketing strategy, I encourage you to speak with SEO consultants. However, if you decide to do some SEO strategy in house, make sure that the technology you choose enables you to fully optimize your recruiting content in a simple and easy way. There is no reason optimizing content for SEO should be difficult in today’s world.