THE PRACTICAL VIEW
A recruitment website should earn the attention of the right people and make their next step easy. Rankings help diagnose discovery. They do not tell you whether the website is contributing to the business.
Recruitment SEO starts with two very different audiences
A candidate looking for a job and an employer looking for a recruitment partner can use similar words while needing completely different things. A single page that tries to serve both can leave neither with a clear next step.
Start by separating the journeys. For a client, show the roles and markets you understand, how an engagement works and how to discuss a brief. For a candidate, make vacancies, registration, expectations and useful career information easy to find. Your navigation and enquiry forms should respect that distinction.
| Search intent | Useful page | Meaningful outcome |
|---|---|---|
| “Finance recruitment agency Sydney” | A specialist hiring page with relevant market context, process and contact options | A qualified client conversation |
| “Contract finance jobs Sydney” | Accurate vacancies, useful filters and a clear application route | A relevant, completed application |
| “How to hire a finance director” | A practical guide explaining the brief, search process and assessment considerations | An informed return visit or hiring enquiry |
These examples illustrate a planning method. They are not keyword-volume research or a promise that a particular phrase will generate demand.
What E-E-A-T looks like on a recruitment website
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust are easier to demonstrate when the content says something specific. “We understand your market” gives a reader very little to assess. An explanation of how a difficult brief is clarified, with the important trade-offs made visible, gives them more.
My perspective comes from 15 years in recruitment technology, including leading Volcanic in Australia and New Zealand. At Wiity, I work across brand, experience and hands-on solution design. The question I want a website to answer is practical: does it help the right person understand the business and take the next step?
- Experience: include a real lesson from a project when you can substantiate it and have permission to share it. Name what changed and why.
- Expertise: explain the decision. Show why one approach suits the situation and where it may fail.
- Authority: make the author and business identifiable. Link to relevant work or supporting sources where they exist.
- Trust: distinguish facts, opinion and examples. Keep important information current and make commercial relationships clear.
Google explicitly says E-E-A-T is not a specific ranking factor. Its people-first content guidance is useful because it asks whether the page genuinely helps the reader. Adding a biography to thin content does not answer that question.
GEO: give AI search something worth citing
Generative engine optimisation is a common label for improving visibility in AI-generated answers. For a recruitment agency, the practical ambition is straightforward: make it easy to understand who you help, what you know and which claims are supported.
Write a direct answer to the question the page addresses, then explain the detail. Keep the business name, service descriptions and author information consistent. Use headings that describe the content. Link claims to suitable evidence. Ensure important text is available in the page rather than appearing only inside an image or a difficult-to-access interaction.
Google’s guidance for generative AI search continues to emphasise established SEO foundations. Other services have their own systems. A technically readable page can still be ignored, and a citation can change between searches. Treat visibility as something to observe, not something a provider can guarantee.
Keep a record of the questions you test, the service, the date and what appears. Pair that qualitative view with referral and enquiry evidence. It is more useful than reporting one favourable AI answer as a permanent ranking.
The reporting view needs to survive the handover to your CRM
A form submission is the start of a commercial conversation. Agree how it will be classified: a genuine client brief, a speculative approach, a supplier message or a candidate enquiry. Then make sure somebody owns the next action.
Keep the original enquiry identifier where your systems permit. Link it to the opportunity and resulting work. Where several enquiries become one opportunity, or one client creates several jobs, document that relationship instead of counting each record as a separate win.
Review a sample manually before trusting a dashboard. Can someone follow the trail from the page to the enquiry, the consultant’s activity and the outcome? If not, resolve the missing handover before presenting attribution as a settled fact.
EXPLORE THE HANDOVERS · ILLUSTRATIVE WORKFLOW
Capture the landing page and available referral information. Record gaps rather than inferring an unknown source.
That is the connection behind our recruitment website work: discovery, a usable experience and a measurable journey into the systems that run the business. Where data is fragmented, the shared information foundation in Ella is part of the wider conversation.
Where I would focus the first month
Choose one service and one audience. Review the existing page, check the evidence behind its claims and follow the enquiry route yourself. Then sit down with the person who receives those enquiries. Their view of lead quality can change what the website needs to say.
Use the next iteration to resolve a specific weakness: a vague service page, an awkward mobile form, an unowned CRM record or reporting that stops at submissions. Record the baseline and the change. Search effects can take time, so do not confuse a short measurement window with a definitive verdict.
The useful question at the end of that month is whether the business understands the journey better and has removed a real obstacle. That is a more credible foundation for growth than publishing another batch of interchangeable articles.
WORKED EXAMPLE · ILLUSTRATIVE
Follow one client enquiry all the way through
Consider an illustrative journey. A hiring manager searches for help recruiting a finance director. They read your specialist hiring page, return a week later through a branded search and submit a brief. The enquiry enters the CRM, becomes a qualified opportunity and eventually results in a placement. A last-click report may credit only the branded visit. A connected view can retain the earlier source where tracking and permissions allow, alongside the eventual outcome.
Where it can go wrong
Do not force certainty where tracking is incomplete. Cookie choices, device changes, phone calls and offline conversations can break the chain. Show known touchpoints, record self-reported discovery where useful and make the attribution method explicit.
PUT IT TO WORK
Your website review checklist
Tick off the points you have covered. This is a working checklist, not a compliance score. Selections reset when you leave the page.
0 of 4 points covered
Questions worth asking
What is the difference between recruitment SEO and GEO?
SEO improves how a website can be discovered and understood through search. GEO is commonly used to describe work aimed at visibility in generative AI answers. The channels differ, but accurate, useful and accessible information is a shared foundation. Neither guarantees placement in an answer.
Is E-E-A-T a score we can optimise?
Google says E-E-A-T itself is not a specific ranking factor. It is a useful framework for thinking about experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. Demonstrate those qualities through useful evidence and honest authorship rather than adding labels to generic copy.
Do we need a separate page for every suburb?
Only where the page serves a real audience with distinct, useful information. Repeating the same recruitment pitch with a different location name gives visitors little reason to choose you.
Can you guarantee that our recruitment agency will appear in AI answers?
No. Search and AI services decide what to retrieve and show. The practical work is to improve the quality, clarity and accessibility of your information and measure the outcomes you can observe.
Continue with Recruitment AI Roadmap: A Practical Planning Guide.
This guide builds on Jordan’s Hyper Automate resource library, updated for Wiity. Worked examples illustrate the approach; they are not customer case studies.