Recruitment growth / Guide 11
SEO for recruitment agencies: what two client sites showed.
The short answer
SEO for recruitment agencies has two jobs: bring the right people to your site, and turn employer visits into enquiries. On two recruitment client sites, salary guides drew most of the clicks from Google search. At the one site where we can track every form, the salary guides produced no form submissions; most came from the sector pages and home page. Before you publish, link each guide to its sector page and send a test enquiry to check it is recorded. Then judge the work on enquiries.
Salary guides bring visits, but few readers take the next step
The evidence comes from two Australian recruitment agencies whose search marketing we manage. AI Talent on Demand recruits AI and technology specialists; the other is a Melbourne community-sector recruiter we haven’t named.
Both publish salary guides and role guides; the community-sector recruiter also has a page for each sector it recruits for. The two sites serve different markets, but visitors from Google landed on the same kind of page: the salary guides.
| September 2026 | AI Talent on Demand | Community-sector recruiter |
|---|---|---|
| Share of clicks from Google that went to salary guides | 60% | 52% |
| Share of the site’s appearances in Google results that were salary guides | 66% | 80% |
| Share of clicks from Google that went to the most-clicked guide | 13% | 32% |
Salary guides carried the search traffic
People search for salary information often, and they use plain words to do it. In September, three in five clicks from Google to AI Talent on Demand went to its salary guides.
Its six pages selling its recruitment services, the closest it has to sector pages, drew 3% of those clicks. At the community-sector recruiter, one salary guide drew almost a third of the site’s clicks from Google.
Most guides reached page one once Google found them
AI Talent on Demand published its first salary guides between 22 and 25 March 2026. In the 28 days to 30 March, three of them had an average Google ranking between 4.1 and 4.9, where 1 is the top result.
The community-sector recruiter’s guides took longer to appear. Google first showed most of these guides in late August or September. In their first week in the results, their average ranking was already on page one.
The guides were slow to appear because Google was slow to find them, not because it ranked them poorly. Before our July review, none of the recruiter’s sector pages linked to any of its articles, and about a third of its articles had no link to them from another page’s main text.
Form submissions came from pages about the agency’s work
Between 1 June and 11 October 2026, the community-sector recruiter’s salary guides received several hundred visits from search, and not one visitor filled in a form. About 4% of search visits to its sector pages ended with a form, and the home page added a few more.
Our analytics count every form, so some may be candidate registrations rather than employer enquiries.
We can’t make the same comparison for AI Talent on Demand. Its forms run through its recruitment software, which our analytics can’t fully track.
What the guides still do
The guides put the agency’s name in front of people searching for pay information, and they give consultants a page to share in a conversation about salary. Some employers who read a guide may also return later by searching for the agency’s name, and analytics can’t trace that visit back to the guide.
They also send readers to the pages for job seekers. At AI Talent on Demand, salary-guide readers who clicked through to another page opened candidate pages several times as often as employer pages.
A guide that appears high in Google can also help the pages it links to. Google treats links from prominent sites as a sign that a page’s information can be trusted, and it follows a page’s own links to find the pages it points to. We expect some of the trust a guide earns to pass along its links, so a guide that links to its sector page can help that page, the one that takes enquiries, appear higher in Google.
Few salary-guide readers went further
At the community-sector recruiter, about one in 20 visits to a salary guide continued to another page on the site.
On one guide we checked, the prompt for employers was a link to book a call, two-thirds of the way down the page. In the four months from 1 June to 11 October, no salary-guide reader clicked a booking link. More readers clicked a guide’s links to its salary sources than visited the contact page.
We read that as a page design problem, and the checklist below is our fix.
What we now build before the first guide
These results taught us to build the path from guide to enquiry before writing the guides. Put these in place before you publish a salary guide:
- A sector page for each market you recruit in, naming the roles, locations, and responsible consultant, with a short form to discuss a vacancy.
- A link from each sector page to the guides that cover its roles, and from each guide back to its sector page.
- An employer next step on every guide, placed beside the salary table, such as “Hiring for this role? Talk to the consultant who covers it.”
- Separate forms for employer enquiries and candidate registrations, or one form with a required question asking whether the person is hiring or looking for work.
- A test enquiry through each form, confirmed in your analytics and your inbox, before any guide goes live.
Help employers and candidates find their next step
Give employers and candidates each a clear path through your site, with separate ways to submit a vacancy and apply for work.
Salary guides draw both kinds of reader, so give each guide two next steps: a link to discuss a vacancy and a link to current roles. The wider recruitment agency growth guide shows how marketing supports both sides of the business.
Choose topics your consultants can answer well
Use recent client and candidate conversations to choose page topics. Check the search terms people already use to find your site, and ask your SEO specialist how often people search for the topics you don’t yet cover.
Watch for search terms that sound like your business but are mostly used by someone else. In the community-sector recruiter’s market, one sector name plus “recruitment” had more than 100 times the monthly searches of the same phrase with “agency” added. Our keyword research showed most people searching the bigger term were job seekers, so a page written for employers will struggle to stay high in Google for it.
Pages worth building:
- A sector page for a market you cover, such as allied health recruitment in regional Victoria.
- A salary guide for a role you regularly place, with a date, a clear source for the figures, and a link to the sector page.
- A hiring guide that answers a recurring question, such as which experience to prioritise when hiring a first data engineer.
- A page of current vacancies for candidates seeking a particular type of work.
The guide to getting recruitment clients covers the follow-up after an employer gets in touch. For advice on presenting what a client offers its employees, see employer branding for recruitment agencies.
Keep vacancies accurate when roles close
Ask your website or recruitment software provider to show what happens when a vacancy closes. A candidate should be able to tell that applications have ended and find any relevant open roles.
Google asks you to mark an expired job in one of three ways: set an expiry date in the page’s job posting markup (code that tells Google the page is a job ad), remove the page, or remove that markup. Your provider should apply the appropriate option and check that it works. Google’s job posting guidance sets out the technical requirements.
You can also keep a permanent page for roles you fill regularly, such as accounting jobs in Brisbane, and list current vacancies there. Keep each individual vacancy on its own page; Google’s job posting markup applies only to single-job pages.
Check it yourself: open one live vacancy and one closed vacancy with your provider, then confirm that each page tells a candidate, and Google, whether the role is still open.
Make your specialisation clear on the page
Explain the roles and seniority levels you recruit for, the locations you serve, and who will handle an enquiry. Add relevant placement examples or client feedback where you have permission.
For salary advice, state when the information was collected and what it covers. If the figures come from a small set of placements, say so beside them. Readers need to know if the advice fits their role and market.
Create separate location pages only when you can offer useful local detail about a market you serve. Name the consultant responsible and explain the work your agency handles there.
Finish sector pages with a clear invitation to discuss a vacancy. Ask for enough information to arrange that conversation without making the employer complete a full brief.
Use clear answers for readers and AI search
Google’s AI-written answers at the top of results can link to the pages they draw on. Its guidance for AI features says the usual SEO practices still apply and nothing extra is needed. Google doesn’t guarantee your page will be included.
AI assistants such as ChatGPT also send visitors. Between 1 June and 11 October 2026, about 4% of the community-sector recruiter’s visits from AI assistants ended with a form. Most came through sector pages and the rest through the home page.
The sample is small, but it matches what we saw from Google search: every one came from a page about the agency’s work.
Answer the reader’s question early, explain the evidence, and keep the page current. If AI search is part of your marketing, ask whoever runs it to show you where your agency appears in AI answers and what those answers quote from your site. Our AI search visibility service covers that review alongside search and enquiry reporting.
Judge recruitment SEO on employer enquiries
Review employer enquiries and candidate applications separately. For employers, record which enquiries became meetings, briefs, and placements; for candidates, review applications against the roles you need to fill.
Use search visit numbers to explain those enquiry results. The evidence above shows salary guides with plenty of visits and no form submissions. Check that each guide links to the right sector page and that the sector page invites the employer to discuss a vacancy.
Search Google yourself as well as reading the report. In September, Google showed several salary guides on one of these sites less often, yet Search Console, Google’s own reporting tool, said their average ranking held or improved.
Search Console works out a page’s average ranking only from the searches where the page appeared, so a page that drops out of some searches can still show a steady ranking. When we searched Google ourselves, the guides were missing from several searches where they had appeared before.
Build the path to an enquiry, then the guides
Use the first 90 days as a work schedule, with a review at the end.
- Weeks 1–2, review the website: check each sector page, the enquiry forms, and what happens to closed vacancies.
- Weeks 3–6, fix the path to an enquiry: make each specialisation clear, separate employer and candidate forms, and test both.
- Weeks 7–10, publish one guide: answer a salary or hiring question with a consultant who knows the role, and link the guide to its sector page and the sector page back to the guide.
- Weeks 11–13, review the response: count employer enquiries by the page each enquirer first arrived on, then choose the next guide.
Whoever does the work, give each task a named owner and a clear description of what they will deliver. If you’d rather not run this yourself, our recruitment marketing work covers it.
Sources: Google Search Console and Google Analytics records for the two client sites, as dated above; our DataForSEO keyword research for the community-sector client; Google Search Central’s job posting requirements, AI features guidance, and link best practices, and Google’s How Search Works, checked 13 October 2026. Client figures are search and analytics records, not placement or revenue results. The work schedule is editorial advice.
Frequently asked questions
Is SEO still worth it for a recruitment agency?
It can be, if you judge it on enquiries. On the two recruitment sites in this article, most salary guides reached the first page of Google results once Google found them. At the site where we can track every form, most form submissions came from the sector pages and home page. If your website doesn't clearly explain what you specialise in, start with those pages and the links that lead readers to them.
How much does SEO typically cost in Australia?
We sell SEO as part of fractional marketing support for recruitment agencies, which can also cover paid ads, website changes, and enquiry follow-up. The fee depends on which of those your agency needs. See our recruitment marketing work.
Which recruitment website pages should I improve first?
Start with the pages that explain each sector you recruit for and help an employer contact you. Check that your enquiry form separates employers from candidates. Then publish salary or hiring guides that link back to those pages.
Do salary guides bring in recruitment clients?
Rarely by themselves, on the evidence of the two sites in this article. They drew most of the search clicks on both sites. At the site where we can track every form, none of the form submissions came from a salary guide. A salary guide earns its place when it sends readers to the sector page that covers the role.