9 Ways to Optimize Your Physician Recruitment Job Posting for SEO

While job boards and online postings should never be a recruiter’s sole source of candidates, they remain a key part of a comprehensive physician recruitment strategy. But whether internal or external, job postings aren’t effective if your ideal physician candidate can’t find them. So how is a recruiter to ensure that prospective candidates will find their jobs while searching online?

Rather than relying on the old tactic of renewing postings on outside job boards on a weekly basis, physician recruiters can now leverage the power of search engine optimization to keep their job postings at the top of search results and in front of prospective candidates. Below are nine tactics recruiters can utilize to make sure that that their opportunities reach the widest audience online.

1. Use Keywords

What are the most common terms prospective candidates will use when searching for jobs online? Chances are they include the specialty and location they are searching for, along with the words “job” or “opportunity.” By making sure to use these selected keywords frequently and organically throughout your job posting (remember to include similar variations of your keywords), you signal to search engines that your posting is highly relevant to what candidates are looking for.

2. Customize Your URLs

Like using keywords in the body of your job posting, using keywords in your URLs emphasize the importance and relevance of these phrases on your page to search engines. Keep your URL relevant and accurate to improve your rankings, and make sure to use dashes instead of underscores between words in your URL.

3. Don’t Forget About Your H1 Tags

Sometimes the same as the title, the H1 tag acts as the header for your job posting page and is the first place candidates will look to figure out what a page is about. Your page’s H1 tag should contain the key information about your open position, such as the specialty, location, and other pertinent factors that prospective candidates may be searching for.

4. Optimize Your Page Title

After the content of a page, the page title is the most important on-page SEO element. Showing up as both the page title in search results and in your page’s browser tab, making sure your page title utilizes relevant and targeted keywords is key for SEO success.

5. Use Keywords in Your Meta Description

The meta description is the brief descriptor that comes up in search results under a job postings page title. Not only does this give prospective candidates insight on what your opportunity is (and when done right, can increase the chances they will click on your page), but it also provides search engines with additional information that will help them decide how your page will rank for certain search terms.

6. Include Engaging Videos

A 2009 study from Forrester found that pages with video were 53 times more likely to rank on the first page of google search results. As the leading search engine the world over, ranking on the first page of google can have a dramatic impact on number of candidates that see your job posting. But the benefits of including video on your job posting pages doesn’t end there. Using videos the right way can help provide prospective candidates with relevant and engaging content, making them more likely to apply for your position or reach out to learn more.

7. Make It Social

Not all the signals sent to search engines come from the information you put on the page. Search engines now factor in things like “social signals” when deciding a page’s relevance. These social signals allow search engines to see what is trending, and can also provide backlinks to your page, increasing SEO.

8. Optimize for Mobile

In the spring of 2015, google released an SEO update giving pages that were mobile-friendly a boost in search rankings. More than that, google went a step further, and began tagging mobile friendly pages in search results as such, setting them apart from their non-mobile friendly counterparts. By optimizing job posting pages for mobile, organizations can both boost their search rankings while also creating an improved user experience for prospective candidates – especially ones conducting their search on mobile devices.

9. Leverage Backlinks

While not often thought about in SEO for physician recruitment, backlinks are one of, if not the most, important element of SEO. By posting your opportunity to general job boards, niche boards, and specialty sites, you can create backlinks to your internal job posting page and increase the chances that candidates can find your opportunity organically.

CONCLUSION:

While it may not always be possible to have your internal job postings ranking on the first page of search results, recruiters can use these nine tools to increase the chances that their job postings will do so. By utilizing both on-page and off-page SEO tactics, recruiters can improve their chances of having prospective candidates find their opportunities organically when conducting their initial searches online, leading to increased exposure for their opportunities to prospective physician candidates.