Recruiter SEO: search and websites built for both sides of every placement

What does recruitment agency marketing cover?

Recruitment agency marketing works on two fronts at once: candidates for the jobs you have open, and companies with jobs to fill. Recruiter SEO can reach both, since candidates search for jobs and companies search for staff, each in their own words. Here is how the work splits:

• The website: job pages, fed from your applicant tracking system where it has a feed, a candidate path and an employer path. The build is set out on our page on staffing agency website design, part of our web design service.
• Search: job pages marked up for Google’s job search, specialty and city pages for the main results, a Business Profile for each staffed branch and a monthly check of how AI answers mention you, all part of our SEO service.
• Systems: the forms, the routing behind them and, where your system has one, the job feed, built for your agency alone.
• Paid ads: we don’t manage paid search, paid social or sponsored job listings; your team or an ads agency would run them.

The sections below set out what we would build for an agency and the job ad rules each piece has to respect. Our industries page lists the other sectors these pages cover.

Which rules shape a staffing agency’s job ads?

Three rules shape the job pages and forms we would build: a California rule on pay, a federal rule on preferences and a California rule on criminal history. Each one reaches agencies as well as the employers they post for.

The pay scale goes in the posting (Labor Code 432.3)

California’s Labor Commissioner explains the rule in its pay transparency questions and answers:

• Who it covers: an employer with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale for a position in any job posting (432.3(c)(3)), and the office says at least one of those employees must be currently located in California.
• Agencies posting for them: an employer that engages a third party to announce, post or publish a job must give it the pay scale, and the third party must include it in the posting (432.3(c)(5)).
• Remote roles count: the office reads the rule to cover any position that may ever be filled in California, in person or remotely.
• What the pay scale is: a good faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage range the employer reasonably expects to pay on hire (432.3(m)(1)). Where pay is piece rate or commission, a good faith estimate of that range goes in too; bonuses, tips and other benefits don’t have to be posted.
• Inside the posting itself: a link or a QR code that leads to the pay scale doesn’t meet the rule (432.3(c)(3)), and an applicant who asks for a position’s pay scale must get it on reasonable request (432.3(c)(1)).
• Penalties: an employer who violates the law may be liable for civil penalties between $100 and $10,000 per violation (432.3(d)(4)).

No preference in the ad (Title VII, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-3(b))

Section 704(b) of Title VII makes it unlawful for an employer, labor organization, employment agency or joint labor-management committee to print or publish a notice or advertisement relating to employment that indicates any preference, limitation, specification or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The exception is religion, sex or national origin where it is a bona fide occupational qualification for the job.

The EEOC’s summary of federal law adds age (40 or older), disability and genetic information for job ads, and gives an example: a help-wanted ad that seeks “females” or “recent college graduates” may discourage men and people over 40 from applying and may violate the law. It also says an employer, employment agency or union may not take those traits into account when making decisions about job referrals, which reaches the work an agency does after the ad runs.

No blanket exclusion for criminal history (Fair Chance Act, Gov. Code 12952)

The Civil Rights Department’s fact sheet says the Fair Chance Act covers public employers and private employers with five or more employees, including union hiring halls, labor contractors and temporary employment agencies. Before a job offer, most employers cannot ask about conviction history on a job application, run a background check or an internet search for criminal history, or make statements in job postings that exclude people with criminal histories. The exceptions include farm labor contractors and any position where an employer is required by law to conduct background checks or restrict employment based on criminal history.

We aren’t lawyers, and this summary is here to plan pages and forms. Your employment counsel decides how each rule applies to your agency and to each client’s jobs, and the templates we would build follow that advice.

What does SEO for recruiters involve?

SEO for recruiters runs on three clocks. At the start, we fix what holds the site back: titles and descriptions, structured data, re-index requests, and overlapping posts merged into one. Every month, we add pages with their markup, such as job and specialty pages, publish new articles, build location pages where demand and local proof back them, earn links (never buy them) and track how often AI answers mention the agency. All year, a weekly site check, a monthly link check, a one-page report on the last day of each month that opens with leads, and a quarterly review keep the plan on course.

Recruiting adds three tasks of its own, each built into the site:

• Markup on single-job pages: JobPosting structured data on each job’s own page, and none on pages that list jobs.
• The Indexing API: Google recommends it over sitemaps for job posting URLs, because it prompts Googlebot to crawl those pages sooner.
• Expiring filled jobs: a validThrough date in the past, a removed page or removed markup, since Google says failing to take timely action on expired jobs may result in a manual action.

How each one is built is on our recruitment agency website design page.

Which channels does recruiter marketing use, and who runs each?

Recruiter marketing runs through several channels at once. This is the job of each, the rule to check and who would run it.

How does recruitment agency SEO handle specialties, cities and branches?

Recruitment agency SEO works in three layers, and every page in each layer needs a reason to exist.

Specialties. The American Staffing Association counts 36% of staffing employees in industrial work, 24% in office-clerical and administrative roles, 21% in professional-managerial, 11% in engineering, information technology and scientific roles, and 8% in health care. Those groups do very different work, so a page for each specialty you place gives both sides somewhere to land: that specialty’s open jobs for candidates, and a request form for the employers who hire in it.

Cities. Google’s spam policies call it doorway abuse when sites or pages are created to rank for specific, similar search queries, and list among the examples substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy. A city page earns its place with open jobs there, a branch that serves it or demand you can show, and each one says something the others don’t.

Branches. Google’s guidelines rule out a virtual office (a rented mailing address the business doesn’t operate from) and P.O. boxes. An office at a co-working space qualifies only with clear signage, customers received there during business hours and your own staff there in those hours. Each branch that meets the rules can have its own profile, kept in step with its page on the site. More on our local SEO work.

Can AI answers find a staffing agency?

Google’s AI features can, through the same search work. Google says that to be eligible as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, that the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search, and that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.

Search Console’s Search generative AI control, rolled out to all websites as of August 31, 2026, sets whether a site takes part. Include is the default. Exclude keeps a site’s links and content out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Google Discover, and the site gets no traffic or impressions from them. Google says the control isn’t used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search, and its Generative AI performance report shows how a site’s content performs in those features.

Our GEO work makes an agency’s pages easier for AI answers to find, read and cite: a clear answer on each specialty and city page, structured data, and robots rules that let AI crawlers in. Each month we check how often AI answers mention the agency and report it against targets. The AI tool decides which agencies it names, so no mention is promised. More on our generative engine optimization service.

Where does automation fit in a staffing agency?

Systems can take on some of the routine steps between a first contact and a placement. These are the ones we would build around the website, for your agency alone:

1. The job feed: where your applicant tracking system has a feed, open jobs publish from it and come down when they are filled.
2. Staff request routing: each request from the employer form reaches the desk that covers that specialty or branch.
3. Interview booking: candidates book a screening call themselves, from the open times your recruiters set.
4. Source tracking to placement: every application and request carries its channel, and where your applicant tracking system can store it, a placement can be traced to where it started.

Who moves forward stays with your recruiters: AI that screens applicants or makes significant decisions about them is outside what we build. Our guide to AI for staffing agencies goes further into where AI fits, and our custom software page covers the systems work.

How much should a staffing agency spend on marketing?

One way to set it: start from the placements and new clients you want each month and what each is worth, then price the channels that would bring them in. For scale, here is what US agency price pages and guides show, all read October 2026:

• Established local business: SEO at $1,000 to $2,300 a month (Coalition Technologies, WebFX, Thrive Agency and an Ahrefs survey), and a website build at $6,500 to $15,000 (WebFX and DesignRush).
• Multi-location or regional: SEO at $2,000 to $7,000 a month (WebFX’s price calculator), and a website build at $15,000 to $50,000 (WebFX, DesignRush and Lee Media Group).

Staffing has cost drivers of its own. WebFX’s local SEO price page says costs are influenced by industry competition, the number of business locations and the quantity of products and services to promote, and that a business in multiple locations can expect to pay more for each location. For a staffing agency, branches and specialties play those parts: each branch you want found is a location and each specialty a service to promote, and the job feed and the city pages add work of their own.

The figures above describe the market. What your agency would pay us comes in the proposal that follows the 15-minute call, sized to your specialties and branches. Paid ads and sponsored job listings would come on top, and we don’t run them. We do not guarantee search rankings, traffic, or uninterrupted uptime.

How do you choose a recruitment marketing agency?

Google’s guide to hiring search help is a good place to start. It suggests asking for examples of past work, how success is measured, the agency’s experience in your industry and in your country or city, and how long it has been in business. During an audit, give read-only access to Search Console. Check references, and if anyone promises their changes will put you first in search results, look elsewhere. Google also suggests asking whether any AEO or GEO advice is aligned with its official guidance.

A staffing agency has four questions of its own to add:

• Pay ranges: how the job template carries the pay scale, and who fills it in.
• The job feed: how jobs get from your applicant tracking system to the site, and how filled ones come down.
• Competing agencies: whether they work for another agency in your specialty and market, and how they keep the work apart.
• Reporting: whether the monthly report opens with applications, staff requests and placements.

Our page on website design for staffing agencies answers the first two, and the section below answers the fourth. The third we answer on the call.

How do you measure what recruiter SEO brings in?

Measure it by placements and new clients, the results that pay for the work. Search traffic counts only as far as it leads there, which takes a source on every application and staff request, kept in the applicant tracking system through submittal and placement. Then track each month:

• Applications: by job, by specialty and by source.
• Staff requests: by source and by branch.
• Submittals and placements: the ones that started on the site.
• Filled jobs still live: job pages still showing a role that has closed, which should be none.
• Cost per placement: each channel’s spend divided by the placements it brought in.

Search Console shows how your pages perform in Google Search, and its Generative AI performance report covers Google’s AI features. Our one-page monthly report, sent on the last day of each month, opens with leads.

How do we start working together?

It starts with a 15-minute call about the specialties you place and the branches you want found. We were formed in 2023 and work remotely with businesses across the US, and agencies near our office in Valencia, California, are welcome to visit during office hours.