Recruitment SEO Audit
Recruitment agency owners are rightfully sceptical of signing long-term SEO retainers after being burnt by generalist agencies that promise ranking spikes but deliver zero client mandates. You would not purchase a £2m commercial property without a structural survey, yet many agencies rebuild their websites without diagnosing the technical foundations first.
We position the Recruitment SEO Audit as a standalone, low-risk diagnostic product. It provides a forensic analysis of your site’s technical health, revealing exactly why competitors are outranking you and offering a prioritised roadmap for growth - before you commit to a monthly campaign.
Diagnosis vs. Strategy: Which do you need?
It is vital to distinguish between a technical diagnosis and a commercial growth plan. This Audit identifies the mechanical "brakes" - such as index bloat, spider traps, or broken schema - that physically prevent your site from ranking. If your platform is already technically sound and you simply need a forward-looking content strategy to capture market share, you require our Innovate Playbook instead.
The Audit fixes the engine; the Playbook maps the route to market leadership.
Key Takeaways
- Technical Diagnostics: The audit identifies invisible crawl barriers, such as faceted navigation issues and index bloat, that prevent Google from ranking your high-value pages.
- Commercial Intent Analysis: We evaluate whether your service pages target "client-side" keywords (e.g., "Executive Search Partners") or accidentally compete for low-value "candidate" terms.
- Job Board Hygiene: Success depends on how well your site handles expired jobs; we assess your 404 error rates and redirection logic to preserve link equity.
- Competitor Benchmarking: We compare your digital footprint against the top three leaders in your specific niche (e.g., FinTech or Life Sciences) to define the gap in domain authority.
- Actionable Roadmap: You receive a prioritised list of fixes - categorised by "Critical," "Important," and "Optional" - giving your development team a clear script to follow.
Why Recruitment Agencies Need a Specialist SEO Audit
Why do generalist SEO audits fail for recruitment websites?
Generalist SEO audits fail for recruitment websites because they treat dynamic job boards like static brochure sites, missing sector-specific technical pitfalls. A standard audit tool might flag "duplicate content" on a job listing without understanding that multi-location job posting is a standard industry necessity.
Our specialist audit analyses the unique architecture of recruitment platforms (like Volcanic, SourceFlow, RecruiterWeb etc.), ensuring that we diagnose the specific logic errors - such as "Spider Traps" in job filters - that generalists ignore.
How does index bloat affect recruitment rankings?
Index bloat affects recruitment rankings by diluting the domain authority across thousands of low-value, expired job URLs instead of focusing it on live content. When a search engine crawler visits your site, it has a finite "crawl budget." If the crawler spends 80% of its time navigating through 5,000 closed job ads from 2019, it has insufficient resources to index your new "Head of Product" roles.
The audit identifies these zombie pages so we can prune the index and force Google to focus on revenue-generating pages.
Diagnosing Technical & Commercial Blockers
Why is entity structure critical for recruitment visibility?
Entity structure is critical for recruitment visibility because search engines now rank "concepts" (Entities) rather than just keywords. If your site structure does not explicitly define your agency as a "Life Sciences Specialist" through proper Schema markup and internal linking, Google treats you as a generic recruiter. Our audit evaluates your Knowledge Graph presence, checking if your site effectively communicates your niche expertise to AI models and search algorithms.
How do we assess commercial intent in content?
We assess commercial intent by analysing whether your service pages satisfy the search needs of a hiring manager or a job seeker. Many agencies optimise their "Engineering Recruitment" page with content that speaks to candidates ("Find a job"), confusing Google about the page's purpose.
The audit highlights these intent mismatches, identifying where copy needs to pivot to address B2B pain points - such as "Time to Hire" and "Retention Rates" - to attract fee-paying clients.
How We Conduct a Recruitment SEO Audit
We do not just export a tool report; we manually inspect the logic of your recruitment platform.
1. Technical Crawl Analysis
We use enterprise crawling tools to map your entire website structure, identifying broken links, redirect chains, and server errors that frustrate search bots.
2. Job Board Architecture Review
We manually test your job search filters and faceted navigation to ensure they are not generating millions of thin, indexable URLs that waste crawl budget.
3. Commercial Intent Assessment
We review your core service pages to ensure the metadata, headers, and body copy are targeting "employer" keywords rather than "candidate" keywords.
4. Competitor Gap Analysis
We benchmark your backlink profile and keyword visibility against your direct niche competitors to quantify exactly how much authority you need to build to overtake them.
FAQs on Recruitment SEO Audits
What is a recruitment SEO audit?
A recruitment SEO audit is a comprehensive health check of an agency's website, analysing technical performance, content relevance, and backlink authority specifically within the context of the staffing industry.
How long does an audit take?
A full forensic audit typically takes 5-7 days to complete, allowing time for a full site crawl, manual data analysis, and the creation of a strategic roadmap.
Do I need to sign a retainer to get an audit?
No, the audit is a standalone product. You pay a one-time fee for the diagnosis and the roadmap, with no obligation to hire us for the implementation.
What tools do you use for the audit?
We use a suite of industry-standard tools including Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Google Search Console, combined with our own proprietary manual checklists for recruitment platforms.
Will the audit fix my rankings?
The audit itself is a diagnosis, not a cure. It will tell you exactly why you are not ranking and what needs to be done, but the improvements come from implementing the recommended fixes.
Book Your Health Check
Stop guessing why your traffic has flatlined. Contact our team to schedule your forensic Recruitment SEO Audit today.
