An SEO audit for recruitment agencies is really two audits in one, because your site has to win candidates searching for jobs and hiring managers searching for a recruiter. When I carry out an SEO audit for an agency, I check how well the site serves each side, and how the constant churn of vacancies affects everything else.
Where agency sites lose visibility
Recruitment websites have a problem few other businesses share: a large share of their pages appear and disappear every week. Vacancies are posted, filled and removed, often automatically through a feed from your applicant tracking system or CRM. Done well, that steady flow of fresh content helps. Done badly, it produces thousands of dead URLs, duplicate listings and wasted crawling, while the permanent pages that should win clients sit weak and neglected.
The candidate side: job pages and Google’s jobs experience
Candidates often see vacancies first in Google’s job listings feature rather than on your site. Eligibility depends on accurate JobPosting structured data. In the audit I check:
- JobPosting markup completeness: title, description, date posted, valid-through date, employment type, hiring organisation and job location (or remote eligibility where the role allows it).
- Salary information: whether pay is included where you publish it, since candidates filter on it.
- Expiry handling: whether filled roles are removed from the page, the markup and the sitemap promptly. Expired jobs still showing as live frustrate candidates and are against Google’s guidelines for job markup.
- Duplicate vacancies: the same role posted under several URLs, in several locations or by several consultants.
- Job description quality: whether descriptions are written for people or pasted from a client spec full of internal jargon.
- Apply flow on mobile: many candidates search on their phone. A long application form that demands a CV upload on step one loses people.
What happens to a vacancy URL after the role is filled
This single decision affects crawl efficiency, user experience and link equity, so I treat it as its own part of the audit. There is no single right answer; it depends on your volume and how roles are reused.
| Approach | When it fits | Risk if misused |
|---|---|---|
| Remove and return a 404 or 410 | High-volume boards where roles rarely repeat | Loses any links the vacancy earned |
| Keep the page, mark as filled, link to similar live roles | Specialist roles with links or search demand of their own | Must remove JobPosting markup, or Google may treat it as a live role |
| Redirect to the relevant sector or location job listing | Recurring role types in the same niche | Mass redirects to an irrelevant page are treated as soft 404s |
I also check how your job board platform handles search and filter URLs. Faceted job search can create near-infinite combinations of location, salary and sector that search engines will try to crawl.
The client side: pages that win hiring briefs
This is where most agencies are weakest. Hiring managers search for things like “IT recruitment agency” plus a city, “executive search for manufacturing” or “temporary warehouse staff supplier”. They want proof you understand their sector and can deliver. The audit reviews:
- Whether each sector you recruit for has a dedicated page that speaks to employers, not just a link to its job listings.
- Whether service types (permanent, contract, temporary, executive search, RPO) have clear pages explaining how each works and what it costs to engage.
- Consultant profiles: the sectors each person covers, their background and how to contact them directly. Clients choose recruiters as much as agencies.
- Market insight content: salary guides and hiring reports can earn links and authority, but only if they are indexable pages rather than gated PDFs.
- Office pages, Google Business Profiles and consistent contact details for each branch.
Common mistakes I flag on recruitment sites
- The job board is on a separate platform or subdomain that the main site barely links to, so authority does not flow between them.
- Sector pages are thin intros with a search widget below, and the widget content is not crawlable.
- Blog posts are written for candidates (“CV tips”) when the business actually needs client enquiries.
- Location pages are created for every town in the jobs feed, with no unique content beyond the listings.
- Candidate registration pages and “submit your CV” forms are blocked from indexing or missing entirely.
- Analytics counts job applications and client enquiries as the same conversion, so nobody can tell which side organic search is helping.
How the audit report is delivered
You get a written report split into candidate-side and client-side findings, with technical issues on the job board written up for your platform provider or developer. Where an issue sits inside a third-party recruitment platform you cannot change, I say so and suggest workarounds. Examples of my reporting style are in my case studies. From Karachi, working remotely, I need read access to Search Console, analytics and ideally a sample of your job feed.
Questions recruitment agency owners ask
Can you audit a site built on a recruitment-specific platform?
Yes. Many agencies use specialist website and job board platforms with fixed templates. I separate what you can change in the admin from what needs a request to the vendor, so you are not chasing impossible fixes.
Our consultants post roles to job boards as well. Does that cause duplicate content?
The same vacancy on external boards and your site is normal. The audit checks that your own version is complete, marked up correctly and posted first or at the same time, so it has a fair chance of being the version Google shows.
Should we publish salary information?
That is a commercial and client-relationship decision, and in some places pay transparency rules apply, which your compliance lead should confirm. From a search point of view, roles that include pay tend to give candidates the information they filter on.
If your job board is busy but client enquiries from search are rare, the audit will show where the balance has slipped. Get in touch for a free audit, naming the sectors where you most want new clients.