6 SEO Basics for Your Employer Brand

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a digital strategy that helps you show up in search results. 

It’s a powerful tool for employer brand awareness, recruiting, reputation management, and candidate funnel–filling. There are few basics you should work on as you start your employer brand SEO strategy, or work to keep a good thing going. 

Why SEO for employer branding specifically?

The main goal of employer brand SEO is to occupy as much real estate on a search engine results page (SERP) with accurate and positive information about your company. 

There will inevitably be a mixture of information about your customer-facing brand and your candidate-facing brand, so this should be a collaboration between marketing and employer branding. Don’t be afraid of each other, work together—SEO benefits both teams.

1. Set up your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)

Do this first. It’s free and quick and is the basis of your search engine presence.

Your Google Business Profile comprises the basic data that shows up on the right-hand side of a Google search results page. It includes the company name, contact information, business location (usually the headquarters, though sometimes the location closest to the searcher, depending on the type of business), photos that the company as well as reviewers upload, answers to FAQs, and company reviews, some by customers, some by employees or even job candidates.

Here’s the Google Business Profile for corporate real estate firm CoStar:

The one part of your business profile you won’t be able to control is the reviews left by customers and employees/candidates. It’s up to you to provide a good experience and then encourage them to leave a review. 

2. Build a dedicated careers page

This is one of the most basic elements of establishing an employer brand—even if you don’t hire that much, here’s why—and it’s another opportunity to occupy space on the SERP.

The second organic result on the SERP for the term “costar” includes a direct link to their careers page. This page also shows up in the top spot for the query “costar careers.”

Need help getting started? Here are 6 things your careers page should accomplish.

3. Create accounts on job boards and employer review sites

Another way to take up valuable real estate on page one of the SERPs is to set up profiles on job boards and employer review sites. 

You do not have to have open jobs to make this worth your time. Fill out the basic profile information, add photos and videos, and request that employees leave reviews. Simply having a polished, completed profile will lend your employer brand some life and legitimacy.

This is one of the results for the query “costar careers.”

Don’t forget to point your employees to Google reviews as well, so you can keep building out that Google Business Profile.

4. Answer Google FAQs on your site

Google your company name and scroll down just a smidge. There will likely be an accordion menu of FAQs about your brand. Use these questions to create content on your site. Here are a few of CoStar’s.

Now that you know what Google users want to know about your business, you can answer it for them on your website. You can do this anywhere, like on your “about us” page or on a company blog. 

Looks like CoStar even has an FAQs section on their site. Not a bad idea.

Note that the more social media accounts you create, the more you’ll need to manage, so we get it if you don’t want to have a presence everywhere. For most brands, it isn’t necessary to be omnipresent on social, but as an employer, you should absolutely be on LinkedIn, even if you’re not currently hiring. 

5. Start a blog

Speaking of blogs…we love an employer blog. It’s the perfect way to show job seekers how you invest in the careers and experience of your staff, and an active blog can show up as a unique search result.

If you don’t have the resources to create a blog dedicated only to your employer activities, incorporate regular posts about your employees and their accomplishments into your corporate blog. Think employee profiles and hiring announcements, new projects and patents, HR initiatives, and changes to company policies that benefit employees, like when Coinbase used its blog to announce company-wide “recharge” weeks.

6. Create (and maintain) at least one social media account

Companies should be using social media to establish and grow their employer brand. On CoStar’s SERP, one of the results is their LinkedIn page.

Some brands are so active that they earn a rich result on page one, where searchers can see right into their feeds. Here’s Carmex’s colorful Twitter feed:

Need an example? Thinx has a really strong LinkedIn page.

It’s definitely a good idea to invest in social media for your employer brand, but it’s not wise to let your accounts atrophy (that looks worse than not having them at all), so no matter where you chose to establish a presence, make a plan to keep it alive.

Now that you understand the basics, it’s time to move on up to…

3 intermediate SEO strategies you can use right now for your employer brand

1. See if you can drum up some good press 

Employer branding 2.0 includes PR. Grabbing good press for your brand will feed your employer identity. For example, in April, Airbnb announced an expansive work-from-home policy that was widely covered.

But this goes the other way too: Better.com fired a healthy portion of its staff via Zoom right before Christmas in 2021 and pretty much torched its employer brand.

You don’t have to be as well-known as Airbnb to drum up positive press. Consider promoting to your local media things like:

• New office locations and hiring pushes

• Real estate expansion

• New funding and cash infusions

• Collaborations with schools and local nonprofits

• Training programs

• New, forward-thinking company policies 

If you need an extra push, pitch to the media along with a business collaborator or partner. And always announce your company policies on LinkedIn (and other social platforms), where journalists poke around for story ideas.

Be careful to not come off as too horn-tooting. A good PR partner can help you strategically get press exposure in a way that feels balanced and fair. 

The best way to prevent bad employer brand press? Look deep within yourself. 

2. Use paid search to bid on your company name 

You can occupy the top spot on Google with paid search ads. By bidding on your brand name and close variations, you can almost certainly control exactly what appears at the very top of a SERP. Some companies actually bid on the names of their competitors to grab business and job candidates, so be sure to keep an eye on your competition.

You can also bid on terms like “healthcare careers” or “tech jobs near me” to capture active job seekers.

3. Have an SEO professional do a site audit

Having an SEO professional do a full site audit can be expensive, but it can produce a comprehensive list of actions you should take to fully optimize your website.

This list might include ways to improve your site schema, restructure your site navigation and URLs, and expand internal linking, plus opportunities for site speed improvements and general site optimization.

A thorough audit can also uncover keywords you can use to optimize your site, fill your candidate (and customer) funnels, and create blog and social media content.

For example, if one FAQ about your company is Who is the CEO of Granny Smith Inc.? You can create a section on your “about us” page that includes the line: Johnny Appleseed is the CEO of Granny Smith Inc., and you might get to occupy that prime space on the Google FAQs dropdown. 

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance writer based in Richmond, VA, who writes about workplace culture and policies, hiring, DEI, employer branding, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others, and has been syndicated by MSN and The Motley Fool.

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