Here’s another way to attract great job candidates: help them find your job posting more easily. How?

Keywords and concise job descriptions. There are over 100 million job-related searches being conducted each month on Google alone. You need to make sure your job postings can be found among the multitudes.

To ensure your job description or posting rises to the top of search engine results, you’ll need to select the right keyword phrases.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What terms might a job seeker search for in order to find a job like yours?
• Which of those, and other terms, are relevant to your job description?

The phrases you use in your job posting should be specific, not general. ‘Financial services sales job’ is better than ‘sales job’ because it’s more specific.

Other types of keyword phrases to use:

• Company/branded/product terms
• Location-specific terms: Many seekers search on location + job title (e.g., “product manager Boston.”)
• Industry-specific terms: Tools, software or acronyms that are important to the job and your business
• Alternative job titles: Are there alternative job titles that people may use to describe the same job? (e.g., “online marketing manager or Internet marketing manager.”)
• Abbreviations: Are there abbreviations for the job title? (e.g., Registered Nurse = RN)

Once you’ve accumulated a list of targeted keyword phrases, select the most popular and relevant to use in the creation of your job listing.

Here are some additional tips to help you integrate your related keyword phrases:

• Use bullet points to make the description easy to read
• The length of the job description should be at least 150 words (search engines like text!) but not too long (seekers don’t like long descriptions.)
• Use brand, industry, and occupation-specific phrases
• Avoid using internal company jargon or abbreviations that will confuse the reader

Titles Are Important, Too

The job title is important to your job listing for three reasons:

1. It appears in the body as text. Search engines use it to understand what keyword phrases your job listing is relevant on.
2. It appears in the browser <title> tag. Search engines weigh the job title heavily when determining what keyword phrases your job listing is relevant on.
3. The browser <title> tag also appears as the clickable hypertext in search engine results.

Your job title should be relevant so that seekers click on your job listing over others.

Here are some guidelines to help you pick your job titles:

• Choose a simple, concise title that job seekers actually search on, not a creative hook. ‘Sales Star Needed!’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Sales Representative.’ And be specific, e.g.: ‘Pharmaceutical Sales Representative’.
• Indicate the career level of the job in the title if possible. ‘Online Media’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Director of Online Media’.
• If a skill is essential to the job then be sure to include it, such as, ‘Customer Support Representative – Spanish Speaking’ rather than just ‘Customer Support Representative.’
• Don’t abbreviate job titles. ‘Sr. VP’ is not an effective job title. Spell out ‘Senior Vice President’.