Choosing an SEO agency for a recruitment business is a harder buying decision than most, because recruitment sites behave differently from almost everything else an agency will have worked on. We've set out why separately in why generalist agencies struggle with recruitment websites. This is the procurement side: how to run the selection so you find out before you sign rather than in month four.
Write a One-Page Brief First
Most agency selections go wrong at the start, because the buyer asks for proposals without saying what they want. You then get three documents that cannot be compared, each solving a slightly different problem.
A page is enough. It needs:
Which audience matters most. Candidate volume, client enquiries, or both — and if both, the split. This single line changes the entire strategy, and agencies cannot guess it.
Your desk mix. Permanent, contract, temp, exec search. Contract and temp desks have different urgency and different search behaviour.
Your sectors and geography. The real ones, not aspirational. "Finance recruitment in Manchester and Leeds" is a brief; "professional services nationally" is not.
Your stack. Which ATS or job board software, how jobs reach the website, and who controls the templates. Say this upfront and watch which agencies react.
What success looks like in twelve months. In your terms: placements, client wins, applications per role, reduced job board spend.
Your constraints. Internal development capacity, compliance sign-off, who can approve content.
This brief does more work than any shortlist. It also exposes whether you have internal agreement, which is worth discovering before an agency does.
The Questions That Expose Inexperience
Four questions reveal recruitment experience fast. Ask them on the first call.
"What do you do with our expired jobs?" The single best question. An agency with recruitment experience answers immediately and with a rule — recurring roles keep a refreshed page, genuinely one-off roles are removed and redirected to the relevant sector or location page. An agency without experience says they will look into it. That is honest, and it tells you what you needed to know.
"How will you work with our ATS integration?" Job pages are usually generated by third-party software, so page titles, URLs and markup may not be yours to change. An agency that has not considered this will produce a plan that collapses on contact with the integration. You want to hear questions about which fields are controllable.
"Which pages will still be here in two years?" The durable assets are sector, discipline, location and seniority pages. If the answer is mostly blog content, they have not grasped that your highest-intent pages expire.
"How do we get client enquiries rather than applications?" Candidate traffic is easier to grow and less connected to revenue. An agency that only talks about candidate volume will deliver a traffic chart and flat placements.
Checking What They Claim
Recruitment experience is easy to assert. Three ways to verify.
Ask for a recruitment reference you can speak to. Not a logo, a conversation. Ask that client what the first ninety days were like and what went wrong, because something always does.
Ask to see a sector or location page they built. Then look at it as a candidate and as a hiring manager. Does it still rank? Is it genuinely about that sector, or a template with the noun swapped?
Ask who will do the work. The person in the pitch is frequently not the person on your account. Ask to meet whoever will actually run it, and ask them the expired-jobs question too.
Contract Terms Worth Reading Properly
The commercial terms matter more in this sector than most, because recruitment SEO involves building assets on your site.
Who owns the content and the work? You should, unambiguously, including anything written for your sector pages. Get it in writing.
What is the notice period? Long minimum terms are a warning in a discipline where the first ninety days tell you a lot. A month-to-month or short initial term with a defined review point protects both sides.
What happens to access on exit? Analytics, Search Console, any tooling — yours, with admin rights retained by you throughout. Never let an agency own your Search Console property.
Is reporting defined? Specify what you will receive monthly and which metrics. Agree it now or you will receive whatever is convenient.
Is there a conflict clause? Many agencies work with competing recruiters. That is not automatically a problem, but you should know, and you should decide whether exclusivity in your sector and patch matters to you.
The general warning signs apply here as everywhere — SEO agency red flags covers those, and the broader criteria are in what to look for when choosing an SEO agency.
What Month One Should Look Like
You can tell a great deal from the first month, provided you know what you are looking for.
A good month one is diagnostic and unglamorous. They audit how jobs reach your site and what happens when one closes. They check whether your job pages are indexed at all, and whether job posting structured data is valid. They map which of your sector and location pages exist and how they rank. They establish a baseline and write it down.
A bad month one produces a content calendar and a list of keywords. That is work you could have had from anyone, and it skips the part that determines whether any of it will pay off.
By the end of month one you should have: a dated baseline, a decision on expired-job handling, a list of what the ATS does and does not let you control, and a prioritised plan with someone named against each item.
Judging It Later Without Fooling Yourself
Agree the measurement framework before work starts, because retrofitting one is how both sides end up aggrieved.
Expect technical fixes to show movement first — index coverage, impressions on job pages, structured data validity. Expect sector and location pages to take considerably longer, and the client-side terms hiring managers search to be the slowest and most valuable of all. Our note on how long SEO takes covers the general shape.
The trap specific to recruitment is judging the work on sessions, because candidate traffic is the easiest number to move. If that is your headline metric you will believe it is working before it is, and you will have no way to tell which half of the strategy earned the result. Report applications per role and client enquiries separately, and the picture becomes honest.
If you want a view on how your job feed and site structure interact before you appoint anyone, our SEO services team will look at it — and our recruitment SEO guide covers the work itself if you would rather understand the discipline before you buy it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I choose a recruitment SEO agency?
Write a one-page brief first covering which audience matters, your desk mix, your sectors, your ATS and what success means in twelve months. Then use the first call to test recruitment experience with specific questions, verify the claims with a reference you can speak to, and check the contract terms on ownership, notice and access.
What should a specialist recruitment SEO agency do differently?
Three things: apply a systematic rule to expiring job pages rather than leaving them live or deleting them, build the permanent structure of sector, discipline and location pages as the backbone rather than an afterthought, and work with the constraints of your ATS integration rather than around them.
What is the best question to ask on a first call?
"What do you do with our expired jobs?" An agency with recruitment experience has an immediate, rule-based answer. One without will offer to look into it — which is honest, and tells you what you need to know about their experience.
What contract terms matter most for recruitment SEO?
Clear ownership of content and work, a short initial term with a defined review point, retained admin access to your own analytics and Search Console, defined monthly reporting, and disclosure of whether they also work with competing recruiters in your sector and patch.
How do I know if recruitment SEO is working?
Separate candidate and client metrics, because candidate sessions are the easiest thing to grow and the least connected to revenue. Track applications per role on one side and client enquiries on the other, against a baseline agreed in writing before the work started.