Finding keywords for your site

Creating keywords for your site is by no means an easy task. Understanding exactly what you think candidates and clients search for is about putting yourself in the mind of the user. There are tools to help you with this but there offer no guarantees. I have put together a short list of ways to go about creating keywords for your website.

Firstly creating keywords is a never ending task and should be reviewed as often as possible, depending on the goals and results you require.

Don’t just use general keywords

It is important that you still use the main keywords that people will search for as search engines will still recognise them. However these keywords are extremely competitive, using phrases of about 2 to 4 words are more useful then say competing for the word “furniture”. By using “art deco furniture” you are aiming to attract more specific users searching for those particular words. The trick is to keep your keywords relevant and popular enough that users will search for them but not too popular that no one searches for them at all(I never said doing this was going to be easy).

Checking on competitors sites

Checking your competitor’s sites and seeing what terms they are using and whether they are getting found in search engines is very important. Maybe you are not using those keywords in your site. This type of research is a long process but it can improve traffic to your site. If you can find keywords that your competitors are not using, you might be able to rank higher with less competition. One way to do this is if you type in Google “allintitle: keyword”. This will bring up all the sites that have chosen to use that keyword/s in the title of their website.

Use the tools that are available on the internet

Google have given webmasters many tools that allow them to refine their SEO to help them improve rankings. All of these tools are free and are very easy to use. Google have a service called Keyword Tool where you can analyse your website and it gives you keywords which are calculated from the content of your site. It will not guarantee if you use these keywords you will get more traffic to your site but it is worth having a go and seeing if there are any words or phrases you have not thought about. There are a couple of others such as Wordtracker and Wordze but these are not free services but it is worth checking out.

We know keywords are important but we must remember it is not the only way in which SEO can be improved. There are many other ways to do this but just remember to keep it ethical because after all this work, the last thing you want is to be banned from search engines altogether.

Jobshout is fully equipped to help with getting your site optimised using keywords and other various ways. To find out more click on Jobshout.

EU Agency Workers Directive

The next major step in this protracted process has now been reached. Here is what the REC has to say about it:

An agreement on the EU Agency Workers Directive was reached late last night by EU Employment Ministers in Luxembourg. This decision means that the Directive, which gives temps the right to the same pay as an equivalent permanent worker, could come into force in the UK by April 2010.

Commenting on the agreement, REC Chief Executive Kevin Green says: “Whilst yesterday’s agreement is significant, there is still a substantial amount of detail which needs to be decided upon. Although new regulations are unlikely to come into force until 2010, the next few months will be crucial in influencing the detail of what equal treatment provisions in the UK will look like.”

The text agreed yesterday in Luxembourg confirmed that there will be some level of flexibility in terms of how the new EU regulations will apply in the UK. This has been a key element of the REC’s campaign and, for example, means that equal treatment will only apply after 12 weeks of an assignment rather than from day one. As discussed at last week’s REC Agency Summit, one of the key issues is to ensure that the scope of equal treatment provisions is tightly defined and does not cover a full range of employee benefits and occupational pensions. The initial feedback from yesterday’s meeting in Luxembourg indicates that we could have a positive outcome on this issue, as well as on the definition of who constitutes a ‘comparable permanent employee’. One of the other positives is the focus on finding alternative dispute resolutions to limit the number of employment tribunals that could result.

There is still plenty of scope for disaster here: the devil as always will be in the detail. REC's press release actually has more teeth than their statement above, sent out to member, and deals with the subject pretty well.

It's an ill wind...

Good news for temp agencies - according to a survey conducted by the REC one in four employers expects to increase their use of temps, mainly because of economic instability. It comes at a time when good news for recruiters is in rather short supply - though it won't be such good news if your main business is perms, which presumably is going to shrink as a result.

Blogshout

Here's my selection of what's interesting in the recruitment blogosphere:

1. Perriam & Everitt's survey of the industry is not a pretty picture.
2. Broadbean's Dan McGuire video interview on how to write good job adverts and the best time of the week to post jobs.
3. Recruitment 2.0 on the impact of fuel costs
4. Sirona says there are ten things that employers have to understand
5. Now here's an idea to bring a smile to your face, courtesy of Louise's blog
6. Enhance Media say that now you can bid for your competitors names on Google Adwords.
7. OMG, Gordon's using Twitter now. Why can't he just stick to phoning voters at 6am? The heart sinks…