How to use SEM / SEO Tools to write job adverts

As a recruiter, one key part of your role is writing advert copy for your own online adverts. There will be many recruiters that simply place the 'actual' job title and 'actual' job spec onto their chosen job board or portal such as Broadbean or Conkers, and leave it at that. They then wonder why they get limited response. I have previously posted about writing creative adverts, but my point is this time to for recruiters to actually consider what the job seeker is searching for.
Search engine marketing (SEM)  and search engine optimisation (SEO) consultants use keyword searching tools such as SEO Book, Wordtracker or AdwordsTools to identify keywords people are using when they search online.  But how many of you are doing the same when you write a job advert? After all you are trying to get the same effect - people looking for jobs using keywords to search.

Before you counter with the, 'haven't got time' argument - think about this for a second. Talent is getting harder to source and the numbers of quality advert responses are slowly declining. So why wouldn't you give yourself every opportunity to get the best candidate?

The thing is, this process is not rocket science and it doesn't have to be too time consuming. All you need to do is to go to one of the sites mentioned above and put in either the Job Title or some of the keywords in the job description.
This will then return the most popular phrases that people are actually searching for on sites like Google and Yahoo. It may well be that you need to change your job title in the advert slightly take advantage of what people are actually searching for. You can apply the same principle for some of the keywords / key skills in the actual advert as well. The advantage for the actual advert is that you can get away with inserting multiple meanings in brackets - Sales Executive (Business Development Manager or Sales Representative or Sales Account Manager). You can of course do this with the Job Title on some of the job boards as well.

So hopefully you can see that spending a few minutes more to write the advert, and using the SEO tools and SEM tools, you will really improve your chances of the best candidates finding your jobs. Go and try it and dare to be different!!