Driving organic traffic through SEO optimizations such as keyword-optimized content, category landing pages, and backlinks is a fundamental strategy for job boards. But how can you ensure that your platform is seen as a trusted resource, by job seekers, employers, and by Google? In this blog post, we will dive into the concept of EEAT, its relevance to job board SEO, and provide 5 actionable steps to implement it to ensure your job board maintains a good reputation.
What is EEAT?
EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are key criteria that Google uses to assess the quality of content on websites. While the acronym has gained traction in recent years, the actual principles behind it have always been essential for creating valuable content that resonates with your users—and ranks high in search results.
The framework is useful because it puts the intangible goal of having a "good reputation" into action to noticeably improve your SEO:
- Experience points to the practical knowledge or skills gained by direct involvement in the particular field your page is about. Ideally, you have experience in the topic at hand, and your content shows this, directly or indirectly.
For your job board, this means your content should be created by someone that has first-hand insights into your niche's job market or own experiences to share. - Expertise refers to the level of knowledge or skill demonstrated in your content. You can show your expertise by diving deep into specific topics or by referencing reputable sources.
For your job board, this could mean providing industry-specific insights and citing industry-leading publications. - Authoritativeness indicates how recognized and credible your site is in your niche. Backlinks from high authority sites play a role here but so does consistently published content. In concrete terms, this means that you want links to your job board from sites in your niche that have a higher domain authority that your own site. You can check any site's “authority” with this free tool.
- Trustworthiness encompasses the overall reliability of your site. This includes having a secure website (HTTPS), clear contact information, and positive user reviews.
Sounds complicated? Simply put: your goal with following the EEAT approach should be to create valuable, trustworthy, and accurate content for your visitors. Hence, this framework will not only improve your search engine rankings but the valuable content published on your site can also help build a loyal user base for your job board.
How EEAT applies to job board SEO
Just like most websites, job board sites heavily rely on content, whether it's job listings, industry-related resources or information to help your job seekers and employers find success.
Applying EEAT to your job board's content will directly influence your site's visibility on search engine result pages and its user engagement, for instance by increasing the number of returning visitors.
Here are some examples on how each component plays a role for your job board:
- Experience can be demonstrated by sharing real-world experiences within your niche, but also through user-generated content such as reviews and testimonials from both job seekers and employers. Search engines will favor job boards that showcase genuine user experiences, as this reflects authenticity and relevance.
- Expertise is essential for establishing credibility in the your sector. Proving your expertise could mean creating content that demonstrates a deep understanding of industry trends, recruitment best practices, and specific job roles. As a job board, you should prioritize publishing articles that provide valuable insights into hiring processes, industry standards, and career advice tailored to professions in your niche, always making sure to cite credible sources. By doing so, you not only position your job board as an authority on employment matters but also improve your chances of ranking higher in search engine results.
- Authoritativeness is built through recognition within the industry and by forming partnerships with reputable organizations or influential people in your industry. This could mean featuring guest posts or obtaining endorsements from industry leaders. Acquiring backlinks from respected websites in your niche can also enhance your site's authority. A job board that is frequently cited as a resource by major publications or industry blogs will inherently gain more trust from both users and search engines.
- Trustworthiness is especially important for job boards because users are sharing personal information in their applications. Simple elements such as a professional design, clear privacy policies, and secure data handling practices (like HTTPS) will prove trustworthiness to search engines. User reviews on the other hand can help build trust directly among your visitors.
Imagine you are running a job board for the content marketing industry. Niche articles written by content marketing leaders with several years of experience, salary databases outlining the methodology with which the data was sourced or interview advice from companies currently hiring in the industry could all demonstrate EEAT.
Some other, simpler ways to prove EEAT could be actively explaining your content marketing expertise in your niche with a short bio or via a link to your LinkedIn profile.
The important denominator here is that your readers, namely job seekers and employers but also Google, respect and trust the content you put out.
5 tactics to apply EEAT to your job board and improve SEO
How do you get started with EEAT? Here are some key tactics to implement on your job board:
1. Create high-quality blog posts
Producing valuable articles that address common pain points for job seekers and employers in your industry is an important basis for SEO. Basic keyword research and tools like Google Trends or AnswerThePublic can help you to identify trending topics and common search queries in your niche to write about.
A great way to showcase your site's experience and expertise is through guest posts. Bonus: You might also win a backlink from their site.
Invite industry experts, recruiters, or successful job seekers to contribute a blog posts in exchange for a cross-reference to the guest's website or publication. You can experiment with different formats, such as an interview/question based article or a simple guest blogpost written by an career expert in your industry.
2. Leverage backlinks from high authority sites
Backlinks are simply links from other pages pointing to your job board. Backlinks from pages with a high domain rating (i.e. sites that Google classifies as "reputable") help prove the authority and trustworthiness of your own site. It's practically like an endorsement.
Apart from creating sharable content like infographics or industry reports that other sites might organically share, you can get proactive to build backlinks: establish relationships with industry influencers or get your job board listed as a resource on industry directories.
One great place for your job board to be featured could be university career resource sites. You might not only get a backlink to your job board, but can also get some of your industry blogposts on the site.
SEO tools like Ahrefs or Moz can also help identify potential sites for backlink opportunities which you can manually contact with a proposition.
3. Showcase social proof
Highlight success stories from employers who found great candidates through your platform or job seekers who landed their dream jobs. Since this information might not always be readily available to you as a job board owner, you need to set up a feedback loop to get these important insights. This could be a simple email or a detailed survey that you periodically send to employer and job seeker profiles.
If you know about an especially prominent role that was filled with the help of your job board, you might even create a case study around this success.
For example, this cycling job board has facilitated the hiring of pivotal positions such as a marketing hire to the biggest bicycle media site in the world, and showcases respective quotes from employers in the industry.
4. Optimize your website's technical performance
Ensure that your website is intuitive to use, mobile-friendly, and has fast loading times. Engagement metrics such as low bounce rates or high average session durations are indicators for search engines that your site is valuable to your audience. So build your site accordingly to prove your trustworthiness.
5. Develop an “About” page
An "About" page on your job board can prove your site's expertise and the founder's experience in the niche by showcasing the qualifications and roles of yourself or your team members. This page should be crafted to illustrate your motivations for starting the job board and your experience in the job board's industry, establishing your unique expertise in the field.
For example, if you are a former recruiter or HR professional with years of experience, mentioning your specific roles and qualifications can enhance the perception of your site as a credible source for both job seekers and employers. This personal touch helps users feel more confident in using your platform.
How to know it's working
To understand the effectiveness of implementing these EEAT principles on your job board, monitor metrics such as:
- Organic traffic growth
- Domain authority
- User engagement metrics, such as bounce rate and average session duration
- Conversion rates of website visitors to profile signup or application
Incorporating EEAT into your job board's SEO strategy can provide a helpful guideline to optimize your job board's SEO, improve your site's reputability, and drive more qualified traffic to your job board. It's especially important for new job boards to quickly build authority in their niche.