5 Key Lessons from Nick LeRoy on Growing SEOjobs.com to 150K Users

Introduction

Building a successful job board isn’t just about posting jobs. It’s about branding, SEO, and delivering real value to your audience. Nick LeRoy, an SEO consultant and the founder of SEOjobs.com, has mastered this process, growing his niche job board to over 150,000 users in 2024.

In our latest video for the JBoard YouTube Channel, Nick shares how he scaled SEOjobs.com, why premium domains matter, and how job board owners can create a long-term strategy for growth.

Watch the full interview here:

5 Key Lessons from Nick LeRoy

1. A Premium Domain Gives You a Competitive Edge

Nick attributes a huge part of SEOjobs.com’s success to having an intuitive, easy-to-remember premium domain. Unlike complicated names or alternative TLDs, a clean .com domain helps build credibility and increases direct traffic.

2. SEO Alone Won’t Make Your Job Board a Success

While Nick is an SEO expert, he emphasizes that brand awareness and direct traffic play a bigger role than traditional search rankings. Job board owners need to focus on community engagement, industry visibility, and word-of-mouth marketing.

3. Provide More Than Just Job Listings

Job seekers don’t just need job posts—they need resources to help them land roles. Nick created career guides, salary data, and an AI-powered interview simulator to make SEOjobs.com more than just a job board. This keeps users coming back and strengthens his brand.

4. Organic Growth Takes Time—But It Works

SEOjobs.com grew to 150,000+ users with minimal paid advertising. By consistently engaging in industry discussions, building valuable content, and leveraging direct traffic, Nick was able to scale his site organically.

5. Employer Acquisition is About Relationships, Not Just Traffic

Getting job seekers is one thing—attracting paying employers is another challenge. Nick uses referrals, personal outreach, and industry interviews to bring employers on board. His biggest insight? Employers prefer niche job boards because they get fewer, but more qualified applicants.

Episode Transcript

Martyn Redstone  0:01  

Martin, welcome to the J board YouTube channel, the go to resource for job board builders and industry innovators. I'm Martyn Redstone, and today I'm joined by a guest who's mastered the art of combining SEO expertise with job board success. Nick. Leroy. Nick is a renowned SEO consultant and the founder of SEO jobs.com it's a boutique job board connecting SEO professionals with top employers now with a deep background in technical SEO editorial strategy and website migrations. Nick is also the author of the popular SEO for lunch newsletter where he shares actionable tips and insights for digital marketers and website owners alike. In this episode, we're going to unpack Nick's journey into the world of job boards, how he leveraged his SEO expertise to build and scale SEO jobs.com and his thoughts on the role of search optimization in driving job board growth. If you're looking for practical advice to grow your job board or improve your SEO strategy, this conversation is going to be packed with some real golden nuggets. Let's dive in. Nick, welcome to the show. Thank

Nick LeRoy  1:12  

you so much, and I'm really excited for our conversation today. Oh,

Martyn Redstone  1:16  

me too. Super excited. So so let's jump into it. Then, Nick, why don't you share a bit about your professional background outside of the stuff that I just mentioned in the intro, and what led you to, I say, start your job board, but it was an acquisition

Nick LeRoy  1:33  

was, yeah, so a quick you know, background on me, so I've been doing SEO for about 15 years now, yeah, I always kind of joke that I was a recovering agency SEO because I had done agency SEO roles for about 10 years, and then this will become relevant later. But I actually lost my job. I got fired once, and then I was actually let go in another agency role due to COVID 19, and at that point I that's when I decided to go freelance full time. So I've been doing that for about five years now. And the reason that I mentioned, you know, those unfortunate job situations is I'm very aware of what it takes and what opportunities exist for SEO is looking for jobs. And with that said, I think most of us, if there's any SEOs listening, we know that if you go to LinkedIn, or indeed, you type in just seo into the search bar, the first thing we always see is some like developer role where there's a bullet at the very bottom. That's like, if you know SEO, that's a bonus, and it's very frustrating. So I had an opportunity, and as you and I had talked offline, you know, Peter askew was the original owner of SEO jobs.com he put it together, and he originally reached out to me to just sponsor the SEO for lunch newsletter. He's like, Hey, I just want to get some visibility to the site. And we did it for a couple weeks. And then he's like, Hey, I feel like I really need a face behind this site. He's like, I do SEO, but I don't consider myself an SEO he's like, so I really would love to get somebody who's just closer to the industry and just deeper. And so I bought in for 50% of the site. Fast forward another year, Peter actually had an opportunity to buy one of his projects back that he kind of regretted selling, so he gave me the opportunity to buy the whole thing. You know, he's like, again, he's like, I love working with you, but this is not my passion project. I need to work on this. So we agreed to a price, and I bought them out. And that brings me to today. But like I said, the the big thing is, you know, and I tell people, because I try not to be shy, it's like, I've been fired and I've been let go. And I know everybody's first instinct is, where are those job boards? And unfortunately or fortunately, if you look at it from my side, my side of things, the big job boards just don't do a good job for SEO professionals. And so SEO jobs.com

Martyn Redstone  4:30  

Fantastic. What a, what a brilliant backstory. You know, it seems to be quite a, quite a theme of some of the conversations that I've been having where people find themselves, for whatever reason, out of work and want to start something in their niche, to kind of almost give back to people as they've found themselves in that same challenge as well. And what a brilliant kind of story around how you came to take on the site, take on the job board after a. I'm meeting Peter and working with him as well. So since you've been involved in SEO jobs.com what's been some of the biggest successes that you've achieved with that job board? We're talking numbers, people, anything that you want to go for.

Nick LeRoy  5:21  

So one thing that was exciting, I was just looking at analytics, and in 2024 I hit over 150,000 users in the in the year. So that was just exciting, because this has always been a passion project. But as I had mentioned, I'm a consultant. That's what pays my, you know, bills, day to day. And SEO jobs has always just kind of been passive or an organic, you know, play, pardon the pun. So being able to hit 150 was a big like, wake up. Of like, this really is an opportunity. So I'm excited in 2025, and beyond, to like, put more like intentionality into it. So I would say that just that validation of the industry and the need was huge. But one of the other things that I was not anticipating at all was there's just a lot of people that send me notes just thanking me for the resource existing, because they have that exact same experience that I had, which was going to the big job boards, being one of 800 people that you're applying for it, you may or may not be qualified. And again, I'm kind of long answer short here, I get that from the job posters too. I'm getting people are like, This is amazing. I love coming to your site because it's like, I'll post a job, and I'll get 30 people to apply, and 90% of them are qualified. I don't have to weed through, you know, 3000 applicants, like I do on LinkedIn,

Martyn Redstone  7:01  

and that right there is the benefit to an employer of a niche job board, because you know that pretty much every applicant that comes through that is is relevant to that niche and to that role. So so that validation is fantastic. And also, you know, the the validation the numbers, is superb as well. But it's wonderful to get that, you know, that kind of written feedback, and that that, that you know, that lovely kind of personal feedback from your users, because ultimately, it's life changing. You know, work and people appreciate it. People really do. So what I love about what you just said is that, you know, if we take kind of both answers, both the last two answers, this has very much been a very passive, you know, kind of passion project, rather than something that you've intentionally worked on, because most of your your your income comes from your consulting work rather than your job board, but you've been able to passively grow to that number of users, I'd love to focus in on that a little bit more through this conversation, and really understand the strategies that you have put in place, whether intentional or not, that have driven that kind of that kind of user Numbers. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, why don't you share some of your secrets behind that?

Nick LeRoy  8:25  

Yeah, I think the secret is not gonna be sexy, because it's all, honestly, it's about building a brand. And you're gonna think this is kind of funny, given that it's the SEO running an SEO job website, you'd think SEO would be, you know, the big, you know, the gasoline behind the fire. And the reality is, my direct traffic from owning the premium domain, SEO jobs.com, makes up about 50% of all my traffic. And now I sound like a mini Peter. Ask you, you know, he's a big champion of the exact match domains. I love it as well, but when I am marketing, even passively, all I'm doing is trying to get SEO jobs awareness, meaning people very rarely see the site, and it's like I'm actively choosing not to use it. My biggest problem is they just don't know that it exists. So what I do all the time is just trying to have relevant conversations, you know, on social media. I am very deep within the SEO industry, you know. So it's just get the name out there, so it's not, you know, do these five things on page so you can rank number one. Because, as people know, and people are probably thinking about this as they're watching this episode, Google has kind of ruined SEO for job boards, because we all know, as soon as you type in, you know, that geography and profession, there's that big widget on the very top, and that's Google, you know, serving, you know. Know, job listings directly. Now, there's ways to get included into that, but organic search is a small percentage of my total traffic. And again, it's funny, because as an SEO creating an SEO Jobs website, you think that'd be the backbone. But what I like is, in the SEO world, there's a lot of turmoil of like, what does chat, GPT, these llms and, you know, social media, tick tock, like, you know. And these are all things that you know other people own and can take away, building a brand and having this Premium SEO jobs.com Creating a Newsletter, building my own audience, like I own that, and that's amazing, and that is truly where I see the biggest opportunity for growth moving forward.

Martyn Redstone  10:51  

So, so, and that's really fascinating. So, so if I could sum that up, it's, you know, premium domain. So, so absolutely have the right domain, rather than a random name for a job board. If you're in a niche, get involved in wherever that niche is, whether it be, you know, online forums, networking events, etc, and just get your your brand in front of as many people using those kind of channels. Is that? Is that a good summary of how

Nick LeRoy  11:22  

summarize that perfectly, perfect. It's really,

Martyn Redstone  11:25  

really interesting, because you're right, you know, I think that, you know, inviting you on, onto the show I was, I was expecting the conversation to turn down the route of you, how do we master SEO from a job board perspective? And you're right, you know, we all know in the job board industry that the SEO isn't what it used to be because of Google. Are there any things that people still need to think about when it comes to SEO? You mentioned about getting onto Google for jobs, and we know that most kind of job boards, you know, hopefully you're indexing on Google for jobs anyway, whether it be using something built in, or something you've built on a x mail feed, or what have you. Is there anything that people could be thinking about from an SEO perspective that might just get them to the first non Google for jobs kind of search result? Yeah,

Nick LeRoy  12:14  

so there's two things that I'll share. One, people are not always aware that there is what's called a job API indexer. And what that means is only for jobs and certain news elements can you tell Google implicitly when a page went live and when it expired. And this is a direct API into Google. It nearly always gets you instantly indexed, which anybody who's familiar with SEO knows that's one of the biggest hurdles. So it's a big benefit that we have, and Google, you know, relies on us to actually do that. So using these this API and being able to push your jobs in and out of the search results is going to help you get listed in that widget, you know, as well as making sure that you have your schema markup in it. So that's one big opportunity. I would say, if you're not using the Google indexing API, make sure you look at that like that can be a big unlock for organic traffic, you know, for people that aren't using it. The other thing that I see is a lot of people love the idea of a job board, kind of being passive, meaning you go there, it's strictly the jobs, and that's it, you know, I want to collect the check, I want to post, but then you're kind of limited to, again, that brand or maybe that potential keyword of, you know, SEO jobs right now, this is where people don't like it because it takes time and money, but creating these additional resources, you know. And what I mean by resources is like, for example, I've created, like, a career guide, so that there are many different SEO titles, but like, what is a description of it, you know? What is an average salary, you know? And I've even included, you know, what a job description that people are actually using within the site, so that other employers can go in and use it as a template. And another example is just recently, again, being an SEO I'm looking at Google all the time, but I know people are searching for SEO interview questions, and you can replace SEO with any industry people are searching for that. But what I saw was, again, in the SEO space is, you know, people write 30 SEO questions 50, and what they're doing to one up each other is just adding to the list. So what I did is, literally, last week, I launched, it's an SEO interview simulator. So I use the AI to create a. An actual simulation of it's like a mock interview. So now my goal, and what I fully anticipate, is that I'm going to be able to rank at the top of Google when people are searching for SEO interview questions. Because I'm not just trying to do the bare minimum to rank. I'm changing the perception and the value that users are going to get, you know, for that query. So that takes time and money and resources, but those are the big opportunities for capturing, you know, SEO listings, but also building your brand as a whole and credibility.

Martyn Redstone  15:38  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. So, so, you know, we've got two things there. We've got, you know, the the Google indexing API, which you absolutely need, you know, and, you know, small plug for J board, you know, we do have that kind of built into the system. Have to do that. Otherwise, one contract obliged to do that, but, but ultimately, you need to make sure that you're getting your jobs indexed onto Google, because that's where you know people. People start their job search, usually on somewhere like Google. They'll type in SEO jobs in wherever they are, and the Google widget will come up first. You need to get your jobs indexed in there. But if you want to make a difference elsewhere, it's resource, it's content that's all aligned with your keywords and your your user kind of search intentions and what have you that where they want to come to your site because they want to find out, things like interview questions, salary guides, all those kind of things that are peripheral to the actual jobs, But but help from a from an indexing perspective,

Nick LeRoy  16:42  

absolutely. Well, it's like, you gotta talk about it as kind of like a user journey. It's like, once you apply for a job, what's going to be the next step of that? I want to prepare for the job. You know, I also have, like, a salary negotiation post that, you know, allows you to get insights. You and now I've gone through the interview. I aced it, I got a job offer, but maybe it's not what I was hoping for it. So how are you providing value at every step in the job process?

Martyn Redstone  17:13  

Love it. That's great, you know, I think that's such a great takeaway is thinking about that user journey. You know, yes, it's transactional. They're coming to find a job and apply for a job, but what else can you give them after that? You know? And I think that's, that's fantastic. That's a great takeaway to to really, really focus in on there. So we've talked about growing the board. We've talked about, you know, some of the successes, getting the brand out there, building the users, getting the wonderful feedback. Love to understand what challenges you've come up against, and what lessons you've learned from those challenges. Can you think of like something that's frustrated you over the last few years that you've been involved?

Nick LeRoy  17:58  

Yeah. So I love this question, because SEO jobs.com and again, I say, despite being called SEO jobs, is like the first big project I've had where SEO is such a small part of it. So what I have found interesting, there's probably two big takeaways. One, brand building is hard. I mean, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm in all these groups, and everyone knows I'm like the SEO jobs guy, but just getting your name out like that is so hard, and you don't have an infinite dollars for paid search and all that. So it just feels like every single day you're kind of screaming into the void. And if you can get one or two extra people to be aware of, it adds up. But that was a lot harder than I thought. The other thing that I did not anticipate is in the SEO industry right now, there's a lot of turmoil, and what I mean by that is with AI and the low barrier of entry to become an SEO of any level, and then, unfortunately, companies getting scammed. There is a lot of pullback right now in budget. So a lot more SEOs right now are actually losing their jobs than there are companies looking to hire. And obviously, in that situation where there aren't nearly as many jobs being posted. It's great for the site getting traffic, because all the people are coming to the site, I get to build Goodwill for them, but I don't make money from people coming to my site. I make money when people are posting a job, so when the market or industry is down, that has an impact in just the monetary performance of the site,

Martyn Redstone  19:43  

I get that. I get that totally and actually, that's quite an interesting conversation. Point, really, is that, you know, when we think about job boards, there are, there are two sided marketplace. There's, you know, the job seekers, and then there's the employers. And a lot of. Time it's, you know, it's easier to capture job seeker traffic, like you said, you know, whether it be, you know, good kind of a good name, or, you know, you know, being involved in industry forums and what have you how are you capturing employer traffic? How are you getting people to your job board and and getting them to pay to post a job posting there?

Nick LeRoy  20:24  

Yeah, so I think that's one of the things that I still haven't perfected, but I believe it's a little bit circular in the sense of because it doesn't cost money for the people seeking the jobs. Once they're employed, and then they know their team is looking to expand, then they become an advocate for you. And I get a lot, especially on the agency side, like agencies use my site more than in house. But a lot of it is, you know, hey, somebody had joined our team previously from your site, and they were raving about it, so we're going to give it a shot. And then again, a lot of it, too, is like, I have an interview series, and I try to go out and interview agency owners, because everybody likes to talk about themselves. So if you can put a spotlight on them, then it's just another opportunity, even on one by one basis, getting them aware that the site exists, and sometimes they'll come back and post a job, or I may offer them a free job listing in exchange for their time doing an interview. So it's not super scalable, but that is the process that I've been doing today.

Martyn Redstone  21:35  

Interesting. So you're really kind of leaning in on referrals, ultimately, you know, through, through providing a good experience and referrals, and then actually going direct to people who could potentially be customers and and interviewing them, I love that. That's great, brilliant, not what we're doing here, but great, perfect. Now, that's really, really interesting. So a lot of our a lot of our audience are kind of, you know, in the real early stages of of building and growing their job boards. If you could kind of go back in time to when you first started getting involved and think about some really good advice that you could have done with, you know, what's the the top advice that you give to somebody that that's just starting out in their job board journey?

Nick LeRoy  22:20  

Yeah, I think it really goes back to probably what the theme is here, and it should be for everybody, regardless of your industry, is like, give, give, give, give. I believe that if you are providing the maximum amount of value to the job seeker, it's gonna come full circle. And like I said, that can be everything from just making your site really easy to use, it can be all the supporting content to give them through that journey. But I believe that if you focus on that, then it will come full circle, because those people will then champion your brand and that, forget about even a job board like that's how you build a good business. When you have people that champion your brand, you win.

Martyn Redstone  23:09  

I like that. I really like that. It's almost calmer, isn't it? You know, you treat people well, and it will come back to to pay you off several times over.

Nick LeRoy  23:19  

Exactly. The only other thing I'll add, too, and this is just the SEO in me, is be careful with those like TLDs. Everybody wants to do SEO jobs.io or.co or SEO dash jobs. And one thing that I'm a big fan of is I just call it the like speaking out loud test. You know, if we're meeting in a bar and you're like, I need an SEO job, where should I go if I have to tell you, Okay, it's SEO underscore, jobs, star.io, like, that's not, that's not brandable. So I get a lot of messages from people that are like, should I be the best seo jobs today.com or should I just be, you know, whatever brand that you are building. So I think that's just one other thing to think about. And if you go the premium domain route like I did, you don't have to really think about it too much. Yeah,

Martyn Redstone  24:15  

I think that's really, really valid advice. Is that, especially as the market gets bigger and bigger and the number of job boards get more and more, you know, people are really struggling to find the right domain. And I think that's a fantastic piece of advice. So as we kind of you know, come to the end of an end of this episode and this and this conversation, you mentioned right at the beginning that you know, you're looking forward to a really exciting 2025 and kind of going to, going to go to, you know, work on the job board with some intentionality. What are the plans for 2025 What are you up to with with SEO jobs? Yeah,

Nick LeRoy  24:58  

so my gosh, if I sound like a pro. Record. But 2025 is the year of just helping people solve for their pain points. Like I said in SEO, specifically, more people are losing their jobs than they are gaining jobs. It's like the first time ever where the supply is bigger than the demand. So what I'm going to double down on is winning over people and making them champions of my brand. And that's why I was mentioning earlier these resources, whether it's job descriptions, salary guides, interviewing tips, they're going to be like, that's what's going to help carry me. And then I just want to make sure that I like, I'm elevating the experience again. I use that experience with or the example of my interview simulator I saw what was ranking in Google. It's all text based, you know, Q and A. We know that when to successfully interview, it's not about memorizing an answer, it's about how you communicate and how you, you know, demonstrate your expertise. So I built a tool that allows people to focus on some of those other soft skills outside of just, oh, this is what technical SEO is. This is what's local SEO. And that is where I'm going to try to be very intentional. So it's just quality over quantity and really addressing people's pain points.

Martyn Redstone  26:26  

Love it. I think that's a great place to to finish on in regards to that. So, you know, really focusing in on people's pain points and thinking about kind of everything else that you can you can offer out to to your to your members and to your employers and to your job seekers. Absolutely love that so Nick, thank you very much. Where can people find you if they want to contact you, communicate with you, learn more from you?

Nick LeRoy  26:56  

Yeah, absolutely first and foremost. Check out SEO jobs.com See how easy that was. That passes the word test. There we go. Yeah. Otherwise, you can reach out to me individually at Nick leroy.com, I'm on Twitter, X you know, LinkedIn are probably the two platforms that I'm on most. And if you want to stay up with SEO, you know, news and updates that are happening. I do write a weekly newsletter, and you can check that out at SEO for lunch.com

Martyn Redstone  27:27  

Well, we'll make sure those are all linked to in the in the info section on the video on YouTube. But Nick You know, first of all, thank you so much for giving us your time today and and the benefit of your your experience and your wisdom, I think that there's going to be absolutely tons of of information for our for our viewers and our listeners to take away from here. So Nick, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Nick LeRoy  27:52  

Thank you so much for having me. This is a lot of fun. You.