SEO for Job Boards:
Your Full Guide in 2024

Marty Aghajanyan | February 03, 2024 (updated) | 12 min read

Table of contents

Introduction

Anyone can start a job board, but not everyone can turn it into success. Over the years of providing a platform for hundreds of job boards, we have seen many job listing websites succeed. However, we’ve also seen many fail halfway. One of the main reasons for their failure is not having enough traffic and therefore presenting no value for both job seekers and employers. 

One of the key sources of traffic for job boards is Google, if not the largest. So the better the SEO of your job board is, the more traffic you can get and the more successful your job board will be. But how do you improve your job board SEO? 

The key to a good SEO for job boards is being able to target the right audience with relevant content. This article will help you learn all the important tips for job board SEO and how you can optimize and improve your website through it. So, without any delay, let’s get right to it!  


1. Create SEO-Friendly Job Listing Pages

If you’re just starting your job board SEO journey, it might be helpful to understand where the other job boards get their traffic from. To do so, we’ll use Ahrefs to get estimated data about the traffic LinkedIn Jobs generates.

Here you can see that LinkedIn Jobs has around 6.2M monthly traffic from Google alone. 

But the main question remains, which pages bring that amount of traffic to LinkedIn Jobs? To find the answer, let’s check the Top Pages section on Ahrefs. 

Here we can see that 17% of the LinkedIn Jobs traffic comes to their main page, while the rest 83% is divided between their 1M+ optimized pages. 

If we scroll down the list, we’ll see that those pages are job listing pages organized by location, category, and type of jobs. This gives them a better chance of showing up on the first page of SERP (Search Engine Result Page) whenever people make queries for specific job types. 

Let’s apply what we’ve learned above to a hypothetical example. 

Pretend, we have a job board for a cyber security niche, what kind of job listing pages do we need to have? 

For that, we can search “cyber security jobs” in the Ahref Keyword Explorer tool to get keyword ideas.

If we scan all the results and also search for other roles in the niche, we can create the following job listing pages:

Type
Keyword
Searches Per Month

Home Page 

cyber security jobs 50,000

Jobs by Categories

cyber security analyst jobs
1,900
penetration testing jobs
1,700
cyber security analyst jobs
3,000
Jobs by Location or Remote
remote cyber security jobs
2,600
cyber security jobs in canada
1,300
cyber security jobs nyc
800
Jobs by Company
google cyber security jobs
1,100
fbi cyber security jobs
900
amazon cyber security jobs
500
Jobs by Level
entry level cyber security jobs
8,400
senior cyber security jobs
70
Jobs by Type
part time cyber security jobs
600
cyber security contract jobs
350

With these pages, we can get way more traffic from Google, than if we had only a homepage with ‘cyber security jobs’ title. 

By the way, if you use JBoard to create your job board, we will automatically generate SEO-friendly job listing pages for you based on categories, tags, job types, and locations. All you need to do is to make sure the categories and tags in your job board match what people are searching for.


2. Drive More Traffic With a Blog 

Besides job listings and job detail page optimization, there’s also another golden opportunity for content marketing, which can help you target the right audience for your job board and bring in more traffic. You can write blog posts that employers and job seekers in your niche search for.

Content Relevance

But can you write about any topic related to your niche? Technically, you can do it, but based on what we’ve seen so far, it’s important to cover topics that are most relevant to not only your niche but also your job board. 

Let’s take two keywords to understand this better: 

  • cyber security trends ~2,000 searches/month
  • cyber security job description ~2,000 searches/month


As you can see, they both have the same amount of monthly traffic. The key question is: Is the same amount of traffic going to the ‘cyber security trends’ as valuable as the one going to the ‘cyber security job description’?

The answer is no! Because the person who is searching for ‘cyber security trends’ simply wants to educate himself about the trends, while the one searching for ‘cyber security job description’ is most probably going to write a job post. So if he comes across your job board through this kind of content, there’ll be a good chance for him to post that job posting on your website. 


Blog Post Ideas for Your Job Board

Based on our research, here are some blog post ideas that can help you generate highly relevant traffic.

Idea 1: Salary Data Statistics

Blog posts that cover salary data statistics for different roles have high relevancy since the person who is searching for the salary data is most likely interested in new opportunities(is a job seeker) or looking to hire for such roles and researching the compensation data(is an employer).

Examples of well-written blog posts


Examples of niche keywords

Keyword Monthly Traffic Potential
cyber security salary 4,300
registered nurse salary 33,000
pharmacist salary in Canada 600
how much does an architect make 4,500
Microsoft product manager salary 600


Idea 2: Interview Questions & Processes

Blog posts that cover interview questions and processes have high relevancy since the person who is searching for them is in the job market(is a job seeker) or is a recruiter/employer who wants to hire for such a role and looking for standard interview questions.

Examples of well-written blog posts


Examples of niche keywords

Keyword Monthly Traffic Potential
cyber security interview questions and answers 2,400
registered nurse interview questions and answers 18,000
interview questions for architect 2,000
delta airline interview 600
google data scientist interview 450


Idea 3: Job Description Templates

People who are searching for job description templates in a [X] niche are most likely writing a job description. So if you can help them by providing a template, there is a good chance that they will also be interested in posting the job on your job board once they learn about your website.

Examples of well-written blog posts

Examples of niche keywords

Keyword Monthly Traffic Potential
cyber security analyst job description 4,000
registered nurse job description 2,400
architect job description 8,800
developer job description template 700
flight attendant job description template 900



Idea 4: Best Companies to Work for in [X] Niche

Needless to say, sharing a list of top companies to work for has a high potential of driving relevant visitors to your website since visitors who searched for the topic are most likely looking for better opportunities in their industry. 

Examples of well-written blog posts


Examples of niche keywords

Keyword Monthly Traffic Potential
best companies to work for in cyber security 250
best tech companies to work for in nyc 3,700
top life insurance companies to work for 3,200
best startups to work for in san francisco 700
best remote work companies 12,000



Idea 5: How to Get a Job in [X] Niche

Writing a blog on how to land a job in a specific niche will most probably drive relevant traffic by sparking the interest of your target audience (job seekers) who are looking for guidance on how to get a certain job.

Examples of well-written blog posts

Examples of niche keywords

Keyword Monthly Traffic Potential
how to get a job in hr 4,900
how to land a software engineering job 800
how to get an entry level accounting job 600
how to get a job as a flight attendant 8,400
how to get a job in web3 1,800


Idea 6: Resume Examples for [X]

Similarly to the top examples, a person who is looking for resume examples is most likely updating their resume before starting the work search. So capturing this traffic can lead potential job seekers to your website.

Examples of well-written blog posts


Examples of niche keywords

Keyword Monthly Traffic Potential
cyber security resume 1,800
pilot resume examples 800
registered nurse resume template 12,000
architect resume template 1,800
teacher resume template 13,000


Idea 7: How to Become an [X]

Individuals seeking employment within your niche will get value from this type of blog posts at an early stage of their career. 

Examples of well-written blog posts


Examples of niche keywords

Keyword Monthly Traffic Potential
how to become a cyber security analyst 1,200
how to become a ui ux designer
1,300
how to become a front end web developer
2,300
how to become a marketing manager
1,000
how to become a product owner
800


There are 5 million job searches on Google every day, which makes Google Jobs one of the most important potential traffic sources for job boards. 

Google scrapes relevant job postings from all over the web and displays them on top of the search results whenever someone’s searching for specific jobs. 

So once a job posting appears on this list, it can generate an additional amount of traffic for your job board. 

To get Google to feature your job posting, you need to have structured data for job search inside your job details page. Additionally, make sure you include as much information as possible in a job posting, such as company name, location, salary range, employment type, etc., to increase your chances of being featured.

Also, if you’re using JBoard for your job board, we automatically integrate with Google Jobs, so you won’t need to do anything technical here. 


All the techniques mentioned above are important for SEO, however, there will be many job boards following those tips. So, how to convince Google and other search engines that the content on your job board is more relevant and credible? 

One of the key metrics that Google pays attention to when evaluating a website is backlinks. Backlinking is the process of linking back to your original website through other sources, and Google values it way too much. 

Here’s an example that shows just how important Google finds backlinks. If you check the top 10 Google results for “cyber security jobs” on Ahrefs, we will see the following:  

If you take a closer look at the 5th and 6th results, you’ll notice that they are not too closely related to the intent of our search. However, they are still in the top 10 results, instead of, for instance, the result of Monster, which is closer to what we’d like to see as a user. 

One of the key reasons is (say it with us!) the backlinks. Because while Monster’s related page only has 32 backlinks, the 5th and 6th top results have 134 and 85 backlinks, respectively. 

This is why backlinks are so important if you want to rank high on Google and why you should start paying attention to them if you haven’t already done it before. 


The web is full of effective backlinking tips and tricks by SEO giants like Backlinko and Ahrefs, so we would recommend checking out their suggestions and tips instead of reinventing the wheel. 

In addition, here are a few additional tips that we have seen work best for job boards

  • Pitch your job board to universities: University websites usually have Resources pages where they link to helpful career-related websites for their students. So, you can pitch your job board to relevant Universities in your niche and get a backlink from their website mostly for free. Here is an example of backlinks that CyberSecurityJobs.com got from different universities.


  • Share statistics that are related to your niche: Blog posts that have numbers and facts are usually great linkbait since other writers like to link to them to back up their articles with numbers. For a niche job board, good content for this purpose can be to share stats like salary data, industry trends, and employment rates in the niche.

  • Share niche-related infographics and videos: According to Backlinko’s study, compared to other types of content, the following content formats tend to generate an overwhelming amount of backlinks: This means you might have a better chance for other websites to link to your page if you create and share helpful infographics and videos. Of course, to encourage them to do so, you need to create visuals that have value and high quality.



5. Do On-Site SEO 

While the majority of SEO for job boards is made up of creating backlinks and content, there are still some simple steps you can take on your website to improve your ranking. These are done to improve your on-page SEO and ensure Google that the users will have the best experience on your job board: 

  • Have a properly generated Sitemap.xml file to help Google easily index your website.
  • Ensure the site is using HTTPS since Google favors those kind of pages. 
  • Have a good website speed since it’s one of the metrics by which Google decides how to rank the web page.
  • Have proper title tags, meta descriptions, and one H1 tag on each page since they help Google understand what’s your page about.
  • Make sure your job board is mobile-friendly since Google is doing mobile-first indexing.
  • Make sure your website is user-friendly since the amount of time a user spends on your website is a deciding factor for Google. 

 

Summing Up 

All in all, ranking on the first page of Google is not an overnight thing, considering the whole competition on the web. It’s a process that takes both time and hard work. In general, we’ve seen job boards get the initial traction at least 2-3 months after the set-up. However, it’s important to keep working on your job board’s SEO and building your domain ranking since that’s the key to having a successful job board.

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