“Have fun”? Absolutely! It’s just like planning and building a new house. You visit neighborhoods to see what you like, take some pictures, discuss ideas with family and friends, look at floor plans, and features; then, call in a builder/architect. It’s the same with a website except the “neighborhoods”, “homes”, and “floor plans” are right there on your computer screen.
Let’s look at what is important for planning and building any good website then look at what makes a good and effective staffing company website.
As you look around the web, take screen-shots of websites you like. Do you have “Jing”? It’s for easy screen-shots and has mark-up ability You can download it free and they have great tutorials
Look at your competitor’s sites for ideas while always honoring their copyrights. Many have good ideas and non-custom features (search tools, translators, chat tools etc.) Most factual and common knowledge information is not copyrightable. But their text writing is, so are their pictures, graphs, and other custom elements.
Look at non-competitor sites as well. You can get good ideas for a color palette, layout, presentation, and different methods to call attention to important areas like using a lead-in text link (anchor text) that goes to an important interior page The goal of all your scouting and planning is to develop a really good website.
And what is a “good” website? A short, functional definition is one that is effective n what it intends to accomplish and what it intends to accomplish, is to “convert” relevant visitors into potential employees and clients. Great. But what makes it effective in its ability to convert, as we will discuss, is made up of several very important elements.
However, no matter how effective a site is, it must be visible. There are lots of ways to drive prospects to your website. You can drag a 40 foot banner above crowded beaches or run ads on TV. But when you talk about visibility, most people (including me) think of being visible on the search engines with the highest ranking on their search results pages via SEO or Search Engine Optimization, that can get you free (organic positions) by becoming the best website out there for the search term being used.
A lot of unnecessary and crazy work has been expended on (SEO) in order to get first page positions on Google. A noble and rewarding effort indeed, but one that is often over worked on insignificant technical and gimmicky solutions which are largely ineffective.
But, although there are lots of technical and content details important to SEO, most of the best ones (see below) are also related to simply building a better website; i.e. well-organized (navigation), relevant (to search term), informative, helpful, interesting (content rich), and attractive (good design). So, building a better website is key to both effectiveness and visibility.
So, let’s look at the basics for every good website to make sure you incorporate them into your planning and building. Then we will look, specifically, at what makes a good staffing company website.
Here are some very important ingredients for every website:
- Keyword Analysis
- Rich, Relevant Content
- Good Design
- Clear and Simple Navigation
- Responsive (Mobile)
- Clear Headings
- Good and Relevant Backlinks
- Meta Titles and Descriptions
- Download Time
- Content Writing
- SSL Certificate
- Pictures, Graphs, Charts
- Internal Link Structure
A good “keyword analysis” is first because that is the first thing you should do. Learn what keywords are important to your business. Know the terms or phrases people use in their web searches where you want your website to come up on the search engine results pages (SERPS). And not just to “come up” but be ranked highly on them.
Build these words into you meta titles and descriptions, URL naming, page headlines (H1, H2, etc.), text body, captioning of pictures, charts, graphs, videos, etc., but do it naturally! Keyword stuffing will absolutely work against you! Trust me!
Notice the second item in the list; “Rich, Relevant Content”. These are not my words but Google’s in explaining their #1 consideration for ranking a website. Think hard about that and what that means. Does the page you are building have “rich” content? Not just rich in text content (although that is very important) but other content, other visual media like charts, graphs videos, diagrams, pictures.
“Responsive”? Is your site structured to deliver your website’s navigation and content n a mobile phone as well as a desktop or tablet? More than 50% of web searches are now done on a phone! Report Nearly 60 percent searches now mobile devices.
Download time is also very important. High pixel rated pictures and other content or technical issues can slow down a site’s ability to download quickly. A page should load in no more that 2-3 seconds. A slow website turns away visitors and sends them to your competitors.
So, Google and other search engines look at all of these and more to determine page rank and organic (free) positioning. But, as mentioned above most all of them are related to simply building a good website and a good website I is what you want for yourself, your employees, your clients, and your prospects to see.
The Staffing Company Website
Beyond the basics for every good website we want to know what is important for staffing companies. What makes a good “staffing company website”?
Unlike most other companies, a staffing company needs to recruit and retain its internal staff, its contract employees, and its clients. That’s a lot of recruiting, especially for a small company.
A good website will be the most effective overall and specifically, the most cost-effective tool for every category of your recruiting (and retaining) goals.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that nearly every one of your current and potential employees and clients are on the web. Every day! With the explosion of mobile phones (mini web-connected computers) it has become, as we said above the most popular method (50-60%) for searching on the web.
Mobile computers (phones) are also extremely friendly to a variety of social media.
So, what are the ingredients for a good staffing company website?
Here are some important ones:
| Client page(s) | Why temp staffing is good |
| Employee page (s) | for clients (PDF-white paper) |
| Location page(s) | Location maps |
| Job Listings page(s) | Why temp staffing is good |
| Online Applications | for Employees (PDF-white paper) |
| Client Portal | Basic training (safety, harassment, how to, etc.) |
| Employee Portal | Informative, helpful, and interesting information (For clients and employees) |
| Client Testimonials | Effective use of social media |
| Meet our staff (by location) | |
| Company policy for employees |
So, what again are the groups of people you are trying to recruit and retain? Internal staff? Then build a couple of good pages for your staff with pictures bios job descriptions, families, awards, interests. When a prospective employee visits your site they will be happy to see how your existing employees are recognized and appreciated.
Recruiting job seekers to become contract employees? Here ii where you will need location pages and job listings pages. When you did your keyword or key phrase analysis you might have come up with a key phrase “jobs in Vestal, NY”, so you not only want to have rich relevant content about Vestal NY but also about job listings for Vestal, NY
A credible testimonial page from existing contract employees is excellent and video testimonials make them even better (richer content).
Recruiting (and retaining) clients can be more difficult, but your website needs to be ready to sell them or, at least, “pre-sell” them on your company. Here everything on your site will be important. It’s not just the “About Us” page although that should also be done well.
Prospective clients want to see your staff, your place of business, key clients and their testimonials. They certainly like to see the basic training you provide on your employee training pages covering safety, harassment rules, responsibilities to the host employers, i.e. your clients, etc..
Client portals can be a real service and a description of what is available to them (instantly and securely) can be a real selling point on how well your company is organized.
(Here it would be important to mention that both client and employee portals and online applications are direct connections from your website to your staffing software. It securely enables you to deliver additional services to your prospective employees, current employees, and clients and it saves you time and money, too.)
To get prospective clients to your landing page, designed just for them, a key phrase, built into your structure and content, like “Staffing Services in Vestal NY” or Temp Services in Vestal NY will certainly help your organic (free) visibility on the search engines. But if you are not there yet consider paying for top positions on Google’s results pages. It will bring keyword driven traffic directly to your client-oriented landing page.
In either case, or even if you have both a first page organic position and an ad, you will get calls and emails so be ready to “close” them or make that critical appointment. Your website will be ready!
So, have some fun, and go build or re-build that website!