Recruitment website SEO: getting found when vacancies are down
UK job vacancies fell to 702,000 in the three months to August 2026, the lowest level outside the pandemic since 2014 and around 11% below where they sat before COVID. There are now about 2.5 unemployed people for every vacancy. For recruitment agencies that means fewer roles to fill and more competition for each client that's left. Recruitment website SEO is how you stay visible to clients and candidates without pouring more money into paid ads everyone else is bidding up. This post covers what actually moves rankings for an agency site, and where most sites lose ground. It sits alongside our guide to what makes a high-converting recruitment agency website here we focus on getting found.
Why recruitment website SEO matters more when vacancies fall
Paid channels get more expensive in a downturn because more agencies chase the same shrinking pool of clients. Organic search doesn't work that way. A page that ranks keeps bringing in traffic at no extra cost, and the agencies that built that ranking before the slowdown are the ones showing up now. Good rankings compound over time. Paid spend stops working the day you stop paying.
Buying behaviour has moved online too. An HR director choosing a recruitment partner will research and shortlist online before they pick up the phone. If you're not on page one for '[specialism] recruitment agency [region]', you won't make the shortlist.
Start with the words your clients and candidates actually use
keyword research for recruitment needs to reflect two different audiences. Clients search commercially: 'engineering recruitment agency Manchester', 'healthcare staffing partner'. Candidates search for roles: 'warehouse jobs Leeds', 'registered nurse vacancies'. Your site needs to earn both.
Pull a list of every specialism you cover and every location you serve, then cross them. Each viable combination is a page you could rank for. Check volume and difficulty in any keyword tool, then prioritise the combinations where you have real placement history to write about. Depth beats breadth. One strong 'manufacturing recruitment Cheshire' page will outrank ten thin ones.
Build location and specialism pages properly
This is the workhorse of recruitment SEO and the thing generic marketing advice skips. A single 'Our Services' page will never rank for the long-tail terms that convert. You need dedicated pages for each specialism-location pair that matters, and they have to be genuine pages with their own content, not templated stubs with the town name swapped out.
A good specialism-location page has original copy about that market (roles you place, typical salaries, local employers, hiring conditions), live vacancies pulled in from your job feed, and internal links to related specialisms and nearby locations. Google can tell the difference between a page written by someone who knows the Cheshire manufacturing market and one generated from a template. So can the client reading it.
Fix the technical basics first
Content gets the attention, but technical problems are what usually cause a ranking drop. Three things matter most for recruitment sites.
Indexation. Check Google Search Console for pages that have slipped from 'Indexed' to 'Crawled – currently not indexed'. A redesign or a stray noindex tag can de-list half your site without warning.
Structured data. Job listings should carry [JobPosting schema] so they're eligible for rich results and Google for Jobs. Service and article pages benefit from Organization and BlogPosting markup. This is one of the biggest technical wins for a recruitment site, and one most competitors get wrong or skip.
Speed and mobile. Job-search pages are heavy with filters, listings and maps, and most candidates are on their phones. Poor [Core Web Vitals] drag rankings down and lose candidates before the page settles. Compress images, load fonts sensibly, and lazy-load below the fold.
Don't ignore AI search
A growing share of recruitment queries now get answered inside Google's AI overviews or by assistants like ChatGPT before anyone clicks a link. Being cited there is becoming its own visibility channel. Clean Structured data and a well-organised site help, and an llms.txt file (a plain-text summary of your site aimed at AI crawlers) is a cheap way to make your content easier for these systems to read. It's early, but the agencies setting it up now will be the ones quoted later.
Where to start
If your rankings have dropped, diagnose before you rewrite. Confirm the site is fully indexed, check your schema is valid, and make sure Core Web Vitals haven't regressed, then look at content. If you're starting fresh, build your priority specialism-location pages first and get the technical foundation right underneath them.
Nodex builds recruitment websites with the SEO foundations handled from the start. If your site isn't pulling the organic traffic it should, book an SEO audit and we'll show you where the gaps are.