Geheel tegen mijn aard in citeer ik vandaag zeer uitgebreid uit het blog van iemand anders; in dit geval van Matt Martone en zijn Job|SearchMarketing blog. Als achtergrondkleuring: Matt is werkzaam bij Yahoo!Hotjobs binnen de afdeling Recruitment Ad Sales. In zijn blog entry van vandaag gaat hij in op SEO versus SEM.

Bedenk dat de achtergrond van Matt hem tot minder dan een objectieve toeschouwer maakt! Zijn blog entry geeft echter genoeg ‘food for thought’ en ik zou iedereen willen uitnodigen hierop te reageren.

SEO is pseudo-science.
It represents some principles of web design and promotion that employers can follow.
Employers which execute an SEO strategy can expect better ranking of their jobs and career sites in the natural search results of sites like Yahoo! and Google.
The trouble with SEO is that it’s not an exact science. It’s an attempt by people outside of companies like Yahoo! and Google to influence the engines’ natural search results. They do this by essentially gaming the billion dollar systems that the search engines put in place to prevent such gaming and ensure the integrity and relevance of users’ search results and quality of experience.

The realities of SEO to an employer…
SEO can be expensive, time costly and inflexible.
The top ranked listings in major search engines for general job search terms are largely owned by big brands such as ours, monster, careerbuilder and niche sites.

Targeting such terms is expensive, time costly and may not necessarily provide an employer with an acceptable ROI.
Niche terms are often easier for employers to target with SEO. Yet still, the execution of a niche keyword targeted SEO effort can require significant site re-design. And site re-design is often costly. So, SEO costs can be high even for employers targeting niche terms.

In my opinion, SEO really misses the ball in the corporate recruiting world with its lack of adaptability.

Recruiting needs change dynamically. Employers need scalable solutions that can adapt fluidly with their recruiting objectives. SEM does just that. SEO does not.

SEM puts an employer’s recruitment ads at a the top of a desired search results page at whenever it is demanded by the recruiting objective. With SEM the employer can remove the ad and quick spending on that recruiting objective just as quickly.

SEO on the other hand is like a heavy Chevy. It takes time to get moving and is far less responsive. You can’t flip a switch or even spend more cash on SEO and be guaranteed the premium placement needed on a search results page.

With SEM you can do just that. SEM can be as reactive like a sports car. It’s agile enough to adjust to changing road conditions and flexible enough to fill the gaps that often open up in a real life recruiting environment due to unexpected growth or attrition.

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