Getting job seekers to your job board takes time. That is something most new job board owners dont understand. Even if you have a “cool” site, thats not enough to get peoples attention. You are competing with thousands of business for people’s time.
You really need to take an all-the-above-approach and be in it for the long haul. And its going to take money also.
Here is my top ten list of things you can do to get traffic.
1. Make it easy for them to use your site. Your registration/apply process needs to be dead simple. Dont make a job seeker take 20 minutes to finish their profile.
2. Use great design! Professional logos and graphics are a must. Use 99designs.com to get them if you dont have access to a good web designer.
3. Press releases. I use eReleases.com which offers great distribution to other news outlets. (see example) I recommend doing at least 2-4 press releases per year for each job board you have.
4. Content marketing. Start your own blog of course and guest post on other related blogs. Utilize communities such as Recruitingblogs.com to write interesting advice like I do. Every job board should have their own blog (even if you can only post 1x per month its still worth it. The more content you produce, the more free traffic you will get from search engines. So be prepared to write your ass off!
5. Pay other sites to feature you Sites like Careerealism and Blogging4jobs have advertising options.
6. Leverage the aggregators. Indeed.com, SimplyHired, JuJu.com, Jobs2careers.com, CareerJet.com. They offer you the CHEAPEST WAY to get traffic at only .10-.25 cents per click.
7. Attend college careers fairs and pass out flyers to your site.
8. Ask college career centers to link to you from their webpages. In many cases they like to pass on relevant sites to their students.
9. Buy keywords on Google and Bing. You dont have to spend a lot so just set a budget and do it consistently.
10. Use social media to amplify your message. Facebook and twitter are great for marketing so use them to your advantage. Be an advocate for job seekers and they will follow you!
So thats my top 10. Some are free but most will cost you $$$. If you dont utilize all or most of these you probably wont succeed.
