Design for two audiences

Split the site into clear journeys from the homepage: one for candidates and one for clients. Each should have its own navigation item, its own calls to action and its own proof.

Your sector or specialism is usually your strongest selling point. Make it obvious in the first screen, rather than describing yourself as a generic people business.

Build job pages that Google can read

Google can show job listings in a dedicated search experience, and its JobPosting structured data documentation confirms this is available in the United Kingdom. To be eligible, each job page needs structured data with a title, description, hiring organisation, job location and date posted.

Google also recommends extra properties such as salary, employment type and a closing date, which it calls validThrough. For fully remote roles, the markup must say so and name at least one country where applicants can be based.

• Use one page per job, and only mark up individual job pages, not search results

• Make the markup match what is visible on the page

• Let people view the job without logging in, and give them a way to apply

• Remove or expire filled jobs promptly, or risk a manual action from Google

Google recommends its Indexing API for job pages, because it prompts Googlebot to crawl them sooner than a sitemap would. Check that your job board or ATS supports it before you choose a platform.

Make applying easy

Long application forms lose good candidates, especially on a phone. Ask for the minimum needed to start a conversation, usually name, contact details and a CV, and collect the rest later.

Let candidates upload a CV from their phone or cloud storage, and confirm receipt straight away. Tell them what happens next and roughly when they can expect to hear back.

Handle candidate data properly

CVs carry a lot of personal data, and some candidates will share health or diversity details. The ICO's guidance on recruitment and selection covers agencies and headhunters as well as employers, from advertising a vacancy through to deleting candidate data. That guidance is still in draft, and the ICO says it is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act, so check for the final version.

Under the right to be informed, you must tell candidates who you are, why you are using their data, your lawful basis, who you share it with, how long you keep it and what rights they have. Where you source details from elsewhere, such as a job board, you must also tell them where the data came from.

On the website, that means a clear privacy notice linked from every form, short wording beside the upload button, and a retention period you actually follow.

Advertise roles honestly

Accurate adverts build trust with both sides. The REC's Code of Professional Practice asks members to avoid false or misleading statements, follow truth in advertising standards and only advertise roles they have permission to recruit for.

In practice, avoid ghost jobs used only to collect CVs, show salary ranges where clients agree, and take down roles as soon as they are filled. The same habits also keep your job pages in line with Google's guidelines.

Win clients with sector pages

Clients rarely search for a recruitment agency in general. They search for help hiring a particular kind of person in a particular place, such as finance recruiters in a city or construction recruitment agencies in a region.

Give each specialism its own page with real detail: roles you fill, typical timelines, how you assess candidates and who leads that desk. Our guide to turning service pages into sales tools explains how to write them so they convert.

Recruitment is a people business, so add short consultant profiles with a photo, specialism and direct contact route. Link each one to the sector pages and jobs they handle, so clients and candidates reach the right person first time.

A worked example: a niche engineering agency

Imagine a five-person agency placing engineers in manufacturing. Its old site lists jobs on a single page, so Google cannot show them in job search, and clients see the same generic message as candidates.

The new site gives each job its own page with JobPosting markup, salary, location and a closing date, fed from the agency's ATS. Filled roles expire automatically, and applications ask only for name, email, phone and CV, with the privacy notice linked beside the button.

For clients, it adds three sector pages, a short how-we-work page and a request-a-call form that goes to the right consultant. Success is measured by applications per job and client enquiries per month, not visits.

Choose a platform that fits your stack

Most agencies already use an ATS or CRM, and the website should connect to it rather than duplicate it. Ask how jobs will flow from your system to the site, how applications flow back and what happens when either changes.

For the marketing side of the site, a visual builder lets your team update sector pages, blogs and case notes without a developer. Some agencies run the job board inside the main site, while others link to a hosted board on a subdomain.

Either can work, but the job pages must still meet Google's guidelines and look like part of your brand. Ask any supplier to show you a live job page and its structured data before you commit.

How The Think can help

The Think is a small branding and web design studio. We design brands, write copy and build fast websites in Framer, with the search foundations that help service businesses get found.

For recruitment agencies, we can plan the candidate and client journeys, build sector pages and connect your job feed where your ATS supports it. See our Framer web design and SEO and growth marketing services.