Make more placements with recruitment SEO.

    What we do / See how you rank / Your SEO ROI / Who we are / FAQs

    What we do

    See how you're ranking

    Clients looking for a recruitment partner and candidates searching for their next role both start on Google. The agencies appearing at the top of those searches are building relationships before anyone else has had a chance to make their pitch. Search for your agency below and see how you compare to competitors on traffic, rankings, backlinks and site speed using real site data.
    We use Ahrefs for keyword rankings and backlink data, PageSpeed Insights for site performance, and a direct crawl of each agency’s website. Traffic figures are modelled from keyword rankings and estimated click-through rates rather than pulled directly from Google Analytics. Every agency in the tool is measured the same way, so the figures give a consistent basis for comparison across the board even if they will not match your own internal reporting.
    Recruitment is one of the most crowded markets online and we will not have every agency indexed, particularly smaller or more recently established boutiques. Get in touch and we will add you or any competitor you want to include, or run you a free audit covering whoever you specify.
    Recruitment agencies vary enormously in focus and the right comparison depends entirely on where your business actually competes. A technology staffing agency placing senior engineering hires is operating in a completely different search landscape to one focused on high volume industrial or logistics placements, graduate recruitment, or executive search at board level. Compare against agencies chasing the same client sectors, the same candidate pools, and operating in the same geography. If your agency covers multiple sectors or has both permanent and contract divisions, it is worth looking at each separately since the competitors ranking well in each space can be quite different.
    Domain rating is a score out of 100 from Ahrefs that reflects the strength of a website’s backlink profile. In recruitment, the most valuable links tend to come from sector specific trade press covering the industries you place into, HR and talent publications like People Management and HR Magazine, business news covering hiring trends and salary surveys, and job board and workforce directories. Agencies that publish original research, whether that is annual salary guides, skills shortage reports or hiring intention surveys, tend to build domain rating significantly faster than those that do not, because that kind of content attracts links naturally from the press and from other businesses referencing the data.
    Recruitment websites carry a lot of content by nature. Job listings, sector pages, candidate resources, client case studies, consultant profiles. That volume of content accumulates performance issues quickly if it is not actively managed, and slow load times affect both of the audiences you are trying to reach simultaneously. A candidate browsing roles on a mobile during a commute will not wait around, and a hiring manager checking your credentials before a call will form an impression of your agency from that experience whether they realise it or not. Page speed is also a direct Google ranking factor, which matters particularly in recruitment where appearing above a competitor for a niche sector search can mean the difference between filling a role first and not being considered at all.

    SEO ROI calculator

    Job boards like Indeed and Totaljobs charge you every time. SEO builds a pipeline of clients and candidates you own outright. Put your numbers in below and see what a consistent increase in organic traffic could mean for your agency.
    Search for your agency in the box at the top to pull in your estimated monthly organic traffic. Then add your average monthly enquiries from the website, your typical placement fee or contract margin, and the traffic increase you want to target. The calculator works out how long it would take for the additional revenue to cover the cost of an SEO campaign.
    The calculator uses your own inputs alongside projected growth figures based on how SEO typically performs for recruitment agencies. Placement fees and contract margins vary significantly between generalist and specialist recruiters, so entering your own figures will give you a much more meaningful result than any industry average would. The projections are structured estimates rather than guarantees, but the assumptions are consistent and based on what we actually see with recruitment clients.
    Estimated traffic figures come from Ahrefs and Semrush, which model organic search visibility using keyword rankings and click-through rates. If you have access to Google Analytics or Search Console for your agency website, entering your verified monthly traffic figure will give you a more precise result than the estimate.
    Recruitment SEO works on two fronts simultaneously, which makes it slightly different to most other industries. You are trying to rank for client side searches like “engineering recruitment agency Manchester” at the same time as candidate side searches like “quantity surveyor jobs in Leeds.” A well structured SEO strategy treats these as separate audiences with separate content, separate landing pages and separate intent. Agencies that get this right tend to find that organic search becomes their most cost effective source of both new business and candidate registrations, particularly compared to the ongoing spend that job boards like Reed, CV Library and Totaljobs require. The calculator shows the month where cumulative revenue overtakes cumulative campaign cost.
    A modest uplift might mean improving your existing sector and location pages and making sure your Google Business Profile is working hard for local client searches. A more ambitious target means building out a proper jobs content strategy, earning coverage in HR and business press like People Management and The Recruiter, developing genuine authority in your specialist sector whether that’s finance, tech, healthcare or construction, and competing for the terms that currently send clients and candidates to the large nationals like Hays, Michael Page and Robert Half. Our pricing for recruitment agency SEO is straightforward and you can get a clear sense of it when you run your numbers above.

    Who we are

    Rooted in Manchester

    Maybe you’ve tried doing SEO yourself instead of focusing on what you do best. Maybe you’ve invested in SEO and been given the runaround by an agency that knows how to send invoices and not much else. Or maybe you’re just not seeing the kind of return you want to see from your website. We speak to business owners just like you every day.

    We’re based in North Manchester, between Prestwich, Blackley and Cheetham Hill, right next to Heaton Park. From here, our team works with businesses just like yours across the city and beyond, putting clear plans in place, doing the work properly, and reporting on progress in a way that makes sense. 

    Your local SEO partner

    From Salford to Stockport, Oldham to Wigan, businesses across Greater Manchester trust us to make them more visible online. So whether you run a dental practice in Denton, an estate agent in Eccles, or some other business that starts with the same letter as where it is, our local SEO strategies can help you get found.

    We optimise Google Business Profiles, create location-focused content, build the right local backlinks, and structure websites to perform wherever you operate across Greater Manchester. 

    Click the interactive map to find out more about SEO where you’re based.

    Jamie Fallon

    My name's Jamie, I've been in SEO since 2016. Since then I've worked freelance, at agencies, and in-house as well as on my own websites - and now at Pollinate!

    Emily Shepherd

    Hi, I'm Emily! 👋🏻 I'm a passionate SEO content manager and writer with 6 years' agency and in-house experience. I'm in charge of content here at Pollinate.

    Latest posts

    How to optimise a job listing for SEO

    By: Jamie Fallon | Recruitment | Last updated: April 27, 2026

    Does a blog help with recruitment agency SEO?

    By: Jamie Fallon | Recruitment | Last updated: April 27, 2026

    How to turn your recruitment website into a lead generation tool

    By: Jamie Fallon | Recruitment | Last updated: April 27, 2026

    How to run a recruitment agency WordPress site

    By: Jamie Fallon | Recruitment | Last updated: April 27, 2026

    Recruitment agency SEO FAQs

    Yes, and the fact that SEO can work on both sides of the recruitment equation simultaneously is one of its biggest advantages for agencies. On the candidate side, people searching for roles in your sector will find your listings and your content. On the client side, hiring managers and HR teams searching for specialist recruiters in your niche will find your service pages. A well structured recruitment website with a clear SEO strategy does not have to choose between the two. It speaks to both audiences at the right moment, which is something very few other marketing channels can do as effectively.
    The most important thing is making sure your website is structured in a way that reflects how people actually search for roles in your sector. That means dedicated pages for the job types, seniority levels and industries you recruit for, written with genuine depth rather than a list of vacancies. Individual job listings matter too, but they come and go. The pages that build lasting search visibility are the ones that exist independently of any specific vacancy and demonstrate that your agency genuinely understands the sector it operates in.
    The honest answer is that you do not compete with them directly, and you do not need to. Indeed and Reed dominate broad searches like “marketing jobs” and that is not a battle worth fighting. Where specialist agencies consistently win is on the searches that aggregators cannot serve well. A hiring manager searching for “fintech compliance recruiter London” or a candidate looking for “part qualified accountant jobs in Leeds” wants a specialist, not a job board. Focused, niche specific SEO puts you in front of exactly those searches, where your expertise is an advantage rather than a liability.
    The same principle applies here as in most service businesses with a wide geographic reach. A single page that lists every city you cover will not rank well for any of them. The most effective approach is building dedicated location pages for your key markets, each one written with genuine local relevance, covering things like local hiring trends, salary benchmarks for that area, and the specific sectors you recruit in locally. It is more work upfront but each page builds its own search visibility independently, which compounds significantly over time.
    Absolutely, and this is one of the areas where SEO and business strategy align particularly well. The content you publish, the pages you build and the keywords you target all send a signal to Google about what kind of agency you are. A website full of content about a specific sector, written with genuine expertise and depth, will rank for specialist searches and attract specialist clients. It also reinforces your positioning every time a prospective client lands on your site. Being a specialist is a claim anyone can make. A website that demonstrates it is a different thing entirely.
    Yes, and content is the main mechanism. Candidates in niche sectors tend to follow industry news, read about salary trends and keep an eye on the job market even when they are not actively looking. Publishing genuinely useful content aimed at professionals in your niche, things like career guides, salary surveys and sector specific hiring insights, builds an audience of relevant candidates over time. Some of them will be ready to move immediately. Most will not be, but when they are, your agency is the one they already know and trust. That is a talent pool that no database or LinkedIn search can fully replicate.
    Relationships are the lifeblood of recruitment and nobody is suggesting otherwise. But relationships have a ceiling, and they are vulnerable in ways that SEO is not. A key contact moves on. A client takes their hiring in house. A sector goes quiet. SEO generates enquiries independently of any of that, from clients and candidates your network would never reach. It also works in your favour when relationships are active. When a referral looks you up, or when a client you have worked with before checks you out before re engaging, what they find online either reinforces their confidence in you or quietly raises questions. A strong online presence makes every relationship work harder.