A specialist legal recruitment firm wanted to reach both candidates and hiring clients through search, in a niche where the large job boards dominate. We built targeted content and landing pages for each side of the market and grew the site’s authority, producing more than 25,000 visitors from Google worth over £75,000 in equivalent ad spend.
The brief
Legal recruitment has two audiences with different intent. Candidates search for roles, salaries and career moves. Law firms and in-house teams search for recruiters who understand their practice area. The firm needed to be visible to both without the site becoming confused.
The competition was the national job boards and the big recruitment brands, which hold the generic terms. The brief was to find the specific role and sector searches a specialist can realistically win, and to build a site that earned those positions.
What we did
We mapped the search landscape for both audiences and split the site accordingly: a candidate side organised by role type and practice area, and a client side organised by the kind of hire a firm needs to make. Each side got its own landing pages written around the specific terms people use.
Supporting content covered the questions candidates and employers ask during a search, giving the site depth on the topics where the job boards are thin. On-page SEO, internal linking and technical fixes were handled as part of the same programme.
Alongside the content we ran a steady authority-building effort, earning links from relevant legal and recruitment sources so the new pages had the strength to rank against established competitors. Rankings and traffic were tracked for both sides of the market separately.
Why it works
Role-specific and sector-specific pages win because they answer a narrower question better than a job board can. That specificity is a specialist’s natural advantage in search.
Treating candidates and clients as two sites within one keeps the messaging clear for each audience and lets you see which side is driving growth.
The result
The site now ranks for both candidate-side and client-side searches and has brought in more than 25,000 visitors from Google, traffic that would have cost over £75,000 to buy through paid advertising.
Frequently asked questions
Do you do SEO for other recruitment agencies?
Yes. We work with specialist recruiters across the UK and understand the two-sided candidate and client search problem.
Can a specialist recruiter really compete with the job boards?
On generic terms, rarely. On role-, sector- and location-specific searches, yes, and those are usually the enquiries worth having.
What does SEO for a recruitment firm involve?
Keyword mapping for both audiences, landing pages for roles and sectors, supporting content, technical fixes and ongoing link building, with rankings and traffic reported monthly.
How long before SEO shows results?
Early movement is often visible within a few months, with the stronger gains building over time as authority grows. We report progress monthly so you can see the trend.
Are there long contracts?
No. SEO is on rolling monthly terms with no long contracts, and we start with a free audit.