Choosing a recruitment SEO agency? What to ask about your ATS feed, Google for Jobs, sector pages, board reporting, retainers and switching providers.
Three proposals are open in three tabs. Each agency says it knows recruitment, each lists a similar set of deliverables, and the monthly fees sit within a few hundred pounds of one another. On paper they are hard to tell apart, which is understandable, because proposals are written to answer the same brief.
The differences show up once you ask about the way your site actually works: the ATS feed, the roles that expire every week, the sector pages that bring in client briefs, and what the board will see each quarter. This guide sets out the questions we would ask in your position and what a strong answer contains. It sits alongside our guide to building a recruitment agency website for search, which covers the architecture itself. This one is about choosing who does the work.
For reference, our own SEO programmes for B2B firms follow the same priority order, so you will see how we would answer each question as we go. One worked example runs throughout: a 40-consultant specialist agency on an ATS-driven site with 1,200 live jobs.
How to compare recruitment SEO proposals
- Ask about the ATS feed before anything else: on a site with 1,200 live jobs, expiry handling, JobPosting markup and indexing rules decide whether Google ever reaches the pages that win clients.
- Judge each proposal on the board report it promises, with client enquiries, briefs and fees from organic search at the top and applications reported separately.
- On a recruitment site, Clear Click fixes the job feed and the tracking first, then moves on to the sector pages.
Have they run a site with an ATS feed like yours?
Start with shape, then sector. A recruitment site is a large-inventory site. Pages appear when a consultant loads a role into the ATS and should disappear when it is filled, sometimes within a week. The search problems that follow, such as crawl time spent on dead pages, duplicate location pages and expired listings still in the index, look much the same on a property portal or a large product catalogue.
So the first question for any agency, specialist or generalist, is which large-inventory site they have run and what they changed in its first three months. A strong answer names the template rules they wrote, the indexed page count before and after, and how long Google took to catch up. A less helpful answer talks mainly about understanding the recruitment market. That matters too, but it comes second.
Sector knowledge earns its place on the client side of the site. An agency that knows a hiring manager looking for contract quantity surveyors is a different buyer from one replacing a permanent commercial director, even inside the same construction firm, will plan better sector pages. A good team picks that up in a few weeks with your consultants, so we'd weigh it below inventory experience.
103 impressions: How often three versions of the question "what criteria should we use to choose a recruitment SEO agency?" appeared for our site in UK search over three months.
Source: Clear Click Search Console data, UK, August to November 2026.
A small number, and a telling one: buyers are asking how to judge this work in long, careful sentences, the kind typed into an AI assistant mid-decision.
Then the ATS question. Ask them to describe what happens to a job page from the moment your ATS publishes it to the day after the role is filled. That one question covers most of the technical work, and the answer shows quickly whether they have done it before.
Take our example agency. If a quarter of its 1,200 roles close in a typical month, that is 300 pages a month that need to leave the index cleanly and 300 new ones that need to be found quickly. A strong answer covers three things.
- Indexing rules. Which pages Google should index (live job detail pages with a full description, salary and location) and which it should not (filter combinations, internal search results, deep pagination).
- Expiry. What the page returns when a role closes, usually a 410 or a redirect to the nearest relevant hub, and how the JobPosting markup is removed or its closing date passed, since Google does not want expired roles in its job results.
- Discovery. JobPosting structured data with the properties Google requires on every job detail page, plus a way of telling Google about new and closed roles quickly, such as the Indexing API, which Google supports for job posting pages.
In plain English: Google should find a new role within hours, drop a filled one within days, and spend its time on the pages that bring in clients rather than on last year's vacancies.
Then ask who will change the templates. On most ATS-driven sites the job pages come from the ATS vendor's plugin or feed, so an agency that can only edit the CMS will hit a wall in month one. A good answer names who they need to speak to at the vendor and what they will ask for. All of this is fixable. It is just usually fixed through somebody else's settings screen, and a plan that accounts for that saves weeks.
How will they divide candidate searches from client searches?
A recruitment site serves two audiences. Candidates search for jobs, and the large job boards and Google for Jobs hold most of that demand. Hiring managers search for a recruiter in their sector or region, and that is where the fees come from.
Ask each agency which side they would prioritise in the first six months, and why. We'd say client-side pages come first for nearly every specialist agency, with the job board's role being to bring candidates in without dragging down the rest of the site. A proposal led by candidate traffic or blog volume is answering a slightly different question from the one your board is asking.
Next, ask how they would choose the sector and location pages. A strong answer starts from your placement data: which sectors and regions produced fees over the last two years, and where you have consultants ready to pick up a client call. For our 40-consultant example, that might mean six sector pages with the services beneath each, and location pages only where enough placements sit to justify one.
A plan with a page for every town before the sector pages exist has the order reversed. It produces a lot of pages quickly and rarely produces briefs. We'd build the sector pages, give them six months, then add locations where the enquiries suggest demand.
What will your board see each quarter?
A recruitment board thinks in fees, so the report should start there. Ask to see a real, anonymised report from a current client, and read only the first page.
A strong report leads with client enquiries from organic search, the briefs those enquiries became and, where the CRM can follow them, placements and fee value. Applications sit in their own section, because the ATS counts them automatically and a rise in candidate traffic can hide a flat quarter on the side that pays. Rankings and sessions are diagnostics, useful to the team and rarely what the board needs.
In our example agency, a quarterly line might read: organic search produced 14 client enquiries, five briefs and two placements. Those figures are illustrative. The shape is what matters, because a managing director can set it against what the same money buys in job board credits or LinkedIn spend.
None of that works unless every enquiry is recorded in the CRM with its source and landing page, so ask who sets that up and in which month. It should be early. Our guide to what a monthly SEO report should include has a template the board version can be cut down from.
What retainer and minimum term make sense for a recruiter?
Ask what the fee buys each month, in hours or in outputs, and how that changes once the technical work is done. A good retainer for a recruitment site front-loads the job feed and the tracking in the first quarter, then shifts towards sector pages, a salary guide and earning links. If the monthly plan looks identical in month one and month ten, it is worth asking why.
For reference, our own SEO fee begins at £1,700 a month, excluding VAT. Below roughly that level it is hard for any agency to put senior time on a site with an ATS feed, a job board and a set of sector pages all needing attention at once.
Where the job board is the main problem, we'd say a retainer may not be the right first spend. An SEO audit over two to four weeks will show what the feed is costing you in crawl and index terms and give your ATS vendor a clear list of fixes. If you then decide the monthly budget works harder in LinkedIn and referrals for another year, that can be the right call.
On minimum terms, we aim for 12-month partnerships, because client-side pages take months to show in enquiries. Early termination terms are set out in the agreement from day one, so both sides know where they stand. Whoever you choose, ask to see those terms in writing before the proposal stage closes, and ask what you keep if you leave: content, data, account access and notes on any template changes.
On a site like yours, our SEO work starts from the feed and the pipeline, and the first year is ordered around both. See how our SEO programmes work
Can you switch SEO agency without losing rankings?
In most cases, yes. Rankings belong to your pages and the links pointing at them, and they stay put if the site stays put. The risk in a switch sits with the things a previous agency set up that were never written down.
Ask the incoming agency for a handover plan before you give notice. A good one covers four things.
- Access. Search Console, GA4, the tag manager container and the CMS, all owned by your business accounts rather than the agency's.
- Template rules. What was changed in the ATS feed, robots rules and structured data, so nothing is reverted by accident.
- Redirects. The current redirect map, especially for closed roles and any retired sector URLs.
- A baseline. Indexed pages, client-side rankings and organic enquiries over the last 12 months, captured before the switch.
In our experience the outgoing agency's work is usually mostly sound, and the first month after a switch is about understanding it rather than replacing it. If a proposal promises a new site structure in month one, ask what problem it solves first. Our piece on how to choose an SEO agency has the wider set of questions for that first conversation.
Questions we get asked
What criteria should we use to select a recruitment SEO agency?
Four, in this order: experience running a large-inventory site with expiring pages, a clear plan for your ATS feed and Google for Jobs, a priority order that puts client-side sector pages first, and a board report that leads with enquiries and fees. Sector knowledge helps on the client pages, and it is quicker to learn than inventory handling.
Which SEO retainer is best for a growing mid-sized recruitment agency?
One that front-loads the technical and tracking work, then moves into sector pages, a salary guide and links, with a plan that changes as the work does. The right budget depends on how many sectors you place in and how much of the feed needs fixing.
Does recruitment SEO work on ATS-driven websites?
Yes, as long as someone can change the job page templates, either directly or through the ATS vendor. The work is mostly indexing rules, expiry handling and JobPosting markup, and it is broadly the same whichever ATS you use.
What are the minimum terms for recruitment SEO?
They vary by agency, so ask to see them in writing early. Ours are written into the agreement from the start, early termination terms included, and we plan for a year because client-side pages take months to show in enquiries.
Is switching SEO agency risky for a recruitment website?
It is manageable with a planned handover. Make sure your business owns the Search Console, GA4 and CMS logins, document the template and redirect rules, and capture a 12-month baseline before you give notice.
How should recruitment SEO be reported to the board?
As client enquiries, briefs and placements from organic search, with fee value where the CRM can trace it. Applications go in a separate section, and rankings stay as diagnostics for the team.
Where we fit
Websites that behave like catalogues are where we do some of our best work: a lot of pages with short lives, and a small set of pages that bring in the revenue. A recruitment agency on an ATS feed fits that pattern. The worked example here is how we would plan it, with 1,200 jobs handled cleanly, a handful of sector pages built first and a quarterly report in enquiries and fees.
If you are comparing proposals and want to talk the questions above through with someone, get in touch and we will happily go through them with you.
