How can a recruitment company get 'credit' from Google when syndicating job posts?

[Mark_Reynolds]

I'm working on an SEO strategy for a recruitment agency. Like many recruitment agencies, they write tons of great unique content each month and as agencies do, they post the job descriptions to job websites as well as their own. These job websites won't generally allow any linking back to the agency website from the post. What can we do to make Google realise that the originator of the post is the recruitment agency and they deserve the 'credit' for the content?

The recruitment agency has a low domain authority and so we've very much at the start of the process. It would be a damn shamn if they produced so much great unique content but couldn't get Google to recognise it.

Google's advice says: "Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content." - But none of that can happen. Those big job websites just won't do it.

A previous post here didn't get a sufficient answer. I'm starting to think there isn't an answer, other than having more authority than the websites we're syndicating to. Which isn't going to happen any time soon!

Any thoughts?

[jemette]

Hey Mark,

If it were me- I'd follow Dmitrii's suggestion and fetch as Google after you post it. So long as you aren't doing 500+ more of these a month, I don't see an issue with that. As far as backlinks go, there are some sites (like meetup.com) where you can sponsor posts to get backlinks. Not sure if that would help your case or not-- you could always have your agency host a networking event and start building authority that way.

That being said, what is the goal here? Backlinks or getting credit for the content? Because once you post it and index it's yours.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Well, I think you actually have two questions:

1. How to make sure that Google understands that you're original author of job post;
2. How to outrank large websites.

Well, as for q1 - the only way in your situation is to do "fetch as google" in GWT of your website's page when you just posted new job. Usually it takes just couple of minutes for Google to index it and include in SERPs. So, first make sure your website is indexed, only then start posting the same job on other job search websites.

As for q2 - that's completely different story. Even if Google understands that your website was original author, it doesn't mean whatsoever that your website is going to outrank large job websites. To make that happen, you have to try to get as many backlinks as possible to those job postings (maybe from other websites with "click for full job description"), and more backlinks to your domain in general.

Hope this helps.