Recruiting SEO Expertise for International Travel Co.
About Our Client
Our marketing recruiting client is an online travel firm that specializes in last minute luxury hotel bookings. These are predominately in major tourist cities throughout the US and Europe. Their main market share is in Paris, London, Berlin, Las Vegas, Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and San Diego.
Given the nature of their business, a strong online presence with high organic search ranking is paramount. They have a staff of content editors but no real formal editorial contacts for link building. Their marketing recruitment efforts for senior search engine marketing personnel have failed to meet mid and even less ambitious goals.
Thin financial margins made paid strategies such as PPC not as viable. Therefore recruiting a digital marketing SEO expert was a high-stakes endeavor. The individual whom they would be staffing would need to have technical SEO expertise, leadership and vision.
Moreover, the SEO recruitment project had a finite budget. The executives at the firm realized the headwinds that were facing them.
Confronting Search Engine Recruitment Hurdles
Recruiting an expert SEO employee had its hurdles. Most SEO recruitment projects quickly fell apart. This was either due to an inability to analyze site visitor analytics and turn that into actionable insight.
Additionally, strategies to increase organic traffic failed. Creativity amongst the marketing team declined. Their ambition and proficiency in creating unique, competitive landing pages became nearly non-existent.
SEO marketing recruiting strategies left a gap in efficiency and accuracy. Moreso, the firm ranked outside of the top 3 for most of the competitive keyword phrases. In conjunction, a high bounce rate to existing pages cost money in the form of buyer conversions.
Logically Analyzing Prior Recruiting Mistakes
When they recruited their last digital SEO manager, it was made evident that this problem needed to be addressed and taken care of.
Unfortunately, the marketing employee was unable to do so. After their tenure, nearly all of the negative digital indicators were present.
These included things such as:
- Reduction in organic traffic
- Reduction in repeat visitors
- Reduction in pages per visit
- Reduction in time spent on site
- Slow and clunky user experience
- Content lacked interesting and fresh themes
- Inconsistent, unclear messaging
Conversion rates, revenues per visitor, and organic search rankings suffered greatly. This put the future of the firm at risk. Therefore, recruiting a marketing SEO expert and getting it right meant more than most occasions. To bolster their search engine marketing recruitment efforts, they contracted the SEO recruitment team at KAS placement.
“Due to the increasingly technical and vague nature of Search Engine Optimization, companies rely on KAS due to their digital marketing and SEO recruiting prowess. They have for years.”
Defining the Marketing Job
The new SEO marketing leader was to be tasked with completely overhauling the firm’s search engine strategy. To meet the core job goals, they would need to:
- Educate all employees on proper SEO strategy
- Overhaul the current marketing staff
- Expand editorial contact list for link building
- Substantially improve ranking of competitive keywords
- Manage website redesign
- Encourage consistent learning and growth
- Keep up to date on new search trends
“HR initiatives need to be organized with a goal of defining the process, perceived priorities. Also, it’s imperative to increase recruiting accuracy while decreasing time to hire.”
The Solution
KAS’s SEO marketing recruiters brought a substantial hiring advantage. Among other things, one was an in-depth knowledge of both organic search as well as the travel industry. Immediately, interviews became more accurate and candidates more relevant. Alongside additional positive out comes, the SEO marketing recruitment team was able to:
- Implement a newer, more effective interview process
- Create a compelling, engaging story behind the role
- Present the challenges of the job in an exciting manner
- Update offer letter to be more informative, eye-catching, and unique
- Prioritize which mission-critical skills that an applicant would need
- Overhaul the assessment strategy
SEO Marketing Recruiting Results
The newly hired Vice President of Sales increased productivity, increased employee satisfaction, decreased turnover, and lastly increased new client acquisition by a substantial margin.
68%
DECREASE IN BOUNCE RATE
43%
INCREASE IN USER RETENTION
54%