However, I have to disagree about the work-a-rounds. Including a logo and limited information is not the same as fully branding the client and seems to be the standard practice. Many of these work-a-rounds do not even link to the career sites. That means the candidates that are applying are not learning about the employer or the employer’s culture, which is usually not good for candidate quality.

Also, the work-a-rounds are only temporary fixes. When those contracts are over and/or those mirror sites are shut down, the client’s ranking is no better off. It’s almost as if they have “leased” search engine placement. Those same funds could have been invested in meaningful changes to the career site’s usability, accessibility, organization, functionality and content that would have made long-term impact.

I understand the motivation for using a work-a-round, however I am advocating for optimizing the career site.

Keep in mind also that some career website’s would need a complete re-design in order to be search engine friendly. Career sites that are built with frames or pop-up’s don’t have much of a chance for being successful organically.

I agree that SEO should not be your only strategy but it is certainly an important one these days with all the job related searches being done directly within the search engines.

PPC or SEM is another tactic as Morgan pointed out but one thing to keep in mind is even paid advertising requires SEO, if your pages are not optimized to fit Google’s quality guidelines you’ll end up paying way more then the guy who has optimized their landing pages.

There are some shady service providers out there, if anyone promises you specific rankings or mentions being able to get you 100’s of links for pennies – Run!