VHR Global Technical Recruitment is a recruitment company that works in the aerospace, automotive, marine and engineering sectors. The recruitment industry is famously competitive, so the business had to find a way to stand out and get more traffic to their website.
Analysing the data they had from their website was massively helpful in understanding their position in the market, and then in planning how to move forward. The first step was in understanding what their audience responded to.
The company’s audience is made up of potential clients, potential candidates and existing candidates. Segmenting these visitors into different categories was the first step in breaking down what they wanted. All candidates are looking to find new jobs, make themselves more employable or looking to get ahead in their careers.
All clients want to find a trustworthy recruitment agency that understands what they’re looking for in their staff. Knowing this, VHR was able to start experimenting new content for those audiences, and could measure incoming data to see if they got more traffic.
The UK government needs to up its game to take advantage of data’s golden age
It takes time
Over two years, traffic to the website has more than doubled, thanks to understanding of what the visitors want. Towards the end of 2018, VHR began a new content-lead marketing strategy to improve their website ranking, as well as to increase engagement with their existing audience. Being able to see what content gets the most clicks meant they could focus their efforts on creating more engaging content that resonated with their audience.
This strategy has seen their blog traffic rise steadily over the last three months. The average monthly traffic has more than doubled in the last six months, going from 2,900 to 6,900. In January of 2018 there were only 23 pieces of content produced and uploaded onto the site. In October of 2018 alone, there were 51 blog posts, which has massively helped attract more visitors to the site and convince more candidates to sign up.
Furthermore, data allowed VHR to see how long people spent on individual pages. This was improved by careful experimentation with pop-ups and visuals which augmented the pages they wanted people to stay on. This level of knowledge was only possible through analysis of the website data.
Improving the site and creating SEO rich content also saw the business climb Google’s search rankings. The company’s Google impressions have risen month-on-month also, going from 75,000 to 111,000 per month in just six months. This means more visits to the site and more leads for the business. This is all driven by data — without hard numbers any ‘optimisation’ is just conjecture.
Using data analytics to improve business processes and reduce waste
“The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognise” — Shigeo Shingo. Read here
The data analysis game
Through analysis of who visits the site and the pages they go on, VHR have been able to improve the number of leads and conversions that come through the website. In July of 2018, there was only one lead generated through the website. After applying more rigorous data analysis to how potential leads navigated through the site, this number rose to four and five and October and November respectively by making those leads’ journeys easier. In less than eighteen months they managed to increase lead generation by 500% thanks to utilising the data their analytics collected.
In terms of ROI, the company has a small marketing team that works on creating content, and analysing the data to optimise that content and the website to ensure continued growth. The revenue generated by new business far outweighs the cost of a data analyst, and the level of insight gained through that analysis grants a deeper understanding of the market, the audience, and trends that may lead to more opportunities in the future. In the future we may see AI systems providing further levels of analysis, finding patterns that humans never could.
How to create a global SEO strategy
If you have a Google Analytics and Search Console account, you already have everything you need to start tracking how your website performs. Most Content Management Systems (CMS) will let you see how well individual pages or pieces of content perform. Having access to data about your audience will give you greater insight into who is visiting your site, and how you can better engage with them.
Data allows you to accurately measure all your efforts, allowing you to experiment with total clarity over which variables are having an impact on your business.
Understanding what you’re doing and how it’s moving you forward means you can have a more clinical approach to your business, removing large elements of risk because you have a level of insight that simply wasn’t possible twenty years ago.
Data has become a core part of VHR’s growth strategy, and has been pivotal in their success over the last two years.
