Make your job title easy to search for

Most job seekers search by job title. So the first step to making your job posting visible to the right candidates is to know how to optimize your title. Your post will look best if your title is straightforward and reliable in the language of your industry. Avoid creative titles like 'Excel Wizard' or 'Code Ninja', as they simply don't capture as well as, for example, 'Software Engineer' - a more commonly searched title. Bhawna Singh points out that "our algorithm will rank your jobs higher if the job title is as close to what the user typed in the search box." Singh adds: "Additional information in the title, like 'Apply Now' or 'Competitive Salary' makes it less likely that your job will match the user's search."
It's best to save these additions to the job description.

Watch out for abbreviations

Most search engines are advanced enough to recognize the most common abbreviations. However, it starts to get tricky when the same abbreviated term is used differently in different industries. Therefore, you should make it clear whether your 'PA' job stands for 'Production Assistant', 'Personal Assistant' or 'Personal Accountant' to prevent your description from being published in the wrong place.

Keep geolocation away from the title

Unlike Internet search engines like Google and Bing, which filter search requests from a single common search area, all major job search sites operate on two search fields, one by job title and another by geographical location. When these search engines try to match your job to the job seeker's query, they match title-to-title and area-to-area.

Job seekers search for specific job titles above any other group or combination including geographical area. If the job title is 'Assistant Ward Nurse, Vejle Hospital' and the area is 'Vejle', the geographical designation in the title will only make it less accurate to match the job search for 'Ward Nurse', so you should drop redundant information such as geographical location in the title to more accurately reflect what the job candidate is looking for. This will boost click-through rates significantly.

Put the most important thing in the title first

An eye-tracking study from 2014 conducted by Meditative revealed that the way people look at search results differs from the way we read other forms of text. Unlike reading a piece of text line by line from left to right, people read search results verticallyby scanning the beginning of a line and then from top to bottom. Applying that knowledge to job search results, job seekers scanning through lots of job results are likely to see only a small fraction of job titles because they focus on the beginning.

To make sure that important pieces of information aren't missed, you need to customize your job titles so that the most relevant words are within the scanning window of the first 1-2 words. Below is an example of a job title that is not optimized for eye-catching. Since the first two words are in no way job title related, the job seeker is most likely to overlook this job.
To avoid this mistake, start your title with the most relevant words.

Keep an eye on the number of characters

It's wise to pay attention to length when putting together a good title for your job posting. Glassdoor has found that among the millions of job postings on the site, the typical length of a job title is between 12-20 characters. Titles within this length also have the highest click-through rate. This includes titles like Product Manager (15 characters), Sales Associate (15 characters), Business Analyst (16 characters) and Non CDL Truck Driver (20 characters).

You risk a significant drop in clicks if the number of characters in your title is extremely off in either direction. On Glassdoor, job titles over 60 characters are clicked on half as often as titles in the 10-20 character range. If this is the case for you, consider either shortening or lengthening your job titles so that they fall within the 10-20 character range. Look at which titles are most commonly used within your industry and within the level and skills you are looking for. If you're worried that your title isn't detailed enough, remember that you can always add more detail to the description later.

Formatting matters a lot

Job seekers tend to skim job descriptions, so it's crucial that your content is easily digestible. In addition to your description being inviting to the eyes, there is also an SEO benefit around formatting. Singh says: "Good search engines take into account the quality of job titles and descriptions. Misspellings and poor formatting can determine how high your job posting ranks." Give your description a well-defined structure by breaking up your text with separate paragraphs, section headings and bullet points when it makes sense.

It's especially important to pay attention to formatting when you have the same job posted on multiple pages. Be careful about copying and pasting descriptions from other job postings. Singh suggests: "If you're using different sites, it's always smart to check what each formatting looks like." Be aware that some job boards don't manage to preserve your original formatting, which will send a bad signal to you as an employer.

When crafting your job posting, remember that your goal is to create job titles and descriptions that match the job seeker's search text as closely as possible. Try to put yourself in their shoes and think about how you would conduct a job search for your particular position. The more you can mimic the way job seekers interact with search engines, the more successful your job posting will be.