Indeed is stopping free organic traffic: Here’s what to do now
If you work in recruitment, you’ll know how Indeed works. Anyone can post a live role to Indeed, whether through an integration or manually. Indeed then lists that job advert on their website, and Indeed visitors can click through to your application page. For years, Indeed’s business model has been all about increasing the visibility of the posting for a fee, featuring it or sharing it with their incredibly large database, while still retaining the option for anyone to post a job and enjoy the ‘free’ organic traffic from Indeed’s listing. However, that is all about to change as Indeed looks to improve overall quality of job postings, levelling the playing field for recruitment agencies of all sizes.
Indeed have announced they will be ‘switching off’ the organic traffic that comes from job postings from their third party agencies, instead opting for a business model that still allows for excellent visibility, albeit at a price. Indeed’s reasoning stems from the amount of poor quality, mass-posted roles that make it difficult for smaller or niche roles to stand out from the crowd. They say it’s all about featuring high quality jobs, and that introducing a sponsorship model will deter job posters who are sharing jobs that may seen as spam or scam.
The knock-on effect here is that recruitment agencies who enjoy a steady flow of free traffic from their postings on Indeed will see the tap turned off, pretty much immediately. If you’re used to seeing website visitors coming from Indeed, even if you haven’t paid Indeed a penny, then you can expect that to stop pretty much straight away.
This is bad news if you’re used to working with little or no budget for Indeed. If you have live roles, then they will be flagged and you’ll be asked to sponsor them for a nominal fee, as well as a joining fee to become part of the Indeed family. If you see the value in this, and understand Indeed’s decision, then you’ll need to expect to sponsor every job you want to feature on Indeed, and if their strategy works, you’ll see more traffic and better applications.
If you don’t have the budget for this extra outgoing, you need to rethink your Indeed strategy.
However, there is a better option, that could save you money on your overall Indeed spend, meaning the impact of Indeed’s halt on free traffic doesn’t become an additional cost. Thanks to our status as a preferred Indeed partner, we have additional tools and privileges that could translate into a discount, which could more than cover sponsorship, depending on your net spend with Indeed.
On top of that, we can optimise your Indeed posts and spend to ensure you’re getting solid ROI. This includes in-depth reporting, better targeting, and negotiating with your Indeed account manager on your behalf, saving you additional time and effort. This won’t cost you anything extra.
So if you’re affected by Indeed’s update to their organic traffic policy, you’ve got three options: pay to sponsor your jobs, forget Indeed exists as a free source of candidates, or reach out to Artfully to retain your traffic, and hopefully save some costs along the way. As this change has probably already happened if you’re reading this, then it’s time to act!
