Ensuring That the Career Site Adheres to Leading Practices

Optimizing your customer's career site will help deliver better information to search engines so that your content can be properly indexed and displayed within search results. We follow SEO leading practices as we implement career sites and work with our customers to get their jobs in front of interested and qualified candidates. To achieve this, Career Site Builder manages some elements for successful SEO out of the box, through automatically incorporating elements that support SEO.

Career Site Builder provides the following for our customers:

• Search engine-friendly career site
• Responsive site
• Automatic daily sitemap updates

To further improve SEO, there are important considerations that a consultant must consider when building a customer's career site:

• Ensuring jobs are prioritized in major search engine results through the inclusion of metadata.
• Maximizing Career Site Builder features to improve SEO within CSB pages and job distribution strategies.

The following capabilities help to increase search engine optimization, helping customers get their jobs in front of interested and qualified candidates: 

• For most applicant tracking systems (ATS), search engine crawlers can’t follow links to get to the jobs, so their jobs don’t show up in search engine results. SAP SuccessFactors solves this problem by importing jobs from the ATS and putting them on a search engine-friendly site.
• One of the places search engines look to determine what type of keywords to associate with a page is the web address, or URL. Most pages in an ATS are filled with numbers, symbols, and unrelated text. Example: https://jobDetails.do?functionName=getJobDetail&jobPostld=140552&localeCode=en-us
• When we create pages, we include the name of the page in the URL to improve SEO. Example: https://careers.SuccessFactors.com/go/Boston-Sales-Jobs/242462/

Search engines rank sites not only based on content but also on how appropriate the site is for the device they are performing the search on. Responsive design is a way of designing websites that allows optimal viewing (meaning easy navigation and reading, and minimal scrolling) across a wide range of devices, including mobile, tablets, and desktops. Utilizing a responsive career site improves rankings for all search results across websites. All Career Site Builder sites are responsive.

Just before go-live on the production environment, the consultant will submit sitemaps to Google and Bing. Once the sitemaps are in place, no additional action is required, unless your customer changes the domain of their career site, such as a brand name change. When SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting runs its nightly maintenance, sitemaps are updated with any changes to the job collection or landing pages.

As search engine crawlers read the bottom of each job page, they come across links to related job categories. Like the segments on the bottom of the page, these links also increase relevant keywords and provide more links for the search engines.

The site-wide metadata is set from Settings → Site Configuration → Site Information. This information is used if it is not replaced at the page level. For the Description, include the company name, "jobs" or "careers," strategic positions the company is hiring for (for hospitals, for example, list doctors, nurses, and so on). If the company has just one location, also include that.

For the Description, include the company name, "jobs" or "careers," strategic positions the company is hiring for (for hospitals, for example, list doctors, nurses, and so on). If the company has just one location, also include that.

To populate page metadata, consider the following:

• Important: Unique metadata should be specified for every page of the site. This is a leading practice and increases SEO value.
• Do this by navigating to the page, selecting the gear icon, and selecting Tags or Meta Tags.
• Enter unique metadata for pages of:
  • Each page type (with the exception of landing pages): home, content, and category.
  • Each Locale, in the appropriate language.
  • Each Brand.
• On a category page for sales jobs, for example, include a description such as Apply online for Best Run Sales Jobs.

Metadata (also known as meta tags) help tell search engines and users what your site is about.

Metadata contains the following main elements:

• Page Title (or Title tag): Your site’s Page Title is the heading that is displayed as a blue link in the search results. The Page Title is considered the single most important element on the page for telling the search engines what the page is about and which keywords to focus on. Titles should be 70 characters or less including spaces and should lead with the most important keyword. In addition to site-wide metadata, every page should have a unique Title and Description. The Page Title also displays on the browser tab.

  

• Description (or Meta Description): The description appears directly below the title and URL in the search engine listing. For example, when a user is viewing search results on Google, the results will display the URL and the description.  Your page’s Description should contain similar information to your Page Title (namely a targeted keyword), but not be exactly the same; it should be used to describe concisely what the web page is about. The Page Description should be limited to approximately 160 characters including spaces.

  • If you go over the word count, the copy will not be shown on the search engine results page. Also be aware not to "keyword stuff" (use the same keyword more than once in your Description).

  • A well-written description not only tells users what is on your page, but also entices them to visit your site. A description is what shows up here in the search engine results. It is like good window dressing. Sites with poor descriptions will get less click-throughs and the search engines will demote your site in favor of other sites.

  • Do not use quotes or any non-alpha characters (Google cuts them out of the meta description).

  

• Keywords: The importance of including keywords has decreased in recent years, as search engines no longer view the keyword tag as a major factor when ranking results. The only search engine that looks at the keywords anymore is Microsoft’s Bing – and they use it to help detect spam.

  • It is still extremely important to conduct keyword research, keeping you aware of what terms visitors are searching for in order for you to optimize for those phrases.

  • Using keywords in the content is much more important than populating the keywords in the metadata.

Management of SEO settings for avoiding undesired search terms include the following considerations:

• Undesired terms may be widely linked on the internet and end up in Google's index. Then if a customer posts their jobs to Indeed and a candidate finds a job via Indeed's search, for example, that search term can end up in the Top Jobs page on the customer’s career site.
• Customers can use Terms to Avoid to prevent search engines from indexing specific terms and suppresses them from being part of the Top Jobs results.
• Start each new term or phrase in a new line and don't include the word "job" in your terms.
• Customers can enter specific terms under Terms to Demote so that those display at the end of the result set. This is not commonly done. In this example, the term shown could be entered in Terms to Demote, so that it does not display on the first page of the Top Jobs listing.

Building SEO value for a page takes time – more time than most job postings allow for. When we build customer career sites, we consider their hiring priorities and job collection to build category pages based on popular search terms. We include these search terms, or keywords, in strategic places both on page and in the metadata.

While the jobs on each page come and go, by building category pages to host the jobs, SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting builds lasting SEO value.

Career Site Builder also generates a page that lists the category pages built for the site. This is enabled in the footer using the View all jobs link. The leading practice is to include Top Jobs and View all jobs in the footer. These pages are indexed by Google.

Customers may choose not to enable Top Jobs to prevent undesired search terms from appearing on this page. View all jobs, the list of category pages, is especially useful to increase SEO value.

When candidates search for jobs they usually include the word "Jobs" in their search term. Including "Job" in the page title and in the URL helps identify the page as a job to the search engines, and as these jobs post to pages, they create relevant, dynamic content to improve the SEO value of pages.

As search engine crawlers read the bottom of each job page, they come across links to related job categories. Like the segments on the bottom of the page, these links also increase relevant keywords and provide more links for the search engines.

Considerations for the Organic Network include:

• Be sure to offer your customer free daily all-jobs delivery to a number of job boards that SAP has relationships with.
• For your customer’s jobs to be posted to the Organic Network, they must sign the authorization form from SAP PartnerEdge. You attach the form to the Referral Engine Task Support Ticket after the customer's career site is moved to Production.
• For more information and a listing of the partners included in the Organic Network program, see the XML Feed Sources & Job Board Distribution document, available on SAP PartnerEdge.

Navigation in screen readers includes the following considerations:

• Audio interfaces present content linearly to users, one item at a time. Despite the linear nature of audio interfaces, screen readers do provide ways for users to navigate content quickly.

• One way is to use the Tab key to jump from link to link. This gives the user an idea of where the page links to, and can be a useful way to run through the content if the user is looking for a specific link. A related technique is to obtain a list of the links on the page, arranged alphabetically. The drawback of these methods is that the user does not hear any of the non-link content, and may miss important information this way.

• Another way to get an overall impression of a page's content is to jump from heading to heading. Users can hear an outline of the page's main ideas, then backtrack to read the parts they are most interested in. The main drawback to this technique is that it relies on headings, so it is important that they are included. To the extent possible, the headings should represent an accurate outline of the content.

• Users can navigate via ARIA landmarks and HTML5 sectioning elements, such as <main>, <nav>, <header>, and so on.

• Users can jump from paragraph to paragraph, listening to the first sentence or two before moving on to the next paragraph. When possible, place the distinguishing information of a paragraph in the first sentence.

• Skip links at the top of the page allow users to bypass the main navigation and go directly to the main content. They speed up the reading process and help users distinguish between the main navigation and the main content.

To populate the first level heading, consider the following points:

• First level headings should contain the most important heading of the page, generally the document title, to convey what the page is about.

• Career Site Builder adds a <h1> tag for each page automatically, from the Page Title, but it is typically not displayed. The site is still considered to be within accessibility guidelines.

• The home page of a Career Site Builder site will take on the Page Title from Settings → Site Configuration → Site Information, but it is not displayed on the page.

  

• For other page types, the tag is taken from the Page Title for that page, and is hidden by default.

• On Category pages, however, the tag can be visible or hidden.

To check for empty headings, consider the following points:

• Screen reader and keyboard users often navigate by heading elements. An empty heading will present no information and may introduce confusion.

• Basically, any element that has a header should have it populated, but you can hide it.

Consider the following when choosing images:

• Use images with a strong focal point because they capture user attention.
• Use a consistently placed focal point for image sliders.
• Use a diverse selection of imagery to keep users engaged.
• Consider diversity in background/foreground, location, and subject matter.

Identify the focal point "Safe Zone" per component.

• The "Safe Zone" per component will vary by the height/width of how it has been configured to display on desktop/tablet/mobile.

• Identify the "Safe Zone" by viewing the finalized dimensions of your component on each device type.

Wide cropped images allow for versatility in the following ways:

• More flexibility for additional cropping and overlaying elements in the layout

• Images can be easily modified in a variety of components and layouts 

When using the Large Image component, consider optimizing the image for mobile and adding the component twice, once for desktop/tablet and one for mobile. This is especially useful if there is text on the image. However, if there are many components on the page, restrict duplicating image components to prevent long page load times. 

Images are provided by the customer by granting access to an image library, logon to a photo site, or a zip file of images.

• The customer is responsible for delivering images that conform to the guidelines. Direct them to Image Recommendations in the Setting Up and Maintaining SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting guide.

• A minimum of 15 to 20 high resolution employment brand images is required.

• The following media types can be used in Career Site Builder: GIF, ICO, JPG, JPEG, PNG, SVG.
  • Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images render correctly regardless of display or layout size. For this reason, a single SVG image of the customer’s logo can be used for both desktop and mobile layouts of the career site.
  • If the image needs to be resized, the customer can use an application to resize large SVG files to the desired size.

• All Career Site Builder images should be oriented as landscape, not portrait.

• Include Alt Text for each image to improve the accessibility of the site. See the Accessibility section for details.

• For background images, choose subtle patterns and colors.

• Text on images is a dated web practice and is not recommended.

• Image sliders are not a recommended practice.

Alt text (also referred to as alternative text or alt tags) are used to describe the images on your web page. It is important to add alt text to the photos on your website for the following main reasons:

• If images fail to load: If for any reason an image does not render on a web page, the alt tag will display in its place. This means visitors to that web page understand what image should be there even though they are unable to see it.

• For search engines: Search engines, such as Google and Bing regularly crawl web pages. It is easy for them to understand text copy on a page, however, images are difficult to read. This is where alt text comes to play. Alt text is used to describe to search engines what the image is showing, allowing them to give users better results when performing an image search. Alt text also improves the SEO value of the site.

• For screen readers: Some users use screen readers in order to browse web pages. These screen readers will identify and interpret what is being displayed on their screen. For this reason, it is important to convey contextual information in alt text that will explain the image in more detail.

Alt text should be populated for all images, in all languages. Enter unique alt text for each image. Include any unique or relevant content about the image. Add alt text from the Image Selector window. You can add it when you upload an image, or add it later.

Be sure to provide alt text for logos, too.

To check for nearby images that have the same alt text, consider the following:

• When two images have the same alt text, this often causes redundancy or indicates incorrect alt text.

• Remove unnecessary redundancy and ensure that the alt text for each image is appropriate.

• The only time that you don’t need to include alt text is when the image is used as a decorative background image.

Some considerations regarding embedded text on images include the following:

• Embedded text cannot be read by screen readers or search engines.

• The leading practice is not to use embedded text on images.

• If the customer wants to retain images that contain embedded text, add alt text to the image.

• Note that web accessibility tools such as WAVE cannot detect embedded text on images.

To check for empty links, consider the following points:

• If a link contains no text, the function or purpose of the link will not be presented to the user, which can create confusion for screen reader users.

• The most common issue is leveraging embedded text on images as a link.

• Remove the empty link or provide title text within the link that describes the functionality and/or target of the link. Or add alt text to the image.

To replace or remove redundant title text, consider the following points:

• Anything that has a link should also have a title tag. The title text typically appears when the user hovers the mouse over a link.

• The title text is used to provide advisory information; specifically, it should indicate what the link actually does. What specifically is on that page? What will you learn there?

• As a leading practice, the title text should be different from the link name, but it is better to use redundant title text than to not populate it.

In some areas, the product duplicates the link text as title text in the background, so it’s not marked as an accessibility error. There is no way to modify this.

Consider the following points when removing redundant links:

• When adjacent links go to the same location (such as to a product page), this results in additional navigation and repetition for screen reader and keyboard users.
• Adjacent links that go to the same location should be combined, or one should be removed.
• Three column components use the same link for the header, link, and image, as shown in the figure. This cannot be changed. You could remove the link from the image as shown in the second image in the figure, or you could remove the header and/or separate link.

The original search grid format does not meet accessibility guidelines and makes it difficult for people with visual impairments to find jobs on the career site.

Work with your customer to enable the Unified Data Model so candidates can use the enhanced accessible search functionality.

The Google Job Map is maintained externally and does not adhere to all accessibility guidelines.

Customers can now configure the map to display a previously hidden message that was only readable from a screen reader. From the Google Map Component, enable Show Heading. From Tools → Translations, change the provided text. Click the link to open a page populated with a search bar and search results.

SAP does not host videos. Direct your customer to first post the videos for their career site to YouTube, Wistia, or Vimeo. Customers need to provide the direct path to the location where the video is hosted online.

• An option is provided to turn on auto-play, but it is important to note that it is not best practice.
• Keep the videos short. The recommended length is 30–60 seconds.
• Include an informative title and brief description for the video.