Job Posting Organic Visibility on Indeed

Get the Scoop on Indeed’s Organic Visibility (Free) Option

At select plan levels, HiringThing offers you the option to post your active jobs to Indeed.com to reach out to Indeed’s 140 million unique visitors each month through organic visibility. We get asked a lot of questions about how this works by employers so we thought to ourselves, there’s no time like the present to share as much info as we can with our employers about how the organic visibility option for Indeed works.

What is Organic Visibility?

Let’s start with an explanation of what exactly organic visibility is. Indeed sources job postings for its job board through a variety of means, including receiving jobs through a live feed from Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS’s) like HiringThing. Employers also have the option to pay for premium sponsorship for their job posting to bump the posting’s visibility in a job seeker’s search results. When we refer to organic visibility, it means that a job posting is “ranked solely by relevance or date” in an Indeed.com website visitor’s job search results. “These are the latest jobs related to your search query, and will naturally fall back in search results over time as new roles are added.” For more information, check out Indeed’s FAQ article on the topic.

Indeed does conduct a very thorough review process before they will post your active jobs and give them organic visibility to job seekers. This review process is performed by Indeed’s Search Quality Team, whose job is to evaluate job postings to make sure they are unique, high-quality jobs posted by legitimate companies.

How to Get Organic Visibility Through HiringThing

Now that we’ve clarified the difference between organic visibility and a premium sponsored (paid) job posting, you probably want to know how to get this organic visibility for your job postings through your HiringThing account. At select plan levels, the “Indeed.com Free” option is available under the “Free Options” section of your Online Recruiting Manager on the Post to Job Boards page.

Before you select the “Indeed.com Free” option for your active positions, take a look at the following guidelines for job postings provided by Indeed to make sure that your postings meet their criteria. If your job postings don’t meet these basic criteria, Indeed’s Search Quality Team will reject them. This may hurt your chances of being considered again in the future, so it’s worth the time spent to review your postings before you submit them.

Indeed’s Job Posting Guidelines

Review the following guidelines provided by Indeed to make sure your job postings are up to snuff.

• Location Blasting: When you have a single position you are hiring for and you create multiple job postings in different geographic locations (city/state/region) for that single position, Indeed considers this to be location blasting and will reject your postings. If you want to advertise a single position in multiple locations, you can list out the locations in which you are hiring right in the job description text.
• Unique Job Posting: Indeed only accepts unique job postings. This means that your job posting cannot be listed on Indeed from any other source. If you are posting to Indeed directly and want to start posting through your HiringThing account to save yourself some time, you’ll need to make sure you stop posting directly to Indeed before you submit your postings for the free option through your HiringThing account.
• Job Title: Do not include locations in your job title and make sure your job title is a standardized title that isn’t spammy. Indeed does not like to see locations in the job title since the location is already in the job posting via the city/state/country fields. For example, “Recruiter (Dallas, TX)” should just be “Recruiter.” Stay away from spammy job titles like “ EARN CASH – WORK FROM HOME .”
• “Poor Quality” Job Description: Indeed’s main focus is on the job seeker and they make it their mission to provide job seekers with only unique, high quality jobs. As such, their Search Quality Team will reject any job postings that are too short or that they deem to be “poor quality.” You can find more information on Indeed’s suggestions for crafting top notch job descriptions and titles in their eBook here.
• Clear Application Process: It’s important to Indeed to accept only job postings that have a clear application process that isn’t overly complex for job seekers. Luckily, using HiringThing to provide job seekers with an online application form makes that part of Indeed’s criteria easy to comply with. Just don’t go overboard with setting up your custom screening questions through Form Builder (for example, setting up 100 required screening questions on your application form would probably be considered “overly complex” by Indeed).
• Staffing Firms: If you are a staffing firm and you are only posting direct jobs for your own company, you can submit your active job postings for organic visibility. If you are posting jobs for your clients, Indeed views these postings as duplicates of postings they may be receiving from your client directly (whether or not they are) and, as such, Indeed will assign your client job postings “sponsored-only visibility” on their job board. That means job seekers will only see your client job postings if you buy a paid Indeed advertisement for them.

Submitting Your Active Job Postings for Organic Visibility on Indeed

The first step toward getting organic visibility for your active job postings is to check the box next to the “Indeed.com Free” option via the Online Recruiting Manager on the Post to job Boards page.

What happens next? Once you’ve selected the “Indeed.com Free” option for your job postings, we will conduct an initial review to make sure they comply with Indeed’s guidelines (see above) before submitting them to Indeed’s Search Quality Team for the official Indeed review process. What is the official Indeed review process, you ask? Only Indeed’s Search Quality Team knows the answer to that. It’s a closely guarded process kept as secret as Google’s famous (or infamous) algorithm.

How long does it take? This depends entirely on Indeed. The first time you submit your job postings, the process can be as fast as a few days or as long as a couple of weeks, depending on the Search Quality Team’s current workload. They have to review every aspect of your job posting as well as your company to make sure the posting meets their criteria and that your company is legitimate (and not a scam). The good news is that once the team has reviewed your company and postings once, any subsequent job postings you submit should be posted within 24 hours, provided the postings meet Indeed’s guidelines.

What can I do while I’m waiting for Indeed’s Search Quality Team to review my postings? You can always purchase a paid advertisement for your open position on Indeed.com. This is called a “sponsored job” which gives your job posting premium placement in search results and is the most effective way to reach the largest number of qualified candidates, according to Indeed. To purchase a sponsored job ad for your active posting through your HiringThing account, just select the paid Indeed option via the Online Recruiting Manager on the Post to Job Boards page.

Defining a job promotion strategy for your active positions is one of the fun parts of the recruiting process. It is completely up to you to decide whether you want to include the organic visibility option on Indeed in your job marketing plan. If you do want to include it, this article is designed to help you through the process of getting your postings submitted and approved by Indeed. There are plenty of other job marketing options to consider in order to create a well-rounded marketing strategy for your jobs. For additional recommendations, consider sharing your job postings to your social media channels and tapping into your employee referral network.

Related Resources

• Innovative Strategies to Improve Recruiting and Retention
• The HiringThing Guide to DEI Recruiting
• Seven Steps to Selecting the Right Job Board

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