Most recruitment agency owners searching this phrase aren't lost. They've already worked out that their website isn't pulling its weight on client enquiries, and they're trying to figure out which type of help will fix it. This article lays out the three real options - a freelance recruitment copywriter, a general SEO agency, or a specialist like recSEO - so you can make the call quickly and get on with running your desk.
What does a recruitment copywriter do?
A recruitment copywriter writes words for recruitment businesses. That might be job adverts, candidate-facing emails, LinkedIn posts, website copy, or blog content. They're usually hired by the piece or on a retainer, and the quality varies enormously depending on whether they've worked inside recruitment or just written about it from the outside.
The best recruitment copywriters are useful. They understand the language of a CFO hire differently to a warehouse operative vacancy. They know the difference between a retained search pitch deck and a PSL submission. That domain knowledge matters.
The question is: what are you hiring them to do?
If you need a homepage rewrite, a pitch deck, or a handful of bespoke job adverts, a freelance recruitment copywriter is probably the right call. They'll charge anywhere from £50 to £150+ per hour, or quote per project - a blog post might cost £200 to £500+ depending on length, research depth and the writer's specialism.
What they typically won't bring, unless you specifically brief them for it:
- Keyword research tied to what your prospective clients are searching
- On-page SEO structure (answer-first format, heading hierarchy, internal links)
- FAQ schema or any other structured data
- GEO-readiness - writing formatted so AI engines can extract and cite the content
- Ongoing optimisation once a post is live
A talented copywriter can produce a beautifully written blog post that nobody ever finds. That's not their fault - it's not what most of them were hired to build.
What does a general SEO agency do - and where does it fall short for recruitment?
A general SEO agency is usually strong on the technical and mechanical side of getting found. They'll run a site audit, fix crawl errors, build backlinks, do keyword research across your domain, and probably write or commission blog content as part of a package.
The gap tends to show up in the content itself.
General SEO agencies write for search engines first. The blog posts they produce often feel generic because they're generic - written by a content team with no recruitment background, briefed on a keyword, and optimised for a word count. When a hiring manager at a mid-market professional services firm lands on that post and reads it, they can tell immediately that it wasn't written by someone who's ever sat across from a CFO and talked through a search brief.
That matters more than it used to. Google's Helpful Content guidance has consistently pushed toward content that demonstrates real first-hand experience and expertise. Thin, keyword-stuffed content doesn't get cited.
The other issue with a general SEO agency is positioning. They're optimising your website to be found. They're not usually thinking about whether the content makes you look like the expert choice when a prospective client reads it. Those two things need to happen at the same time.
How do the three options compare?
Here's a side-by-side. The columns reflect what each option typically delivers - not the best-case version of each, but the realistic version you'd get.
| - | Freelance recruitment copywriter | General SEO agency | recSEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Writes for recruitment | Yes - usually strong on tone and niche fluency | Rarely - generic content teams | Yes - every post is written and edited by a copywriter who was a recruiter |
| Keyword research (client-facing) | Rarely included | Yes - but often candidate-skewed or generic | Yes - recruitment-specific, client-intent keywords |
| On-page SEO structure | Only if specifically briefed | Yes | Yes - answer-first format, one primary term per post |
| FAQ schema / AI-ready format | Rarely | Sometimes | Yes - built into every post |
| GEO / AI engine visibility | No | Occasionally | Yes - structured for AI citation |
| Makes agency look credible to clients | Yes - if the writer is strong | Rarely - content is functional, not credibility-building | Yes - this is an explicit goal of every post |
| Named primary sources | Varies | Rarely | Yes - sourced content makes the agency look expert and citable |
| Ongoing, monthly delivery | Possible but requires management | Usually | Yes - monthly, managed |
| Starting price (UK) | Per post; rates vary | Monthly retainer; varies | From £209/month |
| Human edited | Yes | Often not | Yes - every post |
Which option is right for which type of agency?
You probably need a freelance recruitment copywriter if...
You need something written once and written brilliantly - a homepage, a pitch deck, a capabilities brochure, a key service page. These are one-off projects where the craft of the writing is the whole job, and ongoing delivery or SEO structure aren't the priority.
If you've already got a blog running and just need someone to write the odd post without any particular SEO brief, a freelance copywriter is also fine. Just don't expect the posts to rank or be cited in AI answers without the underlying structure.
The challenge with freelancers is finding one who understands recruitment at a senior level and is available consistently. Good ones get booked up. And because most aren't running keyword research or thinking about your site's topical authority, the content can feel slightly disconnected over time - good individually, but not building toward anything.
You probably need a general SEO agency if...
Your entire website needs structural work - crawlability issues, a backlink strategy, technical audits, redirects after a site migration, local search optimisation. These are proper technical SEO problems that need an agency toolkit.
If your site has fundamental technical issues, no amount of good content will fully compensate. Fix the foundation first.
That said, if technical SEO is already in reasonable shape and the gap is content - specifically content that makes prospective clients find you and trust you - a general SEO agency will often get you generic output that doesn't move the needle on client enquiries.
You probably need recSEO if...
You're a recruitment agency owner who wants your blog to do two things at once: get you found by prospective clients on Google and in AI answers, and make those clients think "this agency knows their market" when they land on your site.
You don't have time to manage a freelancer or brief an SEO agency on what a retained search looks like. You want monthly content that's already structured, already keyword-researched, already formatted for AI engines, and already written by someone who understands recruitment from the inside.
recSEO is specifically built for this. The founder is a copywriter who was a recruiter. Every post is human-edited. The content is built around recruitment-specific keywords - the things your prospective clients are searching - with real market data, named sources, and answer-first structure that AI engines can extract and cite.
The goal of every post is dual: roughly half visibility (SEO and AI discoverability), roughly half credibility (making the agency look like the expert choice when someone reads it). That framing matters because most content only does one or the other.
Why "recruitment SEO content" is a different brief to "SEO content"
Think of it like this. A general SEO agency writing for a recruitment client is a bit like hiring a decorator to renovate a listed building. They know how to paint, and they'll do it competently, but they don't know which walls you're not allowed to touch, which features matter to the people who'll inspect it, or how to make it look right to someone who really knows the architecture.
Recruitment has a specific vocabulary - PSLs, preferred supplier lists, retained vs contingency, in-house vs agency, interim vs permanent, IR35, headcount freezes. A prospective client reading your content will know immediately whether the writer understands those distinctions or is winging it.
More practically: the keywords that matter for client acquisition in recruitment are different to the ones a general SEO tool will surface. "Executive search firm London" is a different intent to "best executive jobs London". If you're briefing an agency without recruitment fluency, there's a real risk of optimising for the wrong audience - and in recruitment, attracting the wrong audience (candidates when you need clients) is worse than attracting nobody, because it trains Google to send you more of the same.
What does AI visibility mean for a recruitment agency?
This is worth pausing on because it's easy to overclaim.
That includes hiring managers at the kinds of businesses you want as clients. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity "what should I look for in a specialist recruitment agency for [sector]", the answers it gives are pulled from content it can read, parse, and trust.
What gets cited is content that is:
- Structured clearly (answer-first, question-based headings, FAQs)
- Specific and credible (real data, named sources, not vague assertions)
- On-topic and expert-sounding
- Accessible to a crawler - text, not images
Generic, thin blog content doesn't get cited in AI answers. Neither does well-written-but-unstructured content. The format matters as much as the quality.
This is why GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) isn't a separate thing from good SEO content - it's what good content looks like now. The practices that make a blog post quotable to an AI engine are the same ones that make it rank well and make a client trust the agency that published it.
Being cited by an AI engine isn't something that can be guaranteed - any honest content provider should say that plainly. What can be done is making your content structurally ready to be cited: clean, specific, sourced, and answering real questions that your clients are asking.
The credibility problem most recruitment agencies don't talk about
Here's something that comes up a lot when talking to agency owners: they already know their content is thin. The blog exists because they were told they needed a blog. It's been updated sporadically. The last post was six months ago. It reads like it was written by a junior team member who was briefed on SEO but not on what the agency does.
The problem with that goes beyond ranking. When a prospective client does their due diligence - and they will - the blog actively works against you. A handful of generic posts with no named sources, no real data, and no evident expertise tells a prospective client something about how the agency operates. It signals that the agency doesn't take the client-facing side of its business seriously.
Contrast that with an agency whose blog has ten posts, each one answering a real question that hiring managers have when choosing a specialist recruiter, each one citing industry data, each one written in a voice that clearly comes from someone who understands the sector. That blog does quiet sales work every time someone visits it, even if no post ever goes viral.
That's what recSEO is building toward for the agencies we work with. Not overnight traffic, not viral posts, but a steady accumulation of credible, well-structured content that compounds over time - on Google, in AI answers, and in the mind of every prospective client who reads it.
Frequently asked questions
Can you switch between these options later?
Yes, and plenty of agencies do as their needs change. You might start with a copywriter for a website refresh, then move to an ongoing content service once you want steady search visibility. What smooths a switch is keeping ownership of your content, your site access and your strategy, so nothing is locked to one supplier.
How do the costs of these options compare?
They sit at different levels: a copywriter is usually paid per project, a general SEO agency tends to charge a larger monthly retainer, and a specialist recruitment content service falls in between with a focus on content rather than technical overhauls. Rather than choosing on headline cost, look at what each delivers each month. The cheapest option is expensive if it produces content no client ever reads.
Do you still need to be involved if you outsource to any of them?
Some involvement is always needed, because the recruitment expertise lives with you, not the supplier. The difference is how much: a good specialist needs a short input session and a review, while a generalist may need constant correction to stop the content sounding wrong for recruitment. Budget a little of your time whichever you pick, since content produced with zero founder input reads generic.
How quickly does each option produce content?
A copywriter can turn around a defined project fairly fast but stops when the brief is done. A general SEO agency often spends early months on audits and technical work before much content appears. A content-focused service is usually quickest to a steady stream of posts, since that's its whole purpose. Match the pace to whether you need a one-off fix or ongoing visibility.
What should you have ready before hiring any of them?
A clear sense of who you want to attract, which sectors you most want to win in, and any real examples or placement details you can share. The more of this you provide, the better and faster the output, whichever route you take. Turning up with nothing forces the supplier to guess, and guessed content rarely sounds like your agency.
The bottom line
There isn't one right answer for every recruitment agency - but there's a clearer frame for choosing.
If you need one-off, craft-led writing (a homepage, a pitch deck, a capabilities document), hire a good freelance recruitment copywriter. Find one who's worked in or closely alongside recruitment, brief them well, and you'll get something worth paying for.
If your site has real technical SEO problems - crawl issues, no backlinks, penalties, a broken site structure - fix those first with a proper SEO agency. Content won't compensate for a site Google can't read properly.
If you want a steady supply of client-acquisition content that's been built specifically to rank, to be cited in AI answers, and to make prospective clients trust your agency when they read it - without you having to manage the brief, the research, the SEO structure, or the editing - that's the gap recSEO was built to fill.
The agencies that tend to get the most from content marketing are usually the ones whose content has a clear audience (prospective clients, not candidates), a clear structure (something an AI engine or a Google algorithm can parse), and a credible voice (something a hiring manager can read and think: these people know their market), rather than simply the ones who publish the most.
That combination - visible and credible, every post - is harder to build than it sounds. But once it's built, it compounds.
If you want to see what that looks like for your agency, reach out to Toni or book a call to discuss further.
