Search Advertising for Recruitment Agencies: Budgets, Keywords and CPA, with Examples [2026]

Search advertising is indispensable to attracting candidates in the recruitment business.

Search advertising means the text ads that appear on a search engine’s results page, related to the search term.
A candidate clicks the ad, and from the landing page it leads to registers with your agency service.
Through careful keyword selection and optimised ad creative, it is a way of reaching the target user that many companies use.

This article covers search advertising: the overall picture, the cost per acquisition to aim at, and what to measure.

Recommended for
・Readers interested in search advertising
・Readers whose CPA is high
・Readers unhappy with the quality
・Readers not running a proper cycle of review and improvement

1. The basics of search advertising

1.1 Where search ads appear, and in what form

Search ads appear in the results of search engines such as Google and Yahoo!..
They are placed either above or below the results.
The logic of placement is explained later, but a position above the results catches the eye more and is clicked more.

1.2 The three places to run search ads

In Japan three search engines are mainly used: Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
Since search ads appear in those engines’ results, the choice of browser matters too.
Their shares are as follows, with Google overwhelmingly dominant.

The audiences may differ slightly from browser to browser, but there is no problem in starting with Google, which has by far the most users.

1.3 The conversion point for search ads

Before you start running search ads, you need to decide the conversion point.
Deciding it lets you set out what action you want from the user who sees the ad.
In the recruitment business the conversion point is registration, or a request for a free consultation..

So the first job is to sharpen the proposition and the creative so that candidates register on the ad’s landing page.

Registration matters, but as a recruitment agency you must then interview those who register, and help them win an offer so their career goes well.
So that the ad spend is not wasted, you need customer support and nurturing in place so that an interview follows registration.

2. Why recruitment agencies should take up search advertising

2.1 You reach people actively considering a move

As the chart below shows, search advertising reaches users who are considering a move right now, so you get your service efficiently in front of candidates who are keen.
Because these registrations come from users seriously considering a move, the rate at which interviews are held tends to be higher than on other channels.

Depending on the audience and the field, the search market may be saturated, in which case the judgment may be to start with Meta advertising instead.

2.2 You can start small

The advertiser sets the budget, and search ads can run on a small one.

With Google, setting a daily budget determines the monthly spend. It varies by campaign and keyword, but you can run from a few hundred yen a day.

That said, a few hundred yen a day is nowhere near enough to measure any real effect.
Use the cost per candidate by field given later, work back from the number of interviews your advisers need, and set the monthly budget from there.

2.3 It works quickly and flexibly

The other way to attract people from search engines is search engine optimisation.
Compared with SEO, search advertising is quicker to take effect and more flexible.
What you set applies at once, and you can set location, age and the rest freely.

What it does not do is build an asset. Beyond SEO, you need to see your marketing strategy whole and approach each method with its own purpose.

On SEO and content marketing in recruitment, see this article. Please see it.

3. Three keys to attracting candidates successfully with search advertising

3.1 Understand your own business

To make effective ads and win registrations, you need to be clear about what is distinctive about you — your unique selling proposition.
Specialising in a sector, carrying many vacancies, high satisfaction: make the distinctive points the ones you push.

And the user’s experience runs: search term → ad → landing page → registration.
The ad sits between the search and the landing page, and must join the two without a jolt.
So build the ad with the whole sequence in mind, taking account of the terms users search and what the landing page says.

3.2 Understand the competition

You need to know what your competitors are running as well as your own activity.

Three things to look into.
・The keywords they are bidding on
・The ads
・LP

What keywords are the competition running?
What do their ads and landing pages say to carry people through to registration? Look into that, and with your own analysis build a campaign that can beat them.

3.3 Run it well

In recruitment marketing, agencies are often used.
(The reasons are set out click here here.)
So choosing the agency matters a great deal.

We said earlier that the ad’s conversion point is registration, and that what matters is whether an interview follows.
In practice, the real result the advertising has to deliver is whether it wins good candidates and carries them through to interviews and placements.

Beyond detailed reporting and keeping CPA down, it matters that the quality of the registrations is discussed with the business side and the campaign improved accordingly.

4. How to decide the spend and the budget

4.1 How you are charged

Search advertising is charged per click..

The cost per click differs by keyword, so find out what a click costs when you advertise to your own audience.

You can cap the cost per click and control it, but setting a cap below the average can mean the ad does not show, or is not clicked — so set any cap carefully.

4.2 Setting the budget

In search advertising you set the budget as an average daily amount.
Since that is the daily average across a month, set the monthly budget divided by the number of days in the month.

Google optimises the spend so as not to miss a chance on days when clicks and conversions come more readily — when search traffic is high, or the return is predicted to be better.
So the spend on a given day may be above or below the daily average.

4.3 How to arrive at the budget

The budget is decided from two things.
① The expected cost per registration
② The number of registrations you want

That is,
budget = ① expected cost per registration × ② number of registrations

.

The expected cost per registration is arrived at as follows.
　(1) Decide the keywords to bid on
　(2) Use Google Keyword Planner to find each keyword’s monthly search volume and average cost per click
　(3) Set an expected click rate and registration rate, and run the numbers

Note: benchmarks for each figure are given later.

For ②, work back from your advisers’ monthly interview capacity to the registrations you need.

5. How ad position is determined

Position affects how well search advertising performs.
Google’s machine learning determines it from your bid and your quality score.

The bid is the most the advertiser is willing to pay for one click. Where quality scores are identical, the higher the maximum cost per click, the higher the ad appears in the results.

Quality score is determined by three things.
　・Expected click-through rate
　・Ad relevance
　・Landing page experience

6. Cost per candidate by field

Below is a table of the cost of winning a candidate through search advertising, by field.
It moves about with the company, the landing page and the season, but we hope it is a useful reference.

We run campaigns against this table, built from real results, and use it for analysis and forecasting.

7. Are there keywords you would recommend?

There are many fields — sales, administration, recent graduates and so on — and for each there are keywords we would recommend.
Having supported the marketing of more than 150 companies in the staffing and recruitment sector, we have built up the good keywords for each field.

That said, the keywords that deliver are the ones closely related to your ad, your landing page and your service.
So run the campaign on careful analysis of your own business and the competition, keep reviewing and improving, and the results will follow.

8. What to measure, the figures that matter, and the benchmarks

8.1 What to measure

In search advertising you can mainly track the following.
They differ by field, but do use the benchmark figures as a reference.

If you are already running search ads and you are below the benchmarks below, improvement is needed— so do check. There is plenty more to be had.

Item	Benchmark
Impressions	ー
Clicks	ー
Click-through rate (CTR)	3%～10%
Cost per click (CPC)	¥400–¥2,000
Registrations (conversions)	ー
Registration rate (CVR)	3%～10%
Cost per registration (CPA)	¥3,000–¥60,000

8.2 The figures that matter

The ones that matter are the click-through rate and the registration rate.

A low click-through rate can have the following causes.
・The text ad is poor quality or not relevant
・The keywords are poor quality or not relevant
・Ad extensions are not in use, or are not showing

A low registration rate can have the following causes.
・There are many wasted clicks
・The landing page is poor quality or not relevant

Check each figure and its cause, and grow the registrations.

9. Points to watch

Winning candidates through search advertising takes skill in running the campaign, but the quality of the landing page matters as much or more..

The measure used to judge a landing page is CVR — the registration rate, registrations divided by clicks.
A typical CVR is said to be 2%, but the cost per click has been rising in recent years, and each click now carries more weight.
So it is better to write it as At 2% the numbers often do not work, and our sense is that in any field a landing page now needs a CVR above 4%.

And improving CVR raises registrations, which in turn helps the advertising’s machine learning — so it is well worth working on.

The article on improving CVR is click here

10. From opening an account to going live

The sequence from opening a search advertising account to going live is as follows.
At best you can be live within about a day.
To go live smoothly, prepare the audience settings, the keywords and the ad text in advance.

①Submit the ads to a Google Ads account
② Set up conversion tracking
③ Set the details: budget, locations, audiences and so on

And since reviewing and improving after launch matters most, set up the measurement and the schedule in advance too.

11. To make search advertising work in recruitment

Do you now have the overall picture of search advertising?

It is a high-priority activity in the recruitment business.
To attract candidates efficiently, set out your own strengths and the competitive situation, and keep improving.

We have supported the marketing of more than 150 companies in the staffing and recruitment sector.
We build up the know-how to do the best possible job in each field.
If you want search advertising for recruitment to work, do get in touch.

We also offer a free account review, so please feel free to contact us.