Companies across industry will tell you that recruiting new staff is an expensive business.

But according to online recruitment consultancy 4MAT, firms can rid themselves of some of this burden in the long-term through well-targeted search engine optimisation (SEO).

Commenting in Personnel Today managing director of 4MAT, James Saunders, claims that it's "definitely possible" to reduce fees by a potential 30 per cent.

He added that many blue chip companies have problems recruiting for jobs advertised on their website because they are not focused on seo web design.

Blue chip web design in particular may be slick, but has not yet "broken the back" of SEO, according to Mr Saunders.

It will of course pain many firms that have forked out money on shaping their website to their custom corporate identity, but it could be in their best online marketing interests to start over.

As a Search Engine Watch blog post states: "Your website structure, design and content has everything to do with whether your site will rank in search engines."

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