Greg's Corner

Geebo reaches site traffic milestone as focus on job listings attracts visitors

When you run your own business and the economy turns sour, there are tough decisions that you sometimes have to make. Some owners look at ways to scale back their operations. Others look for opportunity to expand.

And still others – like myself – look for ways to adjust.

Over at Geebo, we understand the diversity of a site that hosts classified ads. Some people are looking for a more economical car while others may be in search of a roommate. What we noticed was an uptick in searches for jobs – and immediately shifted our own resources to focus on job seekers.

I identified the most visited area of the site and focused all of my efforts in that one section. Direct employers, recruiters, employment specific advertising agencies and stand-alone jobs boards are always looking for new outlets to distribute their jobs and, with that growth in job volume, the eyeballs to those listings followed.

It appears that shift in strategy was a good call. In August, Geebo reached a site traffic milestone of more than 1 million monthly unique visitors. That’s a 180 percent increase over the same month a year earlier and enough to land Geebo in the second-place spot for most-visited classifieds site, excluding craigslist, according to market research firm compete.com.

And, as the projections for economic conditions in the coming months appear to be brighter, Geebo is well-positioned to ride the wave. Earlier this month, a CareerBuilder survey found that 26 percent of employers have plans to add permanent full-time employees in the fourth quarter, an increase of five percentage points from 2011 and closely mirroring pre-recession estimates of 27 percent.

Through various marketing initiatives, Geebo has been working to ensure that job seekers are kept informed of new vacancies in the job market the moment new listings are posted to Geebo. Likewise, we’ve identified new job distribution partners and implemented efforts around Search Engine Optimization in an effort to drive job seekers to Geebo.

Sometimes, in business, it’s not just about understanding the challenges that are ahead but how to adapt and adjust in a way that allows you to turn those challenges into opportunities.