Search Engine Optimization helps Manage Your Online Visibility
What do you do when negative information invades your online profile? Do you engage a reputation management consultant when bad content appears as a search result? What exactly are your options to mitigate the damage?
Search Engine Optimization for Reputation Management
Lets face it. You are rolling along in your business… everything is going great and then something unexpected happens that causes a ‘crash’ or your business to catch fire.
You have limited options when a disgruntled employee or former client manages to get information posted online that is unfavorable to you and your company or an unfavorable article appears in a local publication. Unfortunately, unless you can prevail upon the producer of the negative content to either remove it or change it, your options are fairly limited. You can’t just let it sit there and ruin your reputation and damage your business! You must generate a content plan that reduces the visibility of the offending post or article.
Here are a couple steps you can take to do the reputation management yourself!
Evaluate the Environment
Take a close look at the search engine queries that produce the negative content as a search result. These are usually branded searches that use the company name or the name of a corporate officer in the search term. Offending content typically shows up beneath the branded search results, usually in result spaces three to five. It is also important to evaluate the page strength of the host site that the content is hosted upon. Negative articles that appear on strong local media sites are likely to rank as high as #2 on a branded search result.
It is important then to take a look at some of the websites that appear beneath the negative link. Some might be to local directories links, review sites or other, more positive article links. You can use these links to displace the negative content.
Understand The Objective
Since it is impossible to just have a link removed, it is necessary to displace the negative content by pushing it down the results page to where it is not nearly as visible. Remembering the readers hate to scroll, you can realize significant improvement by just pushing the negative content “beneath the fold” or below where the reader would have to scroll down to see it.
Push the negative content at least ‘below the fold’ of the search result page.
Review the Link Inventory
Evaluate the kinds of links that are currently appearing on the search results page that also produces the negative content. There are two types of links; links:
- Sites you control
- Sites that you can influence
Sites that you control include links for your website or other websites that you own that appear on the set of results. Among the more important types of links for the Reputation Management exercise are the links that you may influence. In the end, you can use your web strength to influence other links to strengthen them on the search results, causing them to appear as a higher ranked search result.
Managing these two types of links can push the offending content well below where most readers will see it. So using the resources you have, you can change how the results appear and how visible the negative content may be. Here are a few ideas
Look to AdWords and Paid Search
A paid search result is something that you control. A quick fix for some Reputation Management problems (if you are not already doing this) is to purchase the AdWords keyword for the term that causes the negative content to appear. This alone pushes all other content down the page. If properly structured, it can push several links below the fold.
You can also create new pages within your existing website that are optimized for the search term in which the negative result appears. This requires some careful strategy about internal link setting within your website.
Influence Other Sites and Links
Remember that linking to other content from your web page can strengthen the link to which you link. If there is a local review such as on a Yelp page or other review site, linking to it from a blog or other page on your site can increase that link’s strength and improve its result placement.
In the end, you must marshal your controllable resources and web assets to control as much of the visual real estate on the results page. This is possible to do! If you have questions, please contact us.
Avoid Setting up a Wiki Page
If you have been advised to create a Wiki page about yourself of your company, DON”T DO IT! Wiki pages are actually very difficult to control and invite negative comments that are very difficult to rid yourself of. If some of this negative content is appearing on a Wiki page, it can be a long and difficult process to mitigate. You may have to come up with a creative, long term content strategy to reduce the damage.
Get Expert Help!
The Reputation Management exercise can be complicated. So why not get some expert help? Contact us today with your questions – email matt@denver-seo-consultants.com.