Online reputation management is a topic of prime concern to most big business and it should concern yours as well. The internet can be a vast wasteland of hackers and flamers that trash your good name and reputation. Learn how to proactively manage your online reputation as guest writer Fionn Downhill, CEO of Elixir Interactive, explains the steps you must take to protect your online reputation.
By Fionn Downhill, President, Elixir Interactive
As with many things in life being proactive tends to make life less stressful. Whether its getting your car serviced, your taxes done or fixing a leak in your bathroom. It is especially true in relation to your online reputation. It is far easier to manage your reputation proactively than to attempt to repair it once you find out you have a problem!
Problems occur when you realize there has been something bad written about your brand (your name, business or product) and this negative information begins to appear in search engine results. At this point the damage has already been done and repair is necessary.
Most businesses have their focus on their main business site. They are often unaware that when people are looking for their site by searching for their brand name they are also being influenced by the other information that appears before their eyes within the search results. Recent studies have shown that up to 80% of individuals have indicated that they trust the opinion of others more than any other source of information – including newspapers. All it takes is one blogger’s opinion to go viral and your hard earned brand reputation is damaged. Many companies, including major brands, are stunned to find that their Google reputation is negating millions of dollars in advertising messaging simply because of these sometimes well intentioned, sometimes malicious bloggers.
Many businesses are damaged by negative information appearing under searches. For example, if you had a branded product whose search results brought up information about it being faulty then this can impact you reputation and your bottom line. (Be aware that in this day and age competitors can be at the root of these reports. A study by Forbes estimated that up to 60% of consumer generated media was actually competitor generated media!!)
Online reputation repair can be a costly and time consuming process. It requires you to optimize and build links to many sites all at once to try to displace the negative information and push it down the search engine rankings. In many cases it is necessary to build new sites that are related to your brand and rank them. This process can take many months or even years to be successful. If your competitors are as active and determined as you are then the Google cat and mouse game begins! I mention Google as it has over 60% of the search engine market share. Yahoo and MSN do not give the same weight to blogs and forums therefore it is more a Google issue than an overall search engine issue. Therefore ignoring your Google reputation can have devastating effects.
Proactive online reputation management means being aware of your brand, what people are saying about it and also what is happening in your search engine space.
Within search engines the results pages are in a constant state of flux. Therefore you should undertake regular reviews of the listings that appear. You should also work towards building an arsenal of positive information and sites that rank for your brand name. This result of this strategy is that it is much more difficult for negative sites to enter the space and displace your series of established sites.
There are now software tools available that can help you monitor what is being said about your brand. It is worthwhile to use these so that you can listen to the online conversation. If negative or false information appears you can react immediately to the problem by communicating with the site and putting your point across. In many cases if the information is false the site may remove it saving the potential of it ranking. Taking part in the online conversation is a necessity for any transparent organization. However, I want to issue a word of caution. If the detractor is malicious then reaching out to them may backfire and they can accuse you of interfering with their ‘freedom of speech.”
Managing your search engine space starts with your own site. Make sure it is optimized and in the number one position for your brand name. Also optimize any other sites or blogs under your direct control and make sure that one page of each site is optimized for your brand name. You may want to consider building micro-sites related to your brand and optimizing them. If good newspaper or magazine articles exist it may be worth while building links to them with your brand name in the anchor text. The same goes for press releases or any other positive information about your brand.
Be wary about attempting to manipulate open access sites such as forum posts, blog posts or Wikipedia articles. Even though they may be favorable at the moment, this can change, as people with a grudge can easily go in and add negative information at any point.
There are some companies out there with expertise in managing online reputations. When hiring such a company look for a solid background in organic SEO. Look for an understanding of branding strategies and ask for details of branding campaigns they have worked on. Ask to see results for reputation management programs. If they claim to be able to do this for you then look at their own reputation online. If they cannot protect their own reputation it is unlikely that they can do it for you. And lastly, beware of scam artists! Online reputation management is closely associated with the SEO industry – an industry with a reputation problem! This has brought out an ever increasing number of people claiming to be experts at removing negative results from Google. Do your homework and look for professionalism not quick fix strategies which do not work.
It is much easier to manage your online reputation proactively rather than react when a problem occurs. Even when you are managing it problems can still arise. However you will be in a position to react and take care of the problem as it occurs. And remember that the investment in this process is small compared to the potential losses accrued through having a negative online reputation.
