Bad news travels fast. Therefore, when negative news about your business, products and you reaches the Internet, you must react to avoid a nasty avalanche.
Remember, handle negativity professionally and also remain positive. If it's a negative review, try your best to handle it through the citation/review website. This shows potential customers that you're willing to resolve the problem.
However, when negative reviews, news, comments, etc., start to impact your overall search engine optimization efforts, then you must take a different approach.
Here's a strategic example:
Search Google on your company name. Review every search result within the Top 30 to see if there's anything negative about your company, products, services, executive team, staff, etc.
In almost all cases, you'll never be able to have the negative item removed from the offending website.
Instead, you're going to have to use some online reputation management techniques to "push down" the negative item in search results and utilize search engine optimization techniques to improve positive items in search results.
Therefore, if the negative listing about your company is No. 4 in Google, can you utilize some SEO techniques to help improve the items in the No. 5 through No. 10 positions so they will move above the No. 4 item? If you have full control over the items ranking below the negative result, you definitely have opportunities for better optimization and improvement in search results.
Some online reputation management techniques include writing better (and more) blog posts; writing an article; producing a press release; sponsoring or hosting an event; writing a white paper; producing a video; recording a podcast, etc.
Social media should also be a strong tool in your ORM efforts. Here, your strategy should be positive and your firm should be active in many social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.). Talk with your clients here. Ask questions. Help them solve their problems.
The best time for online reputation management is when you don't need online reputation management. Most ORM techniques are items business owners should be doing year round and not waiting for a panic alarm to start desperate measures.
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"Pimp My Keywords" is written and published by Purple Trout, LLC. Visit our website for more information about our search engine optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), online reputation management and more. We also offer a free SEO Analysis to help evaluate your business' website with Google and other search engines.
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