Online Reputation Management

What results appear when people type your name, company name, or product name into the search engines? If the results aren’t positive or happen to be untrue, your reputation and business is at stake.

What is Reputation Management?

If the damage has already been done — a bad review, negative comment, or web site dedicated fully to bashing your name — there are a few things that you can do. The main goal is to push down the bad results in the search engine results page (SERP), making sure that positive results are what your customers, potential employers, or clients see.

How Can I Change The Results That Appear For My Name or Keyword?

There are a few ways. Keep in mind that online reputation management can be an ongoing process — if a negative comment is a one time thing, that’s one thing, but if people are regularly bashing your name or product, online reputation management may not be what you need quite yet. Instead, fixing the problem so that new negative reviews don’t appear should be your first concern.

With that said, if there are one or two negative results — or even results that aren’t negative but aren’t related to your business — updating the SERPs consists of moving up positive results, anything from your LinkedIn page to positive mentions of your name or business on other sites.

Got It. So, How Is That Done?

There are a few ways to update the search engine results, including:

• Pointing links to sites you own — Micro sites & landing pages, social media profile pages, etc.
• Point links to sites that mention you — Scholarships that your business funds, events that employees have spoken at, conferences that you attend, charities that you have donated to, positive articles and reviews, etc.
• Creating new sites – social media profiles, blogs, articles, etc.

Some ways to point links and create positive mentions:

• Link building
• Article Marketing
• Press Release Distribution
• Creating New Profiles
• Guest Writing/Blogging
• Keyword Monitoring/Tracking
• On-site Optimization
• Subdomain Building & Optimization
• Micro-Sites
• And much, much, more!

Pricing and Timeline

Pricing is generally determined based on a retainer of 40 hours per month but can be customized based on client needs; pricing is determined upon analysis of your situation. Your project may require more or less hours depending on the number of negative results, links to negative results, or the speed in which you are looking to move down results. For example, personal ORM projects (name of a person) generally take a shorter amount of time and hours than a corporate client (lawsuit mention with a number of news sites pointing to negative results).

Most projects take 4-6 months to move a negative result to page 2+ in one search engine. For multiple search engines, multiple negative results, or results on high ranking/high link sites, the ORM process can take longer. An in-depth analysis before the project starts will allow me to give you an accurate estimate of how long the process should take. In ORM, as in SEO, a guaranteed time period in which negative results will move down can not be given. Items such as new negative press or information, additional link building on the part of the negative press sites or competitors, or changes in the search engine algorithms can increase the time and amount of effort needed for your project. In most cases, I suggest clients start with a three month contract (month to month in all cases) in which we re-evaluate the results at the end of month three.

Past Clients

With each client proposal, I also sign a confidentiality clause. With ORM clients, many (most) do not want to advertise that they are attempting to remove negative press; when working on an online reputation management strategy, advertising your intentions is counter-productive.

Because of the confidentially clauses, I don’t advertise my client list, ask for testimonials, or put links to client sites. You can rest assured that your work will also be only known by myself and the people that you inform. The reason for starting this blog was to help people and companies who want to try online reputation management themselves, show examples of techniques I use in ORM, and provide case studies so that you know what to expect.

Previous client work has included:

- Pushing down lawsuit mentions
- Pushing down negative blog comments
- Pushing down ex-employee blogs

Process

• Analyze negative results (links, on-site and off-site optimization for keyword, online activity)
• Discover positive mentions
• Outline tasks for the month – links to be created, optimization of client owned sites, creation of client owned sites, articles to be created, etc.
• Weekly status calls and ranking reports

If you’re ready to start an online reputation management campaign, contact me now. I’d be happy to schedule an initial call to research your exact situation and what can be done. I am available for retainer projects as a consultant with weekly to-do’s and outlines or on a monthly project basis to work on the online reputation management tasks myself.