Online Reputation Management

Reputation management happens online because that’s where the majority of all communications happen. Since people choose to interact on online platforms, reputation management companies SEO and use social media tactics to achieve their goals.

It’s almost impossible to sell something to anyone that doesn’t trust or believe in your brand values. Because what people think of a brand influences everything about that brand you should use reputation management as a core component of sales and marketing strategies. A good reputation management plan, you can clear the way for positive messages to have the maximum effect.

There may come a time where brand reputation crisis management is needed, have a think about past crises when huge corporations such as BP, Wells Fargo, and United Airlines have been able to withstand damage to their reputation, but at a financial cost. Not so long ago people who had a bad experience with a business may have only told a few close friends now they can broadcast it to anyone they know who in turn can do the same. It’s easy to see how a bad review can snowball, and get out of control quickly.

If anything about a personality or business can be found using Google, Reputation Management and strategies need to be part of your marketing and sales strategies. A large number of people can no longer live their lives in anonymity. If people know your name, they’ll Google your name. It’s just what people do now. What else some people do is make false negative statements about you, a poor rating in Facebook or Google for example.

87% of customers will reverse a purchase decision after viewing negative content about a brand or product online. So as we’ve pointed out, if your business reputation is damaged it will ultimately impact your sales targets. There is also a little known SEO practice called Negative SEO. SEO Strategies are focused on ranking you for what you do and or sell (amongst other things). Negative SEO is any malicious practice aimed at sabotaging search rankings. An example of a negative SEO service offer in a Reddit thread. GSA SER (GSA Search Engine Ranker) is a tool for automated spammy link building.

Just like nearly everything in life, reputation management has an unethical side to it. It is abused for nefarious purposes. It’s not as simple as saying that it’s either good or bad, when in fact it’s both. Reputation management does have its abusers, just as there are those who misuse any form of advertising by making false claims.

The short answer is – Mostly, Not You! All SEO is, in some way, about influence. At Bambrick Media we run standard SEO Campaigns to influence how Google ranks content we create for clients. In turn that content is written to influence people to procure goods and services. Despite there being very little control, we can increase the power of influence by providing tried and tested SEO processes, we refer to these as sustainable SEO.

Here’s is our definition of reputation management (just) once more:

• Negative news articles – News articles are very often one of the first things that people see when they Google your business’s name. Even though people are now more aware that fake news exists, they still tend to believe what appears as news.
• Negative videos and images – The subject of leaked videos, photos or other negative imagery online are a growing problem. Technology exists that allows people to doctor images and videos to fabricate an event.
• Wikipedia – Wikipedia is the cultural default for information on virtually any subject. Unfortunately, Wikipedia can be biased and uneditable. This is a high ranking website, so a bad statement in it will be seen by a lot of people.
• Blog posts – Since anyone can literally write anything they want about anyone they want, this can obviously lead to a lot of confusing, potentially contradictory articles being posted about you on many blogging platforms very quickly.
• Review sites – Review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google Reviews, and others exist to help the consumer make guided choices based on what other customers have experienced. A negative fake review here is a signal to potential clients or buyers to go elsewhere.
• Social media – Social media is the method of choice for people recommending brands, spreading gossip, airing complaints and criticizing public figures.
• The good news is that social media has a much shorter shelf life than any other channel, it still matters because its very popular.
• Bad Links – All websites will have a backlink profile as part of a negative SEO attack writing malicious content, even duplicating content will have a negative effect. A link to your site is a signal to Google about what your website is about. Backlinks are used by Google to rank websites. Good backlinks will help improve rankings, bad links will damage them.

Reputation management is becoming increasingly, with the proliferation of review sites, news media and twitter, information can spread in a matter of seconds and can linger on for years. Every business is at risk for reputation damage. Any Tech-savvy individual will know how to create and distribute fake news.

Your online reputation is largely out of your control. But there are things that you can do, both proactively and reactively, to manage your reputation. At Bambrick Media we have had 20+ years of experience in building many great reputations. If you want to talk about how we can manage your reputation click the red button below.

We can help you manage all aspects of your online profile, we have answered the question “how can i remove a link from google search?” to many concerned business owners who asked us if we can remove negative content from google search results.