Assessing the Strength of Negative Content

Once an attacking article or other content has been detected, it’s vitally important to determine the veracity and strength of the negative content. With an objective of pushing the negative content off of the top pages of the search engines, building a strategy will require intelligence on several fronts. Depending on the nature of the attack, burying negative content can be a relatively simple action or something that requires massive and ongoing counter-measures.

Here’s a short list of intelligence which needs to be gathered to build a response to negative content:

Where is the content being found –Determining where the content exists will dictate the best way to respond to it. Whether the content is popping up on the search engines or on social media sites will require different methodologies

If it’s ranking on search engines, which search terms is it ranking for – These same keywords will be have to be used to knock the content ‘s rankings off the front pages. This information is critical to assess as quickly as possible, especially if the business is optimizing the same terms.

What is the page rank of the article – A high page rank is indicative that the content is could be coming from an authority site. These are usually hard to displace, meaning that your work is going to be cut out for you.

Is it a news site – The work gets tougher if it’s a news site because news stories are often shared between different agencies. Not only are you battling authority sites which will be hard to push down, now you’re battling potentially hundreds of them.

Is the content new – Getting a date on the content should be pretty straight forward. Check to see if people are still commenting and whether comments have been closed. Comments on articles (negative or positive) helps to know that how much people found it interesting to read.

Who is promoting the negative content – Check for backlinks and where they’re coming from.

The important thing here is to start gathering intelligence as quickly as possible so that a counter strategy can be developed and then executed. Due to the high stakes of dealing with a negative content attack, a growing number of companies are employing the services of firms which specialize in online reputation management services. For a free initial consultation on protecting your company’s reputation.