Online Reputation Management

So you have utilized SEO and your website is climbing up Google's Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Break out the bubbly! It's time to celebrate, right? Not necessarily. The can-of-worms marketing types like to call Online Reputation Management (ORM) might be the necessary next step. For those who aren't familiar, Online Reputation Management is a fast growing field in marketing that quells negative discourse about your brand. With the boom of social media, blogs, and forums, anyone with internet access and an opinion can ruin all of your hard work put into gently coddling and shaping your brand. Whether it is a disgruntled employee or an annoyed customer, having those negative reviews listing high on the SERPs can greatly hinder the image of your company, ultimately resulting in lower conversions. The true danger of forgoing ORM can best be portrayed through the following allegory: Imagine you are walking downtown and a retail store has signs posted all over its storefront saying "This store is a rip-off" and "Don't do business here". Or imagine you are interested in hiring a company for their services, but when you call their references, you only hear complaints. Would you want to buy from/work with either of the companies described above? Even if the negative reviews end up being unfounded and libelous, you probably aren't very likely to spend the time doing the research to come to that conclusion. It is more probable that you invest less time to find a similar company to work with that has a clear record. This is exactly what happens when a negative search result emerges that is connected to your brand. Any negative results on the first page of a Google SERP are sure to deter would-be clients in favor of a more "safe bet" company. Although Online Reputation Management is neglected by many because it is a new field, successful companies are increasingly jumping onto the ORM bandwagon to protect their brands from such a disaster. Steps to Successful ORM 1. Put Out the Fire - Make sure to monitor search results for your brand, company, products, and key executives so you know when a negative review is posted and can respond immediately. In this world of instant online publishing, a little "spark" can quickly spread to a full-fledged "wildfire" in a matter of days as the review is forwarded, circulated, and reposted. The best response will include a PR campaign to acknowledge the criticisms and either explains why they were unwarranted or how you are going to respond to them. Utilize several mediums including the platform of the original post, such as blogs, twitter, Facebook, etc. This will help cool down the original reviewer by showing acknowledgment as well as puts your brand back in control of the conversation. 2) Utilizing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can do a lot to help counteract negative search results. One strategy is to optimize positive search results surrounding your brand. By adding inbound links and other methods of optimization to positive reviews of your company, you can move them up the Search Engine Results Page to displace negative reviews to the bottom of the page and eventually off of page one. Another tip is to maximize the text description that is displayed as the search result for your website. The goal here is to take up as many lines as possible to further displace negative reviews down the screen. Along the same lines, try optimizing your website for a double search result. By optimizing a specific page as well as your homepage for your brand keyword, the Google search result will display double stacked result descriptions, one for your homepage and one for the internal page. This again helps displace negative results. Online Reputation Management is an important emerging field for Search Engine Marketing. The price of ignoring ORM is too high when considering the loss of potential clients. Webmarketing123's SEO experts are dedicated to staying current with this new field and offer optimizing services described here to make sure your company isn't paying the price.