Search Engine Reputation Management

A good reputation is more valuable than money.
Publilius Syrus

I love the internet. It helps me do things faster, better and more cheaply. In fact, I can’t imagine living without it.

If we fast-forward a century or so, I think history will point to our generation as the first to fully embrace the internet. Looking back in time, our era will appear so monumental, like human’s ability to make fire.

At the same time, the internet is not perfect. For example, it doesn’t forget. And that can be a real problem.

A few years ago, we started receiving requests from anxious students and worried parents, like “How we do we remove a terrible Facebook post?” And then similar requests from companies, politicians and organizations, hoping to remove negative content from search engine results.

The problem is online content is tough to snuff. I wish there were some mechanism like the memory-erasing gadget in the movie “Men in Black”, where one push of the button makes everything OK.

Or maybe all teens should be granted a new digital identity at age 18. It could be a kind of right of passage, allowing young adults to purge their adolescent histories once and for all.

Unfortunately, the internet hasn’t yet evolved in this respect. Instead, it keeps a steady warehouse of all of we’ve done, both good and bad, for all to find...forever.

And what about the angry client who decided to rant online? Or the disgruntled employee bent on getting revenge? Maybe an evil competitor? What’s going to stop them from posting malicious content online and ruining your reputation?

For doctors, lawyers, teachers, leaders and just about everyone else, reputation management is very serious business. Regardless of whether it’s warranted or not, one negative post can be ruinous. In fact, studies show if there’s a negative result directly below a company’s website, seventy percent of the internet users will click on the negative result rather the company website.

So what can be done to fix this?

Here’s what you need to know:

• There are several online tools to help you monitor in real time your name or your company brand. I like Google Alerts. It’s free and quite effective: www.google.com/alerts

• From time to time, though, you should hop online and Google yourself or your business. Spend an hour once a month and see how other people may view you online. And don’t forget to search using Bing.com and Yahoo.com, too.

• If you find something negative, take a deep breath. In most cases, it’s nothing to get worked up about. In fact, most internet users realize there are some bad apples out there, so one or two negative reviews is natural.

• Most user also appreciate a company’s effort to ‘make it right.’ So if you receive a negative review on Yelp, for example, respond to it in a sensible and sincere way. Be prompt, empathetic and responsive.

• If there’s something embarrassing online, do your best to contact the person who posted it and ask to have it removed. It’s worth a try. And you will have better success than directly contacting Google, Facebook, etc. As you can imagine, they are not interested in removing embarrassing content.

• Protecting your online reputation entails boosting to the top of search engine results positive content that’s already online. This means optimizing that content for search engines (SEO) so it’s easily found and ranks high organically. It’s the way public relations is done these days.

• At the same time, you may need to post additional positive content, like more websites, profiles, and press releases to ensure the good content dominates the first 2-3 pages. It’s important to capture the 1st result. Studies show some 34% of web users will click on the 1st result, compared to less than 10% for the 3rd result. So being at the top really pays off.

What does it cost to effectively repair one’s online reputation? Expect to spend about $1000 per month for at least 6 months. Depending on the damage, you will see promising results within a few months.

Search engines are strongly motivated to provide quality results. It takes time to affect the organic search results. In fact, the overall process is labor intensive since it must be done by hand. (Search engines do not permit automated tools for link building.) For most clients, we suggest they budget at least 6 months of support for search engine reputation management.