Online reputation management begins with solid proactive crisis management and reverse SEO strategies. A
recent LinkedIn online survey about Online PR by Rostin Ventures
brought a number of solid, insightful responses from respected
professionals in our industry. The question: How important is SEO to Online Reputation and Brand Management for a company's Public Relations?
The survey responses were best expressed by Sarah Skerik, Vice President of Social Media at PR Newswire: "The
role [search engines] play in influencing opinion is undeniable. [They]
are the starting point for most Internet users, and surveys tell us
that most journalists start story research with search. The results at
the top of the search results page play a powerful role in shaping
behavior and surfacing commentary from the social layer."
Author Victoria Ipri added: "The
real breaking news is what people are talking about right now, today.
This is the same information you’ll find at the top of today’s search
engine rankings. And this is precisely where SEO, combined with online
reputation management, plays a vital role."
Actions speak louder than words.
When faced with a negative article or comment on the web, the best
approach is an objective, tactful response to the situation. Remember,
Internet content possesses longevity, and your company's positive and
ongoing engagement in the worldwide community is a surefire safety net
should any negative publicity knock on your door.
The
strongest strategy behind online reputation management begins with
proactive public relations before a negative event occurs. How is your
company proactively managing its public relations and brand strategy
within search engine results pages? That's
where Rostin Ventures comes in, providing professional, well-written,
insightful content for Online PR, Reputation Management and Crisis
Management strategies.
Why do companies need online reputation management? Julie Ross, President of Rostin Ventures notes recent SEO industry news,"After the New York Times story about black-hat SEO tactics for JCPenney broke on February 12th, more attention than ever has been directed toward SEO companies' practices in helping their clients' websites climb to the top of the search engines. The Times asked an SEO expert to research why JCPenney held ultra-high online rankings for nearly every category, who later revealed that literally hundreds of unrelated backlinks to irrelevant sites had been deployed to pull JCPenney.com to the top.
Google responded to the Times story by severely penalizing JCPenney's site, and subsequently changed their search engine algorithm. Although the improved Google algorithm initially affected 11.8% of the queries, its changes reward websites with high-quality, original content and links to related content -- and reduce the rankings of poor-quality sites with unrelated backlinks generated by link farms. This is great news for Rostin Ventures' clients, because that's precisely what we do: As part of our White-Hat strategy for bringing relevance and high online visibility for our clients, we produce quality online content and blogs with industry-related content that links to other industry-relevant sites."
Twenty years ago, negative press rarely gained traction. If a disgruntled customer or an irritated employee wanted to vent their frustrations, they were limited to writing letters to newspapers and magazines. Both were forgotten by the time new editions hit the store shelves. The Internet changed everything.
Today, social media profiles, blog and forum posts, and entire websites devoted to publishing negative commentary about others, remain online. They gain traction in Google, YouTube, Yahoo, and Bing, Facebook, Wordpress, Blogger and thousands of other social platforms and online sites. Once they do, they can gain momentum in your market. This is the core reason to maintain an online reputation management strategy.
By vigilantly monitoring every mention of your company’s name, you can identify issues that threaten to tarnish your reputation. If you discover a public relations disaster in the making, you can immediately respond. You might decide to open a dialogue to present the facts. Or, you might launch a reverse SEO campaign to remove bad press from the search engines. The goal of online reputation management is to prevent negative commentary from gaining momentum.
There has never been a greater need for using best practices in SEO for online reputation management. Angry customers, annoyed employees, and even disingenuous competitors can spread damaging rumors about you and your company with a few clicks. If the bad publicity gains traction in the search engines, it can spread quickly. Online reputation management is the most effective solution for controlling the message.
The question is, are you using online reputation management through effective SEO consulting practices? Others on Linked In answered the question.
Social Media Outreach programs and ideas to increase ranking of positive content through social outreach programs. Social Media Outreach : Paying It Forward with Reverse SEO Strategy.
Social Media Outreach brings American children home through a powerful platform from which to promote causes of interest to consumers and organizations who are communicating within social media.
85,000 homeless families and 770,000 homeless children: All of this, right here in America.
More than a mere outlet for philanthropy, Social Media Outreach is an attention-grabbing platform that helps causes raise awareness to consumers and businesses everywhere. Since Rostin Ventures’ launch of Social Media Outreach, the online reach has grown wider than organizations, particularly local groups, ever thought possible. The program lives on social media community pages such as Social Media Community Pages on Facebook, Linked In, Wordpress Blogs and Twitter and it continues to raise awareness for worthy causes.
Online Reputation Management lands jobs. For good or bad, what you say, do and write can and will affect your reputation. That is why it is so important to make sure you manage your online reputation. It is a direct reflection of your personal brand. Just like a corporate brand, this is how and what people think of you. Reverse SEO for online reputation management, essentially online brand management of your name, can help emphasize your positive and hide away the negative.
We all make mistakes. Maybe you posted a photo you wished you hadn’t, or had a heated disagreement about politics on Facebook that, in the light of morning, was over the top. Unfortunately, the Internet never forgets, and while you can try to delete that information, it is often stored in a search engine's cache, and can be found later through basic searches.
This is really important for job seekers. Over 75% of HR professionals have reported hiring decisions being positively influenced by a candidate’s online reputation; conversely, 60% of human resource professionals have rejected a candidate for negative online information. Silly Facebook pictures, an offensive comment, or even someone else who posted negative or incorrect information about you are not worth losing your dream job. Reverse SEO will help you hide the negative and accentuate the positive.
Online reputation management is becoming so important that some universities are even providing seniors with a six-month subscription to an online reputation management service, and helping them overcome their negative online content. By using reverse SEO we can produce more content that will distract away from any negative online slip up’s.
Here are three reverse SEO tips to help with your job search:
Buy your name as a domain name, and post a single page that serves almost as a resume. Use it to point to your other positive content, like a blog, your LinkedIn profile, or a YouTube channel. If you share a name with someone else more famous, or have more than a few negative content problems, you need to make sure you buy the name you want to be known by professionally. — maybe your full name (William Smith, not Bill Smith), or first, middle, and last (William Henry Smith).
Sign up for several social networks with your "professional" name. Get your vanity URL (a URL that includes your name) on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks, as well as blogging platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger.com.
Make sure you're putting positive content on your networks. It's not enough to just create the networks. You have to give the search engines something to index. The more content you create, the more the search engines have to index. As you create more new stuff, the search engines will push down the old stuff off the front pages, and out of sight of the hiring managers and HR professionals.
Reverse SEO is not a miracle maker, but it can definitely help. Negative search engine results will not completely be deleted, but they will most definitely be hidden. 89% of search engine activity is proven to derive from the first page of a search engine anyways. If you can push bad information further down on a search engine, you can eliminate any bad online reputation that may damage perception of your personal brand.
Hiring a SEO consulting firm can be tricky, especially if you don't understand the business. A lot of firms will promise certain things that may be impossible to achieve. Do some homework and ask around to ensure you are getting the best services, not just the cheapest. You want to make sure that your price matches your results and your desires match the value the SEO consulting firm promises.
Here are five questions to ask a potential SEO consulting firm before you hire them.
1) What has your success rate been with other clients? Reputation is one of the most reliable factors in regards to service. If an SEO consulting firm has done a great job for 10 clients, they will usually do well for 20, 50, or 100. It is better to trust results from previous clients and their successes. If an SEO consulting firm is willing to offer testimonials from previous clients, they are confident in their abilities.
2) Where does your own website rank? When looking for the answer to this question beware of their tactics. If an SEO consulting firm cannot rank high with their own site, how can they raise your rankings? That is not to say they do not know their own business, but you have to wonder why "the shoe maker's children don't have their own shoes."
3) What guarantees can you make? This will be a large factor in your decision. We all love guarantees, especially when we are spending hard earned money. However, there are no guarantees in this particular business. There are too many variables that can guarantee a top ranking for your company. So a good SEO consulting firm should answer with "none," a bad one will tell you whatever you want to hear.
That's because organic rankings take time to achieve, because they are constantly changing. Not only are there other companies and competitors who are trying to achieve a top ranking, but Google is constantly changing its search algorithm. So even if you did everything right this week, it could all change next week, through no fault of the SEO consulting firm. So make sure your firm doesn't promise a top page ranking, or you'll be left with broken promises and no money.
4) How will you measure our success? Success is the driving force, right? So we must know how to measure it. How will you even define success? Is it sales? Visits to the page? Time on the page? For a business site, the answer should always be sales and ROI. But even that has to be decided on. How much is not enough versus just right? It is important that your SEO consulting firm measures success the same way you do. You don’t want to be left disappointed, so make sure this is something you discuss early in conversation. It is also important that your goals and expectations are even achievable for your SEO consulting firm. Remember that these things take time — months, usually — and you're not going to see a positive ROI after a few weeks.
5) Do I need to make changes to my website? The answer is yes, yes, yes. How do you expect results if you keep trying the same tactics that never work? If your search engine optimization was perfect, you would have top page rankings and big sales already, and you wouldn't be talking to an SEO consulting firm. But since you're reading this article, I'm guessing that's not the case. Remember, Google even changes things from week to week, so what worked last year won't work this year. So, be prepared to change your website. If your SEO consulting firm says no, you don't, you might want to reconsider your choice.
Reverse SEO lands jobs. For good or bad, what you say, do and write can and will affect your reputation. That is why it is so important to make sure you manage your online reputation. It is a direct reflection of your personal brand. Just like a corporate brand, this is how and what people think of you. Reverse SEO can help emphasize your positive and hide away the negative.
We all make mistakes. Maybe you posted a photo you wished you hadn’t, or had a heated disagreement about politics on Facebook that, in the light of morning, was over the top. Unfortunately, the Internet never forgets, and while you can try to delete that information, it is often stored in a search engine's cache, and can be found later through basic searches.
This is really important for job seekers. Over 75% of HR professionals have reported hiring decisions being positively influenced by a candidate’s online reputation; conversely, 60% of human resource professionals have rejected a candidate for negative online information. Silly Facebook pictures, an offensive comment, or even someone else who posted negative or incorrect information about you are not worth losing your dream job. Reverse SEO will help you hide the negative and accentuate the positive.
Online reputation is becoming so important that some universities are even providing seniors with a six-month subscription to an online reputation management service, and helping them overcome their negative online content. By using reverse SEO we can produce more content that will distract away from any negative online slip up’s.
Here are three reverse SEO tips to help with your job search:
Buy your name as a domain name, and post a single page that serves almost as a resume. Use it to point to your other positive content, like a blog, your LinkedIn profile, or a YouTube channel. If you share a name with someone else more famous, or have more than a few negative content problems, you need to make sure you buy the name you want to be known by professionally. — maybe your full name (William Smith, not Bill Smith), or first, middle, and last (William Henry Smith).
Sign up for several social networks with your "professional" name. Get your vanity URL (a URL that includes your name) on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks, as well as blogging platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger.com.
Make sure you're putting positive content on your networks. It's not enough to just create the networks. You have to give the search engines something to index. The more content you create, the more the search engines have to index. As you create more new stuff, the search engines will push down the old stuff off the front pages, and out of sight of the hiring managers and HR professionals.
Reverse SEO is not a miracle maker, but it can definitely help. Negative search engine results will not completely be deleted, but they will most definitely be hidden. 89% of search engine activity is proven to derive from the first page of a search engine anyways. If you can push bad information further down on a search engine, you can eliminate any bad online reputation that may damage perception of your personal brand.
Take a look at this video to view more on Online Reputation Management for Job Search:
Online Reputation Management could prevent this story from becoming reality for you. What happens in Vegas would stay in Vegas if it did not come up in search engine results under your name. Your friends commented on the trip in social networks and it ended up in search results for everyone to see... including the hiring manager from the company you applied for. Believe it or not, it could happen. Manage your online reputation and control what people read about you in search engines. Online reputation management of Reverse SEO pros could push down negative search results in your name and launch good information under your name in the search engines. http://www.rostinventures.com
Reverse SEO has become critical for all types of organizations. It has never been easier for your customers, competitors, and employees to publish items online that can have a damaging impact upon your business. If those items gain exposure in Google, Yahoo!, Bing other major search engines, their effects can last for years.
Whether you operate a small firm with less than ten employees or a multi-billion dollar company, bad publicity can destroy your business.
To follow are the fundamentals of reverse SEO. We explain how it works and the advantages of using it. We'll also describe a seldom talked about strategy of leveraging reverse SEO as a preventative approach to online reputation management (ORM). You'll discover why many companies are rushing to search engine optimization specialists to enlist their help for damage control. If you are not currently using reverse SEO to limit the effects of bad publicity, your company may be vulnerable.
How Reverse Search Engine Optimization Works
Google ranks pages based on several criteria. One of its organic algorithm's ranking parameters is a website's authority within its space. The more authority a site has, the easier it is for a page on that site to rank well and control its position. When an authoritative page carries bad publicity about your company, it can gain exposure to a wide audience. This is the problem that reverse search engine optimization resolves.
Reverse SEO specialists have a number of tools at their disposal they can use to suppress bad publicity in the search engines. First, they'll analyze the authority of high-ranking pages that speak negatively of your business. Then, they'll formulate a strategy to push those pages into the depths of the search engines' organic listings, limiting their visibility.
Long-Term Advantages Of Reverse SEO
A single unsatisfied customer can create havoc for your company by spreading deceptive stories of poor service or shoddy workmanship. Similarly, one resentful employee can anonymously unfurl a string of damaging diatribes. If such stories and diatribes are merely told to another person, their effects are limited and temporary. By contrast, if they are published online and gain exposure in Google, they can have disastrous results for your business.
This type of negative press tends to gain a groundswell of momentum, regardless of its accuracy. By suppressing these pages in the search engines, reverse SEO allows you to control the effects of bad publicity. It helps you to smother the flames before they grow out of control.
Reverse SEO: The Preemptive Strike
Most companies launch a reverse SEO campaign after bad publicity has already crept toward the top of Google's organic listings. That is a reactive approach. The problem is that high-ranking pages with negative press tend to generate inbound links. Those links further strengthen the pages' positions. As a result, they become more difficult to suppress.
You can use reverse SEO as a preventative measure. By launching a campaign that controls the top organic positions, you can prevent negative publicity from gaining exposure in the first place. In effect, you can insulate your company from the whims and machinations of frustrated customers, unhappy employees, and deceitful competitors.
Is Reverse SEO An Essential Cog Of Search Engine Marketing?
Search engine marketing (SEM) increases your company's exposure within your space. On its own, an SEM campaign can deliver staggering results that translate directly to your business's bottom line. However, bad publicity can disrupt even the most formidable of search engine marketing campaigns.
Reverse SEO is a vital component of any SEM effort. It protects the integrity of your search engine marketing campaign and supports its growth. The same tools that can be used to control the top positions in Google and prevent negative press from gaining traction can seed inbound links to your website. This creates a well-rounded SEM campaign that is potent on multiple fronts.
Damage Control And Online Reputation Management
If your company enjoys exposure on the internet, whether from social networking sites, professional online trade journals, or broad media, online reputation management is important. The number of authoritative websites that your customers, employees, and competitors can use to spread negative press about your business is increasing. Making matters worse, many journalists have become lax in sourcing their stories. ORM and reverse SEO can work seamlessly together to control the spread of bad publicity.
Negative press does not need to be accurate in order to rank well in Google. That makes reverse SEO more critical for your company than ever.
Reverse SEO manages your online reputation. See how this company replaced negative search engine results with good information in just 8 days!
If you search on your name in Google, Yahoo or Bing, what will you find? What are search engine results saying about you? Are the results under your name about someone else with a bad reputation? Reverse SEO will replace the bad information with good information under your name. Manage your online reputation today with Rostin Ventures Reverse SEO. http://www.rostinventures.com
Reverse SEO experts in online reputation management provide search engine readers with what you want them to see. Reverse SEO pushes the negative information down in search engine results. Manage your online reputation with these proven techniques of these Reverse SEO Management pros.
Online reputation management (ORM) was created to help business owners and professionals deal with bad press. Countless companies – large and small – have found themselves on the receiving end of negative publicity. When it is posted online, it can spread quickly. The size of your business has little influence on the devastating effect of such feedback. Online reputation management curbs the impact of bad publicity in search engine results. It allows you to control information about you.
Rostin Ventures, http://www.rostinventures.com, Reverse SEO Experts in SEO Consulting and Public Relations Online
Reverse SEO manages your online reputation, pushing the negative information down in search engine results. Manage your online reputation with these proven techniques of these Reverse SEO Management pros. Online reputation management (ORM) was created to help business owners and professionals deal with bad press. Countless companies – large and small – have found themselves on the receiving end of negative publicity. When it is posted online, it can spread quickly. The size of your business has little influence on the devastating effect of such feedback. Online reputation management curbs the impact of bad publicity in search engine results. It allows you to control information about you. Rostin Ventures, http://www.rostinventures.com, Reverse SEO Experts in SEO Consulting and Public Relations Online
Reverse SEO is a necessity in public relations online, given the recent search engine integration of social media comments within search engine results pages. Reverse SEO is an online reputation management (ORM) strategy. It protects companies and notable individuals from negative publicity and rumors that can circulate quickly online. Left unattended, this bad press can find a permanent home within the natural listings of the search engines.
Blogs, forums, and social networking sites have given millions of people the ability to publish their thoughts on a global stage. What's more, they can do so instantly and anonymously. Many companies have discovered that these community-based platforms can attract a groundswell of attention. If bad press gains momentum on such sites, reverse SEO becomes the only cost-effective way to control it in the search engines.
The search engines have given social media and community sites a bump in ranking authority. These sites tend to rank well in Google, Yahoo, and to a lesser extent, Bing. If a company or individual becomes the target of false rumors or negative publicity posted on these sites, the damage to online reputation can be substantial.
Therefore, a growing number of companies are launching reverse search engine optimization campaigns. Reverse SEO can push the bad press off the first page of search listings. Because few people explore past the first page, few will see the negative publicity.
Reverse SEO is an effective strategy for suppressing negative publicity about a company within the search results. However, once the bad press takes root, it begins to cement its position. As a result, it become more difficult to remove.
The grounded information is based on the age and number of inbound links. The longer a page stays within the index, the more authority it receives from the search engine. Meanwhile, the more exposure it receives, the more inbound links it attracts. Those links further strengthen its position. Reverse SEO techniques can push negative publicity from the first page of organic listings. But, it requires time and effort to knock entrenched pages from their ranking.
It is easier than ever for embittered employees, irritated customers, and deceitful competitors to post bad press online. If the sites on which they publish their thoughts gain traction in Google, Yahoo, and Bing, it will become more difficult to remove them. Public Relations Experts are incorporating Reverse SEO into campaign strategy to prevent negative publicity in search engines.
Reverse SEO delivers lasting results and strengthens with time. It is a key component in any online reputation management program. Given the potential exposure, it is arguably one of the most valuable.
Reverse SEO: What are they reading about you in search?
Reverse SEO assists companies and individuals in online reputation management by lowering negative information found in search engines.
Search engine optimization and search engine marketing services at Rostin Ventures rank top in the online business. Get ranked above your competitors and found by your online customers within first page search results on Google, Yahoo, Bing and thousands of others. Rank organically, without paying for keyword advertising.
Julie Ross is an online reputation management professional in SEM: Search Engine Marketing, using SMO or Social Media Optimization for ORM in Public Relations. Julie has 20 years experience in advertising, online marketing, and public relations. President, Marketing for Rostin Ventures, Ms. Ross studies search engine algorithms to increase rankings. Hundreds of internet marketing case studies have combined to build the SEO consulting formula that drives search engine ranking through social marketing and web 2.0 communities and resources. Achieve high search engine ranking, drive quality website traffic, manage your online reputation, online public relations, and profit online with Rostin Ventures.