Reputation ManagementShane Hampson

What is Reputation Management? Online Reputation Management is the

process of suppressing negative remarks from the first page of search results and creating resistance for any future complaints to appear on that first page of Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Common Myths You can “delete” harmful websites, like

Rip Off Report Responding to the reports helps prove

your innocence You can boost star ratings with fake

reviews Online complaints don’t effect business

Reputation Management is important ORM is an important piece to every marketing effort: SEO, SEM, print

ads, radio spots, commercials, etc. are generating "buzz" about your business or product and peaks the interest of potential business.

Ask yourself this: if you have a great product and a great marketing campaign you are getting consistent walk in traffic or a good CTR (Click Through Rate) but you are not converting the traffic in sales your probably missing your target ROI What could be the culprit?

Picture the first page of Google search results as your resume meaning you have 7 to 10 spots to create a great first impression, if that first page is revealing words such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Rip Off, etc. it automatically puts a red flag in your customers mind and they may choose to move to a competitor who does not have anything negatively reflecting on their business.

Ideal Candidate? Ideal Clients

Is an individual person or business who is established has credibility with the BBB, won awards or accomplishments, etc. but may have had a disgruntled ex-employee, rival competition or random things like ex-spouses throw their name in the mud.

Resources to use Google Adwords Keyword Tool Compete.com

Pre and post traffic

Techniques Social Media Press Releases Video SEO Off-site content Microsites On-site content Positive Reviews Pro Linking

Social Media Social Media Sites such as Facebook, Google+,

Pinterest and LinkedIn all offer business pages you can create. These have a great page rank in the eyes of

Google. Twitter actually can out rank most social media sites but the

draw back here is that there is a limited amount of letters so if you have a big business name it may not get optimized for the keyword you want.

Press ReleasesA well written press release combined with syndication to the proper sources can generate a quick ranking for ORM as well as generate quality high profile backlinks to help your SEO.

Press releases offer one of the best ways to boost your search engine rankings and increase web traffic for your business. Now more than ever, Google values websites with lots of quality, newsworthy content that’s distributed around the web.

Our monthly press release marketing program builds on all the best Search Engine Optimization and content marketing strategies to help you increase rankings and web traffic.

Video Video’s are another fantastic resource we have

at our disposal. Google bought YouTube and has made it an integrated

part of their product line. (you can’t create a Gmail account without them trying to get you to set up your YouTube channel)

Video content accounts for more than 50% of all web traffic in the world. That’s why Google places added importance on the creation and promotion of video content

YouTube videos can be embedded, tagged, titled and optimized for the keywords you are trying to protect.

Off Site Content Websites such as Squidoo, Slideshare, and PitchEngine that

already have a great page rank with the search engines can be utilized with the proper content and keyword utilization (don't keyword stuff though).

The combination of high page rank, the availability of custom URL’s and organic strength can be a phenomenal tool to be utilized. Organic traffic to these individual sites is extremely beneficial in

helping you achieve the desired rankings. Q and A sites with organic community involvement (real users

responding) can get you great rankings.

MicrositesIf you have been targeted by one of the major search engines as an auto suggest for a harmful term (ex. Example company scam) then a Microsite can be beneficial for you to sustain long term protection . A great technique for microsites is creating an EMD (Exact Match

Domain) Exmple: if the keyword your trying to clean up is "example

company scam" you may want to buy and host www.examplecompanyscam.com/org/net/etc.) Exact match domains get ranked very effectively but since your

starting from scratch it does take some time to see results. EMD's are a great resource to spin a potential negative into a

positive for example, instead of the potential customer seeing how you are a supposed scam they will see your micro-site and how not to get scammed by someone in your industry or field.

On Site Content Creating on-site content such as

examplecompany.com/reviews /blog can be very beneficial for eating up real estate on that first page of major search engines.

search engines already trust your site, if you apply proper white hat tactics you should be able to get indexed by the crawlers quickly and see rankings in a timely matter.

Ways to get these to rank The two main techniques to get these

profiles and webpages ranked above the negatives. Linking Organically (through community

involvement.)

Linking Linking is the last point we will discuss but it is without a

doubt the most important. The techniques we have discussed are designed to get organic rankings but linking is really the bread and butter of every reputation management campaign. The goal of the linking campaign is to link to all positive and

neutral information surround the negative complaint(s) in order to suppress the negative into the 2nd pages of search results.

Linking is essentially a big popularity contest, you want as many votes of confidence as you get….. Here's the catch though bad links (links not relevant, or

from bad neighborhoods) can actually hurt you more than help so make sure you are getting quality inbound links.

Organic Strength Organic community strength combined with a high PR

are some of the reasons websites such as Rip Off Report, PissedConsumer and Yelp are such a pain in the side and very hard to budge.

Iron sharpens Iron The same techniques used that brought the negatives up

the search results you can bring your positive content you created to the top of the search results as well via organic strength. Increase your popularity (Friends, circles, followers, etc.) Get your content as many re-pins, Likes, Follows, retweets, etc. The more comments, shares, times embedded, etc. the better!

Questions? Contact me. 805.410.7984 shaneham@nationalpositions.com http://shanehampson.com