Reputation Management As A Business

Posted by on November 30, 2011 No comments

 

Reputation Management as a business is a great one to be in, but being customer of a reputation management firm is not a great position to be in. If you must hire a reputation management company, then you must have some very unflattering reviews or talk about you or your business online. The fact is almost every business online that does business frequently is going to have some sort of negative mention about them somewhere. Even if you treat all of your customers perfectly and do everything by the book legally, morally, and ethically, you can still end up with a bad online reputation.

 

You could find yourself in a position where there is hundreds of good reviews about your business and for whatever reason unknown to most, Google is showing that 1 single disgusting review about you on page 1 of search results and in the top 3 of results no less.

 

Over 50% of online reputation management companies are a scam. Not all rep managers are bad; it seems that everyone in the “SEO” industry is now trying to offer reputation management packages. Since the industry has exploded in growth over the past 2 years, it is now clouded with scams and scammers. When the Reputation Management industry sparked there where only a handful of reputation management firms like Reputation Defenders (now reputation.com), ReputationArmor.com, RemoveYourName.com, and a couple of others. Now the industry is on fire and yes some people will get burned by the bad apples of the industry. 

 

Did you know that many “shady” reputation management firms also own the same complaint sites you are listed on? There are even some (very dumb) reputation criminals that post a link on their complaint site offering removal for a fee, VIA their reputation management service! Some reputation management companies use these complaint sites as a tool to get you in the door and show you results fast, other use them to threaten you for payment. If it is a small complaint site, chances are a small “reputation management service” owns it.

 

Reputation management is not as hard as some people think 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time it is very hard. Some reputation management campaigns can cost you $1500.00 and some can cost you $15000.00. The difficulty of a reputation management campaign is dictated by many variables. The main factors being the website sites strength that you are mentioned on, the age of the bad link, where it ranks, and last but not least which or what keywords that you are concerned with pull the complaints up on Google.

 

Where a lot of reputation management services make error is in the price the charge for a campaign. Some do not charge enough to have the budget necessary to actually make a difference, and some charge 10 times too much and drain your wallet on a simple reputation issue.  Learning how to gauge the difficulty level of a reputation management campaign is very important if you are seeking the help of a reputation management firm.

 

Here are some pointers on how to name your own reputation management price:

First you need to learn what makes a reputation management campaign hard.

 

Keywords

The keywords (your name or company name) that make the complaints show up on Google have a direct relation to the price and difficulty level of a Reputation Management campaign. If your company name or name (keyword) is very common like “Affordable Financial” then you will be looking at a more difficult campaign. Why? Because this keyword produces over 200 Million results on Google and that means a reputation management firm must fight to get good links about you not only above the negative links, but also above the other 200 Million sites that your company name or keyword triggers on a Google search.

 

An uncommon or rare company name like The George Taverso Agency (example only) only pulls up 325 sites on Google; this would make a Reputation Management campaign very easy and thus should cost less. No matter how many complaints this company has it should make for an easy reputation management campaign.

 

Where the complaint is located and where it ranks on Google

 

 Where the complaint is hosted or located, as in which website it is on, is a very important factor also. If the complaint is on a complaint site like RipOff Report or Complaintsboard, it may prove to be more difficult than if it where on someone’s personal blog. If you have something negative on a local or national news site this can make your campaign more difficult.

 

Where the complaints or links rank on Google or what position they are on can make a big difference. A link ranking position #2 is harder to bury than a link ranking position #8. The higher a link ranks can make a difference in your reputation management campaign pricing.

 

Social Activity

 

Has your online complaints become Viral or received a lot of comments/rebuttals? Comments added to your complaint link/page can have a big impact on where it ranks on Google. If you add a rebuttal to your complaints or a comment, you are adding new fresh content to the page. By adding this new content you are shown Google and other search engines that the page is interesting to other users and they give it higher rankings. The same rule applies if someone links to the page about you that is negative. Try not to create comments on a complaint about you. The more comments it has the higher it will rank! A Reputation Management campaign price can go up based on these factors.

The Reputation Management Solution, Is It For You?

Posted by on October 15, 2011 No comments

Businesses turn to reputation management to clean up brand blemishes on search engines and build trust. How do you know when you or your company needs to hire a reputation management firm?

It may or may not be obvious depending on where the negative information about your name resides. The most common way to find out if your business needs reputation management is to simply search your name on Google and other search engines, click back a few pages and see what you find. Keep in mind when a customer or prospective client researches your company, they might type in your business name plus the word “Reviews” or “complaints”. Some reputation management services offers reputation monitoring for a fee, you can do this yourself by using Google Alerts, top learn how to use Google alerts for reputation management read below:

Google Alerts & Reputation Management

Google alerts can be used as a great Reputation Management tool, plus it is a free tool. To use Google Alerts follow these simple steps.

Visit: http://www.google.com/alerts – Type in the keyword and preview the search results – Choose: Everything – Frequency (1 Time A Day) – And Type In the email address you want your alerts to go to. By creating a Google alert for Reputation Management you will get an email once a day that shows you anything new that has been indexed (added) to Google about your keyword (name). It is important to set-up an alert for each word or name you want to monitor. Reminder, if you are using this tool for reputation management you need to remember the alert will only show you new items and you will have to do your own manual search initially on Google to discover any existing content.

Reputation Management Myths

With so many so called Reputation Management companies online it is hard to sift through the information and misinformation provided by them. When speaking with reputation managers you will often hear conflicting stories about how to deal with certain issues. Below are a few reputation management myths that are not accurate.

If you click on a complaint about yourself it will cause it to rank higher on search engines. No, this is not true, if this was the case businesses could click on their own websites thousands of times a day and gain artificial rankings on Google. Myth Busted!

RipOff Report Is Owned By a Reputation Management Company: This is far from being true, ripoff report is owned by Ed Magedson and he does not have anything to do with mainstream reputation management, he might offer some type of underground service to people with complaints that help them. The website ripoff report is not owned or affiliated with any reputation company.

 

 

You can just bury negative information with social profiles like twitter and facebook: I wish this were true, if it were true I would be one of the richest reputation management gurus online. Creating social profiles for online reputation management is a great idea however without other content and promotion of web pages you will not make an impact at all. There are hundreds of social profiles online you can use and only a few that you probably know about. Research online for all of the social networks that you think your company or name would mesh well with.

 

Will Online Reputation Management work for my company?

There is no Reputation Management Company in the world that can truly guarantee that reputation management itself will fix all of your online blemishes and issues. On the other hand there is no harm in using a reputation management service; even if you think that the service will not get rid of all of your online complaints. Whether or not a reputation management service will completely repair your online reputation depends on many factors that are not controlled by anyone in particular, no one has a magic and to wave and make negative comment or reviews about you disappear and no one can stop people from commenting, complaining, or reviewing your company. There are far more benefits to using a reputation management firm, than most people realize. The tactics used to deliver an effective reputation management campaign are the same tactics used by a search engine optimization company, a search engine marketing company, a pr company, and a social media optimization company, plus an internet marketing company, all combined.

 

Even if reputation management does not remove everything negative about you online it will certainly dilute or draw the eye away from bad mentions of your name, while at the same time, branding your company name further online. If you use a reputation management service that is worth half of what they claim, you should see an increase in web traffic and sales just from using their service.

 

 

The Cost of Reputation Management

 

Reputation Management services are not cheap as in a few dollars per month or a few hundred dollars flat rate. True Reputation Management requires and investment and commitment. If you are not prepared to make the financial investment required to save business and lost sales then you might be on your way out of business. Time and time again I have talked to businesses that say they are loosing thousands dollars per month because the have online complaints ranking on Google Page 1, and time and time again I hear the same businesses say they can not afford to pay $3000.00 for a reputation management campaign. I think they can not afford NOT to hire a reputation management firm. The math is simple; if you are loosing $15000.00 it makes sense to spend $3000.00 to correct the issue that is causing you the loss. Reputation management is not expensive when you are losing money without it.

 

As with most services online, you get what you pay for in the Reputation Management industry. Some reputation management companies prey on people that want big results for a small investment by only charging a small monthly fee under $100.00 and promising a change in search results (eventually). These companies MIGHT be able to dilute the issue by mixing in Reputation friendly pages and articles about your brand. When choosing a reputation management firm, choose carefully or you might end up wasting money in the long run.

 

 

Beware of Reputation Management Scams

 

No matter what industry you examine you will find a few bad apples within the industry trying to make an easy buck. The reputation management industry is no exception, there are bad companies out there waiting to take your money and deliver zero results. It is important to use a reputation management service that will give your a return on your investment.

 

Some signs that a reputation management company might be a scam:

 

  • The company you call has a .net website, or a domain name that is very long like InternetReputationManagementPlus.ccc

 

  • You call a company and they don’t answer there phone EVER – They screen all of their calls with voicemail.

 

  • The website relies on a chat script to communicate with you instead of a phone call.

 

  • The reputation management services website was recently in the past 12 months registered; this one is a good one! Go to a whois service site like Whois.sc and search their domain name and see when they first “went online”. New companies in this industry seem to be less that trustworthy.

 

  • Their website makes tons of promises and guarantees like 100% Guaranteed Results or your money back 100%. Or the worst one is, “We remove your complaints in 30 days or less – guaranteed”. SCAM!

 

  • The company will not take a credit card payment from you. This should be the first question you ask a reputation management firm. If they do not take credit card payments, or at least have the option available, then run and don’t look back.

 

  • Non USA companies, I am not going to say that all businesses overseas are bad but from what I have seen is most reputation management firms that are not in the USA are a little shady to say the least.

 

Reputation management is not a quick fix and is not for everyone. If your business gets a lot of complaints online, you might want to change how you run your business a little more clear and open with your clients. Usually communication can keep someone from posting harmful information online. If you communicate with an irate client or customer and offer some sort of solution, you will reduce the risk of them posting negative information online. A reputation management campaign will always help you clean up Google results, if you choose the right company. For most business reputation management is a mystery and they no nothing about it, be sure to do your research and talk to at east 3-5 reputation management experts before selecting a company.

Reputation Management The Tactics

Posted by on October 10, 2011 No comments

Online reputation management is changing the face of the web one keyword at a time. By utilizing age-old search engine optimization techniques and combining the latest SEO methods, ORMS (Online Reputation Managers) are manipulating Google and other search engines in their clients favor.

 

The core tactics used in a Reputation Management campaign are to some extent similar to the ones that a SEO Firm would use to make a website rank high for a particular keyword. With Reputation Management the only difference is, instead of getting just one website or URL to rank high for a keyword or key phrase, you must accomplish the same for 30-50 different websites and/or web pages. By shifting search results in a manner that places 30 or more positive links about your business above the negative links, you will over time push the bad links down. Sounds uncomplicated right? Well it is far from simple; getting a few sites to outrank negative links is moderately easy if you know a little bit about SEO and Social Media, on the other hand, getting dozens of sites to rank well for the same keyword is a lot harder that one would think.

 

A well planned and executed Reputation Management campaign does require some knowledge outside of traditional search engine optimization and web marketing. Some of the techniques a reputation management firm might use would never occur to a regular SEO firm.

 

Planning the Reputation Management Campaign

 

A well planned reputation management campaign is crucial, without a plan of action and a system; you will most likely fail at accomplishing your overall goals. You must layout a daily and weekly checklist of tasks that you will perform in an order that makes sense. For example you wouldn’t want to push a bunch of backlinks (links that are incoming from other sites that link to yours) from hundreds of blogs to your website the same day you register the domain name. This would look unnatural to Google and they may give your website or page a penalty.

 

Persistence and Reputation Management

 

Be very patient and realistic about your goals. This is very important, if you are not realistic about when you should expect results and change, you might give up. An old Chinese proverb states “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.” This adage is very true with reputation management and search engine optimization. Do not expect Google to change in your favor overnight or even in a few days or weeks. In some cases it can take 3 months or more for bad links about you to reach deep pages within Google search results.

 

Basic Reputation Management Tactics

 

Online Reputation Managers use a plethora of methods to help their clients “Remove” negative links from the top pages of search engine results. Some of the most popular and effective tactics are listed below.

 

Social Media Optimization: This is basically where you create accounts on social media or social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and dozens of others. It is not only important to create an account at these type of sites, it is important to actively use them on a regular basis and build your network up. If you simply make an account and do nothing with it, the chances of it really helping are low.

 

Micro Domains: You may here the term micro domains or micro sites thrown around the industry, in fact, there is nothing micro about them usually. A micro domain or site is a website created in addition to your primary domain name. An example would be xyzbutchers.com would register xyzbutchers.net as a micro domain and install a blogging platform like wordpress on it, or they might install a 3-5 page mini-website that shares company news.

 

Buy Your Domains: Buy all of your domains and variations! Buy your-name.com, yourname.net, yourname.org, yournames.com, and so on… These domains are keyword rich domains and are easier to get ranking high for your name.

 

Press Releases: Put out a weekly press release about your business! Use websites like PRWeb.com to distribute your press releases. Make sure to use your company name in the title/description/body of your release.

 

Link Building / Back Linking: Get other websites to link to your websites or pages about you that you want to move up on search results.   

 

Blogging: Become a blogger, its easy! Create accounts at free blog sites like Blogger.com and wordpress.com. You can create an account like yourname.blogspot.com and load it with content about your name or business.

 

To succeed at online reputation management you must be patient and persistent. Do not create a bunch of content one week at think it will fix you problems, it wont. Update your content regularly and frequently, always be adding more. Search engines love active sites that add new content daily.  You don’t have to stop at text base content; you can use images and videos also. Sites like Flikr and YouTube are great for reputation management.

 

Our next reputation management post will include hundreds of tools and tips you can use for reputation management.

 

Reputation Management Importance and Effectiveness

Posted by on October 7, 2011 No comments

The importance of reputation management becomes more and more evident each day for businesses online. The root of online reputation management was conceived in 2006 by a few firms that provided such services. Nowadays there are numerous legitimate companies and fly-by-night copycats diving in to the internet reputation management industry.

 

Many businesses are locked in to believing the only way to increase awareness about a brand is through traditional advertising and promotion. Reputation Management is often overlooked by businesses, even when this type of service is exactly the remedy that they need to deal with their current issues.

 

Online reputation management is not only devised to hide negative information about a brand, it is also one of the smartest most cost effective ways to increase awareness of ones brand, products, and business all together.

 

Prediction: In the year 2012 Internet Reputation Management firms will see an explosive growth of new clients.  

With the huge invasion of online complaint portals, social media sites, user to user sites, and user generated content, protecting and repairing your reputation will become one of the greatest concerns in months to come. These types of sites seem to appeal to Google’s ranking algorithm. Online complaint sites and social media sites habitually rank high on search engines for a business name when a business name is mentioned within this genre of website.

Search engines rank certain types of “reputation management unfriendly” higher within SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages) for various reasons. The main factors that dictate why sites like this rank high include:

User Generated Content: User generated content is exactly what it sounds like, content made by an internet user or one of your online peers. UGC, as we call it in the Reputation Management Industry, ranks high because search engines like Google want to show us “the searchers” and “internet users” content that is appealing and interesting, and what is interesting to one user must be interesting to another. Examples of UGC would be Social Media sites like Twitter/Facebook, Online Complaint Sites like RipOff Report/Complaintsboard, forums, and comments on content like blog comments and article comments.

 

Popularity of Site: The popularity and amount of users on a website can greatly effect how high it ranks on search engines. One example is the NewYork Times Vs The Daily Messenger (online versions). Which one do you think would rank higher? The NYT of course, since the NYT is an authority on news and has such a strong following, it will always outrank the less known news portals. 

Content Type: The type of content displayed on the site can have a great influence on how it ranks. The more appealing the content is to the masses, the higher it will rank in most cases. If a website is about worm farming it has a small niche and may rank high for the keyword “worm farming”, but if the site mentions your name it will most likely not rank high for your name. If a website is about criminal news and mentions your name in an article, it might be time to utilize reputation management techniques.  

 

Having been within the SEO and Reputation Management Field for over 8 years I have concluded through extensive research that Google has some type of Humility Algorithm. This hypothesis was first discovered in 2008 and was called the “Quality Deserves Diversity” algorithm. Google has not stated to our Reputation Management Experts that this “algorithm” exists, however throughout my career I have seen this theory in action countless times. I have even used this algorithm to my clients advantage in the past. I was so captivated by the theory of the humility algorithm that I did my own research and tests. I have come to the conclusion that it does exist 100%.

 

The humility algorithm as we in the Reputation Management refer to it is basically explained like this: If a website’s content is about complaints, scams, exposing frauds, bad news, or anything that could insult a name or business, then it may be awarded higher ranking. I think that Google gives certain sites a free ride to the top of search results based off of the negative content they display.

 

Reputation Management Why You Might Need

 

Is your name or business pulling up negative, bad, damaging or embarrassing results on search engines that rank on pages 1-2? Then you might need or want a Reputation Management firms help. Why you need Reputation Management will become evident once you have these types of negative links ranking on page one for your name or business. Clients, potential clients, friends, family, associates, and anyone who searches your name will find, read, and gossip about the negative links. Some clients and potential clients, and others will bring these embarrassing links to your attention, affirming that they have seen them.

 

The loss of business and credibility because of these negative links will lose you sales and income if you are a business. As for individuals these negative links can lose you friends, opportunities, and much more.

 

Your online reputation is very important in this era and should be considered one of your top priorities. Many businesses have dedicated a portion of their marketing budget specifically for online reputation management services. In 2012 every business that has an online presence will at one time or another have the need for reputation management or will have considered using it. In conclusion, reputation management is not just for bad businesses or bad people, it is not just for big fortune 500 companies, it is for anyone that wants to protect their online image.