Reputation Management

No matter how well you run your business, you’re occasionally going to make a mistake that angers a customer. Even if you do everything perfectly, though, it’s inevitable that someone, somewhere, will decide not to like what you do or how you do it.

So what do you do when that one mistake or that one angry person is a reference that owns the top search engine results for your company?

The good news is that you are far from helpless in such a situation. It will take about 2-3 weeks, but you can replace your top 10 search engine results with the kind of positive news about your company that you want your prospective customers to see. And you don’t have to – and shouldn’t – stoop to black hat SEO to do it.

Here’s what you can do to help your online reputation:

• Find out what search terms people are using that bring those negative posts back as results. First, it will be obvious when you Google your business’ key words or phrases. The results will have negative title tags. But to be thorough, also do searches for “(your keyword/s) + review,” “(your keyword/s”) + scam” and “(your keyword/s) + rip off.” Remember that your company’s name is always among your keywords!

• Buy the domain names for those terms, your brand or business name. Try to buy them with .net, .org, and .biz extensions. Use GoDaddy to host your .biz site.

• Build a separate blog or web page on these domains. You don’t need to post a lot of content, but make sure that you use unique content on each of the separate sites.

• Put a link to all three of the sites on the main page of your business website.

• Link to each site from a separate page on your business site that has content related to the blog. On one page link to your .biz domain; on another, link to the .org, and so on.

• Put a quick, relevant update on each of your reputation management blogs per day.

• If you don’t yet have them, open accounts and create profiles for your business on the top social networking sites: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, the Amazon.com wish list, Twitter, and YouTube. These accounts will replace 5 of the top 10 search results for your business.

• Link each one of your social networking accounts to one other of your social networking accounts – but not to all of them.

• Put a link to your social profiles on your .biz blog, but not on the other ones.

• Don’t put duplicate content on your social networking sites. If you have a financial services business, for example, you could post different articles on the topic of diversifying your portfolio.

• Be sure to include the keyword/s or key phrases/s you’re targeting in the body of your social media and blog posts.

• Create and post one or two videos to YouTube per day. Reference your .net blog in each of the descriptions of your videos.

Example Of A Top Ten Fixed Using These Techniques

This is a great company that had misfortune with a couple customers.

Wealth Masters International had a partner use marketing strategies that really hurt their brand name.  Wealth Masters is a great company with good products but unfortunately made a business partnership that went south.

Their top 10 for “Wealth Masters International” contain 2 Ripoff Reports, Scam Report, Complaint Board Report and 4  other websites with negative feedback about the company.

They used my reputation management guide and this was their result.

This is what their top 10 results looked like

• Homepage
• Negative Review
• Ripoff Report
• Scam.com
• Complaint Board
• Official Blog
• Competitor Bashing Their Company
• Negative Review
• Ezine scam article
• Another Competitor With Negative Feedback

Click Here To See Their Current Top 10: Wealth Masters International

The CEO Kip Herriage had 8/10 negative remark for the search term “Kip Herriage”

They wanted quicker results so they called me and I fixed it in 2 weeks.

• Homepage
• Negative Review
• Ripoff Report
• Ripoff Report
• Complaint Board
• Scam.com
• youTube Video
• Negative Review
• Scam Article By Customer
• Consumer Review

Click here and look at the top 10 results for Kip Herriage

If the negative posts are from a customer with a legitimate issue, you can also reach out to that customer and try to resolve the issue if you think that’s a possibility. Even if the customer doesn’t accept your overture, there will at least be an online record that you tried. And if the customer accepts and is made happy – congratulations! You’ve just turned the situation to your favor.

Follow the above steps and in approximately 2-3 weeks you will own your top ten search results – unless the negative news about your company is coming from a website with a .edu or .gov extension or is being posted on Ripoffreport.com. Those sites have more authority with the search engines, so it’s going to take longer to undo the damage.

If you are dealing with a RipOff Report check out this FREE guide about Removing a RipOff Report.

Additional White Hat Reputation Management Tactics

Once you’ve taken care of the basics, there are additional things you can do to raise your positive profile with the search engines.

You can create blog accounts with Blogspot, Blogger, and WordPress where you post your company’s profile and other relevant information. Be sure to use the keywords you’re trying to take back from those negative posters.

Open a Google account and post a profile there. When it comes to online authority, Google definitely has it!

In addition, you can use publishing sites like Slideshare, Squidoo, and WealthMastersInterneational.net to post profiles and articles related to your company. Some sites, like HubPages, will actually pay you when people read your content. This way you may be able to earn back some compensation for the time you’ve had to spend on online reputation management.

Link all of these sites in a train – one site linking to another. Include positive testimonials about yourself and your company wherever you can. And, as always, make sure you are posting content that people will find humorous or useful in some way.

Obviously, your online reputation is something you need to develop and protect. Use these steps and you’ll be able to do just that.

I have a premium step-by-step reputation management guide that walks through the process of removing a RipOff Report & 10 top tens results in 3-7 days. Reputation Management Guide = $29.99