No company with a presence in cyberspace is immune from malicious attacks on its reputation. The ease of posting negative feedback – whether deserved or unwarranted – makes companies easy targets for anonymous flamers.
Once the negative comments have been posted, restoring a company’s reputation may seem an insurmountable task. However, employing the tactics of a search engine optimization campaign – commonly called SEO – can alleviate some of the damage to a business’ good name.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
In a nutshell, SEO is a way to route Internet searches to a site using organic means. The goal is to increase traffic on a web site by spending no advertising dollars. The tactic utilizes search engines’ algorithms to rank the popularity of web sites. Commercial search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo create algorithms or mathematical formulas as a way to sort and rank query results.
Managing Negative Publicity through SEO
There are several ways to influence a negative web presence by using SEO strategies. An easy, yet highly effective method to influence online reputation is keeping a well-organized and professional-appearing blog. There are some other guidelines to consider when relying on a blog to influence online reputation:
Make regular posts.
By adding new content at least every other day provides search engines with new text to rank your site. Daily contents also helps positively affect reputation management because it essentially “buries” negative comments that appear on search engines. New content will help the damaging content move further down the search engine’s results list.
Developing great content may seem clichéd, but using content that is appealing and useful is critical to search engine optimization.
Every time an engine performs a search an intention is assumed. Intentions could be to find information, to learn about something, to solve a problem, to buy a product, to fix something that’s broken, to treat a condition or to understand an issue. Search engines attempt to satisfy the assumed intent in the best possible way by the way they return results. Crafting the most fulfilling, thorough content that addresses a searcher’s needs provides an excellent chance to earn top rankings.
Be true to the business’s brand by keeping the same tone as in posts prior to the bad publicity.
Sometimes the tone must be adjusted to speak to a specific audience, but it’s extremely important to avoid steering from the normal way of doing business and communicating with existing and potential customers.
Don’t oversell.
It is more important to entertain readers than to offerthem a sales pitch. If the blog is well-written, it’s possible to make your case while informing readers of the business’s products or services rather than simply offering a hard sell.
Use sites that allow for optimized content placing.
Sites that allow you to place optimized content are a great way to manage your online reputation. Use article directories likeSquidoo, HubPages, Buzzleor Go Articles to place new articles that include the terms you want to use to drive traffic to your site and enhance the reputation. Create a link-building strategy using article directories. Write unique, quality articles and submit them to article directories, web 2.0 sites, blogs and other sites that will accept content. Vary the anchor text, and spread the links across sites so the link profile will eventually be more natural.
Buy out similar domain names.
Another tactic is to buy domain name that are similar to the existing domain. For example, buy the .com, .net and .org versions of the exact match domains for the search phrase. You may also consider buying versions of the domain as well. Having access to these domains will allow you to control content and opinions expressed about the search term.
Any company is susceptible toattacks on its reputation. The ability to leave negative feedback with ease and anonymity makes internet companies especially vulnerable to such attacks.
The restoration of a company’s reputation may seem difficult after a particularly vicious attack; however, when used properly, SEOtechniques can bring a business back on its feet, rebuilding its reputation in no time.
Author Bio:
“Vincent Ammirato is the marketing strategist for Alter Imaging -SEO Company in Charlotte, NC. Vincent has over 15 years experience in digital design, development and marketing working both large corporations in house and in agency settings. He also teaches web design at UNC Charlotte.”