Adding A Search Engine Reputation Management Partner To Your Enterprise
Posted by Patrick Hare
Bad press and negative publicity can affect businesses in many different ways. In the online world, negative information can be difficult to combat, especially when it ends up adjacent to keyword queries in search engines. In many cases, medium and large companies who find themselves on the wrong side of a search engine will consult with their PR and marketing firms. Unfortunately, not every agency has team of search engine optimization (SEO) specialists on retainer.
Having a Search Engine Reputation Management Partner can be a great way for marketing agencies and PR firms to deal with unwanted search engine listings. Firms like Web.com Search Agency have in-house professionals who specialize in reducing and removing the impact of malicious, defamatory, inaccurate, or outdated online content. Even if your PR client has legitimately upset customers in the past, a good SEO campaign can reduce the stigma left behind by unhappy clients or bloggers with an axe to grind.
If you have a client who is seeing negative, unwanted, or defamatory results in search engine listings, then an SEO company is the best choice for reducing the impact of the bad postings. While it is possible to remove some postings from search engine results through legal channels, there are some websites that are either outside the reach of the law or immune from lawsuits. In the US, courts have held that defamatory forum postings are not the responsibility of the site owner. Even worse, sites like RipoffReport.com will not remove defamatory and negative postings, even if the underlying issues are resolved or the charges are untrue.
In many cases, calls for web reputation management come from C-Level Executives who Google their company names (or their own names), and find information that is not complimentary. You never know when the wrong person may come across this information, so savvy businesspeople are generally more motivated to deal with any potential negativity as quickly as possible. This is always a good idea, especially considering that due diligence in any business transaction requires a thorough examination of the partner company and its public faces, and Google is now a top utility for learning about other companies. Therefore, a course of aggressive reputation management may be the difference between a multimillion dollar deal and a lost sale.
SEO agencies can use a variety of methods to push unwanted information off the first page of search results, which instantly keeps 70% of searchers from seeing the negative items. The advantage of retaining a reputation management professional like Web.com Search Agency is that your marketing firm may not have up-to-date SEO knowledge, and could exacerbate the situation by using outdated rep management techniques. SEO agencies also can work hand-in-hand with PR firms by creating new publicity, while simultaneously improving search engine positions for positive information that is already present on search engines like Google.
A Search Engine Reputation Management Partner should be part of any PR firm’s arsenal of disaster recovery tools. In many cases, adverse situations can be avoided or attenuated through a tactical approach to bad news and online customer complaints. Keeping an SEO firm in your contact list, or having a relationship with a trusted company, can ensure a timely response to publicity nightmares and unexpected situations. Furthermore, the use of an SEO firm for reputation management can be completely confidential, ensuring that your client can discreetly reduce the impact of unwanted information.
About the Author: Patrick Hare is a contributing writer on SubmitAWebsite.
Leave a Reply