The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Positive Brand Image for Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management is something that most people and businesses only think of when they need it. And when they need it is when disaster has struck – a negative review about their business, a negative blog post about their products, or a negative record about themselves surfaces online.

The thing to keep in mind is that online reputation management is one of those things that works better if you implement it before you actually need it. The following are ways to build a positive online reputation before you need it or start building positive online properties to outrank negative news and reviews.

Own Your Own Website

Your first goal for creating a positive online image is having a website. Chances are, you already have one for your business like yourbusiness.com. Be sure to also protect your personal brand by having one for your own name, i.e. firstnamelastname.com. Websites with an exact business or person’s name in the domain generally rank first when someone searches for the name. If you have a website you control at #1 in search results, it will get the most amount of clicks and prevent most people from continuing to look through the rest of the search results.





Own Related Domains


If you want to take it to the next level, build up some other domains for your business or yourself. Hosting companies are notorious for having negative information pop up in search results from bad reviews to anti-their-company groups. GoDaddy tackled this by creating a crop of additional websites with their brand name in the domain.






Start Multiple Blogs


Your main personal or company blog doesn’t have to be your only blog. Thanks to Google+ authorship and Google Direct Connect, you can tell Google a blog on any topic is related to you.

Here are two great examples. Danny Sullivan is well known for being the editor-in-chief for Search Engine Land. If you search for him, you’ll also find his personal blog named Daggle. It comes up in search results for his name simply because he put Danny Sullivan’s Personal Blog in the title of the homepage and connected it to his Google+ profile.






Be Active on Social Media


Notice that I didn’t say create a whole lot of random social profiles that you may never touch again. There’s little point to doing that when reputation management is concerned. Instead, you want to create several strong social profiles on prominent social networks and keep them active and up to date. You will also want to build a strong audience on these networks as well – you could almost consider your number of connections like the number of links to your profile – the more you have, the better they will rank.

Some of the best social profiles to create and routinely maintain that will generally rank well in search results include the following.

Google+ – Profiles for people, pages for business. Make sure you occasionally include your name or business name in a status update or two as well.
Facebook – Profiles for people, pages for business.
Twitter
LinkedIn – Profiles for people, company pages for businesses.
Biznik – People only.
Pinterest – Make sure one of your pins includes your name or business name too!
Myspace – Don’t laugh, it still ranks well in search.
Quora
Flickr
YouTube
Vimeo



Do Interviews


If you or your business is asked to do interviews on blogs, videos, or podcasts, definitely say yes. Typically people will include your name and/or your business name in the title of the resulting content which will rank well in search.






Place a Lot of Images of Yourself Online



This is easily done when you’re creating social profiles and getting guest posts. Having lots of images of yourself online might sound like vanity, but it can trigger image search results for your name or business to pop up, further pushing down potential negative search results. Easy ways to do this is through profile photos on your social networks, author bio pages on your websites & blogs, avatars on forums, and so forth.




Create an App or Podcast


Apple.com is a highly authoritative website, so it is no surprise that any apps or podcasts rank well in search results. As a matter of fact, your app or podcast is almost guaranteed to show up on the first page of search results for your name or your business so long as you include it either in the title or the description.






Publish a Book on Kindle


It doesn’t have to be anything extraordinary although it should be something you would be proud to sell. But when you publish a book on Kindle, you become an author, granting you the privilege of creating an author page on Amazon. Thanks to Amazon’s authority, your author page should rank well in search.





Interlink Everything


One key thing to note with all of these opportunities to build your reputation is that you need to build links to them all and interlink them when possible. Basic SEO 101 – if you want something to rank, you need to build backlinks to it. Some ways to interconnect all of your good online properties and build links to them at the same time include:

Making sure your social profiles link out to your website and blog.

Making sure your website and blog link out to your social profiles and local search profiles.

Adding links to your podcasts, apps, books on Kindle, guest posts, guest posting author bio pages, etc. in your blog content.

Embedding your videos into your blog content and share them on your social networks.

Linking your blogs and subdomains to your main website (when applicable).

Adding anything notable to your Google+ profile links section. Be sure to distinguish social profile links, links to sites you contribute to, and general related links to the proper sections. Don’t forget to +1 them as well.

Read more

10 Online Reputation Management Tips for Businesses

1. Optimize Your Site with Your Company Name.

Why? Google will likely see your site as the ultimate authority on your company. Authoritativeness on a topic is one of many important signals the search engine considers when matching content to a search query and then ranking that content among other results. By properly optimizing more than one page for your company name, you'll help keep those pages at or near the top of search results. Not only does this give your site greater visibility in search results, it may also help push down not-so-positive content about your company that you can't control.

The best practice is to use your company name in important places such as the HTML title tag and URL (if possible), particularly on pages that describe your company, such as About Us or Contact Us.






2. Diversify Your Web Presence.

Your goal should be to proactively own as many slots in the Google top 10 search results for keywords you care about, says Don Sorenson, president of Big Blue Robot, which offers corporate online reputation management services. For one thing, it shows your companys dominance in that topic. For another, you'll have a better chance of keeping negative content about your company or its products out of the top 10.

To achieve top 10 dominance, your Web presence should be spread out among your company's site, related blogs, and social media networks such as LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook Fan pages, YouTube and Twitter. Google's search engine technology views these social network sites as authoritative and trustworthy; both are important factors in how highly content on those sites is ranked.






3. If You Have to Choose One Social Network, Make It LinkedIn.

Social media takes a lot of time and effort to manage. If you must limit your resources, focus on LinkedIn.an online reputation management service. LinkedIn profiles tend to rank higher than some other social media network content, and it's particularly important for B2B companies, as many people search on LinkedIn instead of Google for professional services.






4. Get Other Sites to Link to Yours with Anchor Text—But Don't Overdo It.

Anchor text is a hyperlinked word or phrase, such as online management tips for job seekers, that when clicked takes you to another Web page. Search engines use anchor text to determine the relevancy of the page being linked to. If several pages on authoritative, trustworthy sites link to the tips article using the above anchor text link, it helps that article rise in search result rankings for that phrase.

The best way is to simply ask others to link to you using keyword-rich anchor text relevant to your business. But don't ask everyone to link to your site using the same anchor text, Sorenson says. Google is wise to all the different ways people try to game the system and may demote your content for aggressive anchor-text practices.

5. Proactively Monitor Your Search Results at Least Once a Month.

Google your company name at least once a month, Beal suggests. Do it much more frequently if you're a large company in the news fairly often. Set up Google Alerts for important keywords so you know as soon as possible when new content about you hits the Web.

Don't simply look at the first page of Google results, advises Beal. Even though the vast majority of search engine users don't go any further, you should always check pages two and three for negative content. Given how frequently search rankings change, that content could end up on page one overnight.

Keep an eye out for any content on the second or third page of results that might be negative, because it might work its way to the first page. Track what you see in a spreadsheet with columns for the URL, page title, status of the page (whether you own it, control it, or have some influence over it) and the sentiment (whether it is positive, negative or neutral).







6. To Counteract Negative Content, Contact Its Creator.

Even if you do monitor your results proactively, you might wake up one morning, Google your company, and find an unpleasant surprise. The bigger your company, the more likely you'll discover negative content mixed in with your top search results.







7. Pay Attention to Your Offline Reputation, Too.

If negative content about you becomes a trend, you need to understand why? Treat your customers and clients well, and encourage those who are happy with you to leave reviews on Yelp. Focus on your reputation in the offline world, and your online reputation will fix itself."







8. Send Out Optimized Press Releases on a Regular Basis.

Believe it or not, search-optimized press releases can rank highly in Google for relevant keyword searches, giving your company another opportunity to own a top Google slot. For instance, Sorenson posted a release on PRWeb that is optimized for the phrase corporate online reputation management. Even though the release was posted in April, it still ranked within the top five Google results for that phrase as of early August.







9. Pay Attention to Your Wikipedia Page.

Wikipedia entries about companies nearly always rank within the top five results.In most cases, you won't have to look further than the first three or four search results to find its Wikipedia entry.You can't control Wikipedia entries because anyone can edit them. You shouldn't get directly involved in your Wikipedia article, either; that's technically a conflict of interest, according to Wikipedia community guidelines. If there is negative or incorrect information on your company Wikipedia page, ask the Wiki community for suggestions on how to fix it.







10. Don't Expect Miracles.

It's so important to proactively own or at least influence top Google search results because it's extremely difficult to push down negative content when it surfaces. "One client of mine had seven negative results on the first page of Google,"

Read more

Search Engine Optimization: Get More Traffic To Your Website

Search engine optimization techniques are vital to help your site rise above the hundreds of others you’ll be competing against. Search engines provide consumers with a means to shop for just about anything, read up on new companies and perform research. Your site is sure to start increasing in rankings if you decide to follow the great advice offered in the paragraphs below.

You should not have a separate page full of links. Blend them in with the other content on your page. Search engines often ignore link pages and readers have no interest in them. When you keep your content relevant to your text, it helps the search engines interpret the context more accurately, and it makes your information look more professional.

Make sure to have a good description tag to get your site’s search engine ranking up. The content in this area shouldn’t exceed 30 words. It is important that your description not take up more than 100 KB of data storage.

To raise your search engine rankings, keeping your content unique should be at the top of your list. A great way to generate more traffic onto your web site is to have unique content. Unique, informative content will net you repeat visitors.

If you are serious about improving your site’s rank, then you will want to implement web analytics from the start. You need to purchase and install analytics software in order to monitor the performance of your SEO tactics. When you see which methods are producing good results and which are not, you can adjust your strategy.

Keyword placement throughout your website is key for search engine optimization. Make frequent use of keywords toward the beginning of your content, but do not overdo it. The first paragraph of every page should feature the target keyword at least twice. After that, you want to place the keywords many times in the following 200 words, making sure that it flows nicely and it doesn’t seem overused.

Use a site map to help boost traffic to your website. This allows all of your pages to be linked together. This will boost your site traffic, as people will visit the links at the side.

Code your site well when trying to use SEO. If your site uses primarily JavaScript for content, for example, and the code is messy, the search engine spiders will be unable to index it. When your website contains a lot of Flash content with no text to describe it, search engines won’t see it at all.

A fully optimized site includes titles which focus on the most relevant keyword. You’re going to want the title tag available on all the pages that need it, so they can stay linked together. If you have a company name, put it at the end of the title link in order to connect them all together. Remember that people are not likely to search for your specific company name unless your name is well known and famous.

One vital SEO tip that you should remember is to keep an eye on your search standings at all times. Take a proactive approach, and find out how search engine optimization techniques are working for you. Monitor your results to learn if it is working or not. You can use either Alexa or Google toolbar to figure out your ranking.

Blogging is a great way to add more keyword rich content to your site, and improve your search engine ranking. Of course this leads to increased visitor numbers viewing your website.

Optimize your whole website, with emphasis on your target audience and your keywords. Always add relevant content that contains keywords; this includes articles. Insert your keywords across all aspects of your website so as to increase you SEO strategy.

While you can certainly improve your site’s search rank yourself, the best method may be to enlist the help of a company that specializes in search optimization. Having good SEO content is key to moving your site up in relevant search results. Many businesses offer great deals on these services.

Distinguish each page of your website completely from the rest. In particular, look closely at which titles you put there. These will be highly scrutinized by search engines and may influence your standing with them. Titles must contain your primary keyword if you wish your site to be highly ranked in search engine results.

Make sure you carefully research your options before outsourcing your website’s search engine optimization. Find an established company to handle your SEO. It is best to avoid the fly-by-night companies, even if their prices seem lower. Talk to former clients, look for testimonials and do your research. You will be happy you did.

For increased traffic from search engines, place your keywords strategically within the text and main body of your blog or website. It is important to pack your introductory content with keywords, but do not overdo it. Try to get your keyword into the first paragraph twice. Use the keyword frequently throughout the following 200 words. However, make sure that the text flows naturally and doesn’t sound contrived.

If your website is for a business, include the owner or CEO in contributing content. The CEO acts as the spokesperson for the entire company, and is someone whose thoughts people want to hear.

Don’t just make a wall of links on a page. It’s a good idea to keep links relevant to the content of the page. Link pages are not appreciated by readers or search engines. Making your content match your text helps search engines have an easier time indexing your site and makes your website look more professional.

There’s no big secret to search engine optimization, but you’re not going to be as successful as you should be without plenty of studying and research. The highest-ranking websites are those whose keyword content closely matches a search term; you can make your website one of them by employing keywords properly. The most effective ways to use keywords are covered in this article.

Read more

Most algorithm changes of Google are going against the technical SEO people that abused ranking factors

• Content Aggregation Scripts and Content Scraping ScriptsMajor source of duplicate content online. Often pestered with a variety of ads.

• Content Spinning ScriptsSometimes created as standalone desktop applications, sometimes as web-based applications with APIs, sometimes as CMS plugins, add-ons, extensions, or modules. Made to combat duplicate content issues, but often end up having bad grammar and low quality content.

• Article Directory ScriptsArticle directories used to be repositories of articles that you can search and find articles free to use for your own magazine or news website, online and offline. The benefit the author gets is simply recognition. Until the article directories started ranking themselves and spammers came in and just made their own article directories.

• Web Directory ScriptsOnline web directories are currently not as powerful as they were before. Probably the ones that still work are the ones for geographic location and are official citation sources. But everything else running the common opensource directory scripts, and are obviously made for links alone no long work.

• Submission ApplicationsMay be in the form of desktop applications, or a web-based tool, tool to submit to various places, from article directories, website directories, forum posting, blog commenting, social bookmarking and many more. In most cases, these postings can look as spammy as hell. Not because of the software, but how users were using it.

• Multiple Blog Administration SystemsCommon CMS plugins to manage sites multiple number of sites for blog networks. SEO using this technique just makes a network of blogs made for links alone. They use the multiple administration system to manage the blogs easier.

• Templates and Widget LinksAlmost every CMS has a template system, and in each one has the opportunity to display or even hide a link. Same is true with widgets on a CMS platform. Often disguised as a free theme or tool, to bait people to install it.

Read more

Do You Deserve A First Page Ranking?

Does your content really deserve to rank on page one for your target keywords? Is it one of the 10 best, most informative, most useful pieces of content on the internet?

If not, the answer is probably no.

You Need to Be Worthy of Ranking


The idea behind this concept is that the game has changed for the better. It’s no longer about gaming the system, it’s about being worthy of the attention that top rankings in a competitive industry will bring you.

Companies Websites ranking on page one who are not among the best in their niche are squandering an opportunity that would be better served by their competitors. If you are getting the right traffic but can’t make the conversion, you don’t deserve that ranking.

Furthermore, it is not good enough to think you are the best or say you will be. In order for this approach to take shape and drive results,  this commitment must flow through your organization from the top down. It is a mindset that must be accepted by every person on your team and they need to believe in it.

Part of this mentality is developing a culture of testing and constant improvement; where any day you are not getting better you are getting worse.




Current State of The SERP’s


I wanted to go out and take a look at the first page of Google across a variety of vertical markets to see if after the Zoo Updates, only the best, most rank-worthy websites are holding the top spots.

I picked a variety of large, very competitive markets, to see how the big brands stack up against other websites competing in their space.

The verticals I’m looking at are women’s fashion, children’s products, technology hardware, software, and then some of the less savory verticals like credit cards, car insurance, and payday loans.

Read more

Advanced SEO For Ecommerce: Maximizing Keyword Spread

Maximizing the search engine visibility of your eCommerce website, for qualified queries, is perhaps the most important role SEO has to play in selling products online.

The idea of keyword spread is similar to an approach taken by stock options traders called a condor option; you are essentially increasing your keyword opportunities while lowering your overall risk.


By spreading your search engine rankings for as many qualified keywords as possible you are exponentially increasing the probability that your site will be seen and hopefully visited.

And to be fair (and clear) this strategy is not just for eCommerce, but for the purposes of this post I am going to focus on selling online, looking at websites that are effectively ranking for eCommerce intent keywords from head to long tail.

The nuts and bolts of this concept is about making sure you position the right content, for the right time, for the right person. If you’re taking a strategic approach to keyword spread, then your visitors are getting the right page at the right point in the conversion funnel, based on their search behavior and intent.

Think of this as more of a keyword funnel where the top of the funnel is informational and navigational-based content; content that helps to inform the visitor, present them with facts, data, and options but does NOT pitch them.

You are then ranking content at the commercial investigation phase, helping users to quickly gain insights into how your product stacks up against your competitors, the pro’s and con’s (yes! The con’s too, I’ll come back to this later in the post), pricing information and availability.

The end game here is to take the Google approach to information experience; provide as much as possible as quick as possible so users don’t have to look anywhere else.

I realize this is counter-intuitive from an eCommerce perspective, why would you ever want to provide competitive information to a prospective customer?

Simple, if you provide them with all the information they need, not only are you building trust through transparency, but they have no reason to go looking elsewhere for it.



Keyword Spread Opportunity

Taking a lesson from my days in Finance, you can lower your risk for negative returns from search by making sure to spread your rankings across more purchase-intent SERP’s. Similar to a condor option, the wider your spread on target traffic, and the higher your average position, the less risk you have on not making your target return.

You need to be building awareness and mind-share throughout the buying cycle.

Searcher behavior starts with initial interest and information gathering. As shoppers begin to browse more specific queries they move through the conversion funnel.

Read more