The term “reputation management,” once squarely in the PR domain, is increasingly sneaking into the search engine marketing realm. Monitoring search results for complaint-speech (sometimes called “flames”) involving your brand name or trademarked words is extremely important. If users find a protest site in search results for your brand, they may click the link and believe what they read. Worse, they may base purchase consideration on the site’s content.

Reputation Ruined. Sale Lost.

Protest Web sites often seem believable, even when a complaint is trifling or unfounded. A site owner may or may not be willing to speak with you to resolve the matter.

Worse, a number of Web sites offer complaint forums. Sites such as the Rip-off Report, Epinions.com, even Edmunds.com have moderated discussion boards where unhappy customers post complaints. Discussion pages from these sites can show up in search results, sometimes near your listings, sometimes on broader, category-defining keyword phrases where you’re not found at all.

Imagine: The sole online voice speaking to your future customer is someone who hates you.

Reputation Management Strategy
Our search reputation management strategy is simple: Displace the offending search listings with favorable ones and with your own content.

Optimizing a company’s primary content — namely, its own Web site — is the best place to start. Often, a site has an abundance of non-optimized pages that can be leveraged, ranging from press releases to product specs that can quickly rank higher in results than a protest site. Optimizing partner, affiliate, or other content sources (with the partner’s cooperation) will usually accomplish the rest of the job.

Don’t Forget Paid Search Advertising
Companies’ brand reputation can be damaged in search advertisements, too. Though major search engines don’t allow advertisers to infringe on trademarked terms in text ads, a surprising number sneak by.

Recently, a company discovered a competitor advertising on its trademarked term and using the term as the title of a text ad in Google AdWords. Although Google prohibits such use, trademark holders must often bring offenses to Google’s attention. In this case, Google was alerted and the competitor was put on notice of the violation. The ad was taken down within days.

Reputation Management utilizes advanced tools to track pay-per-click (PPC) search ads on an ongoing basis. Unlike natural search results, PPC ads change by time of day. Some disappear as budgets expire. PPC ads from your competitors or trademark infringers are much more transient. They appear on some searches, not for others. They disappear on the weekends or evenings, and reappear during certain hours.

To complement our search engine optimization programs, Reputation Professor has a specialized team of seasoned search engine marketing professionals to assist in monitoring for and displacing protest sites. Unlike a traditional PR department, our team has the technical knowledge required to attain high rankings in natural search results. This is the singular skill most necessary to produce the desired result.

Though understanding the importance and nuances of reputation management is valuable, ability and experience in attaining a higher ranking than an offending site must be the primary consideration.

For more information on how we can search for and defend your company’s reputation, email Reputation Professor.