Negative search results can cause a serious blow to your business. And unfortunately, most customers only give feedback when it’s negative. So how do you manage your online reputation when you have either negative feedback or no feedback at all?
Online reputation management is about creating a credible and authoritative name for your business. This is done by keeping the most relevant and useful results for you or your business on the first page of search engines.
Website and mobile applications allow customers and competitors to litter the Internet with trash talk about who or whatever they please. In many ways, this is a good thing, as it gives the consumer the opportunity to inform others when a product isn’t how it should be. But there will always be those competitive businesses, or a past client where maybe one mistake was made, that make it a point to say something negative about your company.
On the upside, a positive online reputation can really benefit your business by blurring negative results and putting you at the top of frequented search results pages. So it’s really important to know how you can manage your online reputation and keep the haters at bay.
Here is some advice when it applies to businesses.
Claiming Your Brand Name
You need to make sure that no one has control of misrepresenting you online by controlling a piece of your brand. There are multiple web services that allow you to check for the use of your brand or product on social media sites. A few of these include:
- KnowEm.com
- UserNameCheck.com
- NameChk.com
Manage Your Brand Name
So, let’s say when you check your brand name on one of the aforementioned sites 300+ username accounts come up. There is no way you can manage all of these accounts, but you really just need to focus on the top 10-25. These include:
- Google+
- Quora
- Tumblr
- YouTube
- Foursquare
- Yelp
Monitor Your Brand Name
You will then need to monitor search results, blog posts, tweets, status updates and so on and so forth. This isn’t nearly as time-consuming as it sounds thanks to online monitoring tools such as:
- Trackur
- MonitorThis
- Google Alerts
- Twitter Search
- Google Search
- Bing Search
Tackle It At The Source
If something negative has been published the next step is to try to remove it from the original site.
- If the content is on your site, then you can easily remove it yourself.
- If you can’t remove it yourself, contact the site’s webmaster and ask them to remove the content. There is usually a ‘Contact us’ link and if that does not work, contact the site’s hosting company which can be found by typing in “whois” (who is?) on Google with the website’s URL after it.
You can also bury negative search results by posting client testimonials on your website, blog, forum, and social media profiles.
The best thing you can do to protect your online reputation is to publish a lot of quality content. This can be anything about your business or product. Keep the Internet populated with great content and negative search results should be few and far between.
We Can Help Manage Your Reputation
Mediaura takes the online reputations of our clients seriously. We know that 87% of Internet users do a search before doing business with a company and the online presence of your organization is critical to its success. Negative reviews, blog posts, and comments – or worse, no presence in search results at all – can send prospective customers straight to your competitors.
For additional information about Reputation Management or one of our other services, please contact Mediaura today at (502) 554-9649 or complete our convenient online form and a representative will contact you with the information you need and make recommendations to start improving your online reputation today.
