With more and more customers heading online, your business can no longer afford to avoid the digital space. While websites and search engine rankings are really important to grow your business online, having an awareness of what users are saying about you is equally important. If you’re struggling with negativity online, you might want to consider search engine reputation management.

Search engine reputation management covers a range of activities designed to highlight online positivity towards your brand and to minimise negative sentiments. There are a few ways to handle this type of activity, so understanding your issues is crucial towards delivering maximum results.

Search Engine Improvement

If you find that for a particular keyword you find the top ten search results filled with negative results, you might want to run a campaign aimed at removing the negative results and replacing them with positive ones instead.

Acting as a form of reverse SEO (optimising lots of pages for few keywords, as opposed to a few pages for some keywords), this process works on a range of positive pages that are designed to supplant negative ones. Of course, this can be challenging in that top ten results are typically quite hard to move; however, with hard work and determination, it is achievable.

Reputation Monitoring

The main reason why negative opinion spreads across the internet is through social media platforms and online forums. When dissatisfied customers voice their opinions, they can spread negativity and encourage others to voice their issues.

Part of reputation monitoring is reviewing popular platforms where reviews and comments might be shared and addressing each of them directly. Seeking to resolve and remedy any negativity is crucial as a part of online reputation management, and a big part of search engine reputation management. While you might not be able to reach everyone (and certainly people can still be quite upset), at least you’ve taken a front foot approach to improving online reputation, which is the first step.

Search Engine Claiming

If you’re running a business, or you’re just an individual, either way, you want to ensure that reputable listings appear on the first page of Google above any other types of negativity. Having results like business websites, social media profiles, Wikipedia listings (if possible), business listings and blog sites can allow you to have several positive links in the top ten results.

Part of search engine reputation management is about setting these pages up and ensuring they rank highly. It goes hand in hand with search engine improvement, but without these pages, you might struggle to get pages landing high enough.

Don’t Ignore Your Problems

Simply put, online reputation is the difference between businesses that survive and business that thrive. If you’ve got a restaurant beset by negativity, you’ll struggle to attract new customers unless you do something to resolve your issues. The same applies to any business, which is why you need search engine reputation management. Visit our ORM services page or hit us up to see how we can help!