First steps for ORM?

What are the first things you do for a new ORM client?

I secure about 200 social media and web 2.0's for the exact match name if possible, put a few pages of content on each of them and identify the positives and neutrals from the first 10 pages of Google. This gives me a good idea of where the client is and what type of content is available to promote.

Spam pages which are showing negative results.

I'm not really familiar with ORM techniques, but isn't 200 a bit exaggerated?

Nut-Nights said:

Spam pages which are showing negative results.

Click to expand...

Ouch! I feel for your clients. Have you actually been able to test and prove (more than just once or twice) that negative SEO works? I've seen many cases where it backfired.

Aty said:

I'm not really familiar with ORM techniques, but isn't 200 a bit exaggerated?

Click to expand...

I do a lot more than 200, but that's the starting point! In my opinion, you can't overdo it with ORM. I plan for today as well as a year from now. I don't know if Google will like Facebook next year, but there is a chance they will like some of the 200 sites more than they do today. Remember MySpace? I always make sure my eggs are diversified out of a single basket.

Those 200 are done manually after that I begin doing more with software. The software created sites/accounts tend to get deleted a lot more often than the manually created stuff.

BHopkins said:

Ouch! I feel for your clients. Have you actually been able to test and prove (more than just once or twice) that negative SEO works? I've seen many cases where it backfired.

Click to expand...

Negative seo does work. I blasted 100% exact anchor texts to few news results in top 10 , most of them disappeared .
The catch is as those spam pages are deleted , I am seeing those results crawling back .
So If you can send some permanent toxic links , yes it does work.

Aty said:

I'm not really familiar with ORM techniques, but isn't 200 a bit exaggerated?

Click to expand...

Depends on the situation. If you're scared of other people registering the brand name on other sites then it's good insurance.

Typically ORM folks just want results cleaned on the front page. That means you'll only have to rank 9 or 10 pages on the front page, less than that if you're lucky. I think in this case it's a good idea to just focus on ranking the strongest properties first.

I don't have much clients in ORM, But i have done RM for few clients and get success. IF we know how to use spam, it will not backfire.

How would you filter negative reviews that already exist on Yelp/Google though?

It seems like this technique is just to push down negative reviews that are on the first page for the brand.

In the event that the client doesn't have a large online reputation yet or a barely existent one, what would be your recommended steps to take?

PandaDomo said:

In the event that the client doesn't have a large online reputation yet or a barely existent one, what would be your recommended steps to take?

Click to expand...

Same exact steps, it's just easier. I had a client with 17 exact matches for his name. I had the negative on page 6 in less than 4 days. That is definitely not a common occurrence, but the less results, the easier in my experience.

The easiest sites to rank, both for companies and individuals, are their social profiles on the major sites, so the first thing I do is make sure those are all built out, cross-linking to each other, and that there's some kind of plan for ongoing content for them.

Secondly is to get normal-looking backlinks to all of those, so I build out all the secondary social sites -- aggregators, directories, social promo sites, etc. I don't expect those to ever rank -- they're just natural link sources.

Third is structured data build-out -- schema.org markup on their main site, Freebase, Crunchbase, correct structured data on Wikipedia, etc. I'll get into this more later, but trust me on this one -- hugely important.

Fourth is setting up ongoing monitoring and promotion for their official content (blog, Youtube) and any positive mentions.

Fifth is competitive analysis.

From there, I work out a specific promo plan for each positive site and suppression plan for negative sites. And yes, negative SEO works -- we have about an 80% success rate. Sometimes it happens very quickly, sometimes it takes several months, but it almost always works.