Is there a better solution to this?

I have a client who ranks number 1 for his target keyword. However, directly below him at number 2 is a consumer complaint that he wants moved completely off page 1. My solution thus far has been promoting the other sites that rank well and are on page 1 for that term enough to push them up and bump the complaint down.

What I found. Never have I seen results move around so much! I make sure to clear my cache and not be logged in when I check and it seems almost every 3-4 hours results shuffle a bit. Not so much number 1 or 2, although I've seen 2 move up and down, but the rest of the results jump a page or so at a time.

Question: Is there a better method to move someone off the 1st page?

Thanks

smizz

Depending on the complaint, my first question would be if it's inflammatory / incorrect.

If so, you might be able to contact the site and have them remove it.

Nah. it's totally legit. The company has tried to fight it and have it removed but no luck. It's on a very authoritative site as well. consumeraffairs*com

Try a DDoS on it, that usually reduces the activity and top rankings also usually have a factor of visitors on them. So, that may knock them down a bit.

Good idea and I'd do it if the CA wasn't so big. They would prob figure it out with in a couple of days and it could very well lead to my client. Thanks for the suggestion tho. =)

I'm facing the exact same situation actually. What's worked for me so far is sublistings by putting a lot of new, useful content on the site relating indirectly to the keywords they're trying to push the nasty report down on. It started in the second spot. This pushed it down an inch because of the sublistings so effectively into third place.

I've also gotten a bunch of our customers to put links and testimonials on their sites which has helped by a slot or two as they now show up in the top 5 depending on the day (like you said, there's a lot of bouncing around).

I've also added some videos in youtube channel named [keywords.com]. That pushed it down even further.

Finally I put together a small blog farm (only about 20 blogs) all dedicated to keywords in the same industry, interlinked them a bit and sent a bit of juice from our main site OUT to some of the blogs.

I've gotten them down from #2 to #8 now in about 90 days (and here's the key) WITHOUT pumping up the competition at all. Just took over the keywords.

The only thing is, the main keywords we're targeting for this aren't trying to sell our customers. We have a different purpose in mind which I can't disclose. My point is, that if you're in a highly competetive market, none of the above may do anything at all; I'm lucky that we're not really trying to change the market, just our image to a certain group of searchers.

Sorry to be vague. If I can think of anything else I'll add it in. I just got told that this is my new full time gig at the company so I'll be experimenting pretty heavily over the next couple of months.

Good luck with it.

-scuba

Good advice Scuba. *Thanks* added. I'll take your advice and keep pushing.

Smizz

Perhaps copy the content over and over so its not unique anymore? Maybe hide it in text on other pages