[METHOD] Reputation Management, How To Guide

I've been fooling around on freelance sites the past few weeks, and have pulled some fun jobs off of there. I've also seen a few Reputation Management jobs on those sites and I've heard some pretty rough strategies that do more harm than good.

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The point of Reputation Management is to improve the online presence of a company. The one I see most is a person/company has a negative article written about them, and it shows up first when you search their name or their specific niche. It greatly reduces sales, and ruins their image.

If you're going to take that persons money to "fix" the problem, please do it right. They're trusting you to remove that negative article, and are taking the chance by paying you. Think about it from their shoes, and not just from the quick dollar standpoint.

Obviously there is a moral issue about removing articles, so you be the judge if it deserves to rank at the top, or should not be there. Use your discretion.

If you don't know what you're doing, please don't make it up as you go. You make a bad name for other SEO's and make it more difficult for the job to actually get done.

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Some *(not)GENIUS* heard about the Google Sandbox and the Google Slap, and heard it was possible to get a site removed from the index. Just spammy links; Adult and Gambling sites, and random blasts of links. It happened to my little niche blog when I tried those techniques, so why wouldn't it happen on this negative article.

RipOffReport and other similar sites have a reputation and authority with Google and will not be affected by spammy links. Even smaller blogs may not see the planned effect so it's not worth doing. Even if you do knock it out for the short term, it will return and will take a ton more work to remove it.

DO NOT BUILD LINKS ON NEGATIVE SITES!

That's it. If you think you're doing them a favor, you aren't. You will not get the results you are after, and are only making more work for the next person. And honestly, it's messing with the client as well. They paid you to help them, not to make it more difficult.

>END RANT>

And the Method:

The idea is not to push down the negative site, but to push up all the sites around it. Understand that, and you'll understand Reputation Management.


1. Figure out all the keywords this negative article is showing up for. Also figure out monthly searches and the ranks of the negative article.

2. Go through the sites in the top 5 pages of Google. Figure out which ones the client owns/controls, or other pages that could potentially benefit the client. Make a list, and stay as organized as possible.

3. Choose 3 Sites that are ranked after the negative site, and all the sites that are ranked above it. These are preferably in the top 10 results, just for times sake. The goal is to push those 3 sites above the negative site, but you need to keep SEO pressure on the currently ranked sites. If you can access the site, do on page SEO to all the sites you can. Title Tag, Description, and H1.

4. Links you want to include are manual blog comments with anchor text, an xrumer blast, and some social bookmarks. There's no set number of links. Try 50 blog comments, 250 xrumer each, and 150 social bookmarks for each of the 3 sites (weekly). The sites that are ranked above the negative site receive about half that, although keeping it the same is fine as well.

5. Track everything. If you have RankTracker, put the site you want at #1 as your main site, and put the other sites, including the negative one, as competition. It will show you a graph/positions of the movement over time.

6. Once those 3 sites are above the negative link, choose another 3 sites to push up. It's a rinse and repeat strategy, but be sure to always keep a constant pressure on the links above the negative site.

I've tried pushing 10 sites at once, but found it actually moved the negative article up. 1 was too slow, and 3 seemed to be a sweet spot. These sites don't need to belong to your or the client, as off site SEO can work for anyone.

*Currently existing facebook pages, twitter accounts, youtube pages, can take a lot more SEO work than normal pages, so feel free to push those up first.

This is more of an optional step, although it's great for most clients as you can control what shows up in their top 10.

Create web 2.0 properties on Wordpress, Blogger, tumblr, and any other site that allows you to essentially create a website. On Page Optimize those as much as possible (with the dead on keyword in the domain).

Keep the link building on for at least 2-3 months, to keep the results lasting.

Do not build any links to the negative site.

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And I think that's it. The gist is Push Up the good sites, and ignore the negative site. It will shift down relative to it's surroundings.


Hope that helps everyone. I felt bad for my client today as I heard what someone did to his site. I also felt pretty bad for me, because I not only had to deal with the negative article, but with the added pressure of all the links to the negative site.

Granted I'll be outsourcing all of it, and I am getting paid; it just added a bit more work to the planning process. I kind of felt bad for the client as well, as he was trying to fix a negative article, and an inexperienced person made it worse.

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That's all now. Thanks and I hope you enjoy. ~englandrm

very well written englandrm

Good Job , I am agree with you at this point people want to sandbox other peoples website by spamming too much but hey it will come after few months even stronger if it goes to sandbox

+REP and Thanks for this firstly.

Secondly ,
I have been doing some reputation management for a fairly well known SEO Company (US based) and before this they were working with another guy who thought it was wise to blast millions of xrumer and scrapebox links in the hope that this would de-index and have the hate site penalised by Google. And i must say that this is completely the wrong way to go about managing an online businesses reputation as the links you built on the "Hate" sites may have a positive effect and they could come back stronger , Hence then of course they will be even higher than before and thats not what you need.

The best way to counter the hate blog/site problem is to create many positive sites/web 2.0 platforms that say your site is great , Positive effects after using your companys services etc and then rank them. It takes longer but it gives the company a major reputation boost when the good sites start to show up for the keywords people search and positive buyers = Sales

But i must say your guide is awesome Englandrm and it will help alot !

Thanks again

Yep, guest posting on already high authority blogs is another way to go too. Pay Per Post is a bit pricey, but you can find some very high pr blogs willing to do reviews and mention your keywords. Likewise, fiverr is a good quick fix to get positive review articles on other people blogs as well. You can even instruct them to link to other high ranking positive entries already on page one of g as well.

Spamming the site like crazy may work in a few scenarios, but there's still a huge chance of it not working; so it's not worth the risk of making it stronger.

Web 2.0's are one of the best ways to quickly get the content up there and ranked.

I just prefer to take sites that are already ranked in the first few pages, because it's much easier to move a site up a few spots; than create content, optimize it, and then rank it.

Both are great methods though. Honestly, people should mix in both because you'll bury the negative site even deeper, and have much greater control over the actual content.

Englandrm, I'm glad I stumbled upon your thread. I read it just after reading another thread that took the opposite approach - trying to destroy the negative competitor's link rather than counter by pushing up other sites. With the process you detailed you definitely sound like a good fit for the Reputation Management freelance projects you're taking on.

Good info to follow. Thanks Englandrm.

Not much to add.

From my perspective of someone who's been in this game for a number of years now, I've taken a simple approach that works every single time..

Feed Google. They're not looking for SEO perfection. All they want is to compare our pages with our competitors pages. Feed Google more than our competitors and our pages move up, pushing competitors down to page 2 [or beyond] where no one is looking.

No need to over complicate it.

Very effective information and well written.
Keep up the good works.

500leads said:

Good info to follow. Thanks Englandrm.

Not much to add.

From my perspective of someone who's been in this game for a number of years now, I've taken a simple approach that works every single time..

Feed Google. They're not looking for SEO perfection. All they want is to compare our pages with our competitors pages. Feed Google more than our competitors and our pages move up, pushing competitors down to page 2 [or beyond] where no one is looking.

No need to over complicate it.

Click to expand...

Agreed

Good information.

Sharing one mistake i made once:

The client keyword was "Name + arrested" so i went and did the normal process of creating blog posts with the anchor keyword for the sites that was below the negative article to go up.

But i put the anchor keyword as "Name + arrested" results: I removed the negative article from the first page,but all my blog posts with the anchor "name + arrested" was showing on the short description of google on the first page.

Thank you, your info is really helpful, but isn't it just cheaper and quicker to hack or ddos hate site?

Good info/method thanks.

Its great to read positive ways of promoting rankings. :30:

There are too many threads on BHW about how to negatively effect a competitor.

More discussion on how to combat negative campaigns is most welcome.

It is an nice information, it is really you had described it very well in your post, thanks for the useful information.

Gave thanks just because I learned that you can also boost other sites that are not owned by the client to push down the negative article.

Thanks for the post. Shared alot of valuable info

All ready on this as its already needed in alot of huge markets. Thought you were targeting someone. but nice post. there is also a wso on rep mgmt, as companies like Mccheese and other Big companies can get hurt, as we go mobile and place instant reviews.

can you smell whats hapening?

cheers.

Yup... focusing on everything but the negative ranking property is a sure fire way to get it pushed down. Works better than forcing Google's hand on a site.

pirondi said:

Good information.

Sharing one mistake i made once:

The client keyword was "Name + arrested" so i went and did the normal process of creating blog posts with the anchor keyword for the sites that was below the negative article to go up.

But i put the anchor keyword as "Name + arrested" results: I removed the negative article from the first page,but all my blog posts with the anchor "name + arrested" was showing on the short description of google on the first page.

Click to expand...

were these blogs that you owned, or were they third party sites such as blogger/wordpress/tumblr etc?

im assuming you had no control of them otherwise you would have changed the DESCRIPTION TAGS?

are you saying that

1. there was no solution to that problem at that time because of the way you went about removing the offending website from the serps

2. but now knowing what you know, you would do it differently for a new client and the offensive anchor text wouldnt show in goog's short description

3. or are you saying that there is nothing that can be done and clients will have to live with the fact that part of the price they pay to remove the offensive site with the damaging article, is to have lots of unrelated sites ranking in the serps for the same offensive keywords but not one of them is carrying a single offensive article about your client between them?

the reason im asking the question is because (i think) it would be a good idea to educate a prospective client of what they can expect to see in the serps AFTER youve done your job and BEFORE they authorise the RepMan contract - i.e. if they are pre-warned that results for the offensive keywords will fill all of page 1, probably page 2, possibly page 3 and maybe even page 4 of the serps, but all of those sites will be there because you have strategically worked to get them there and the reason youve worked on getting those sites so high up the serps is because they dont carry any content that is damaging to your client.

armed with that knowledge BEFOREHAND, your client won't have any subsequent complaints about how youve achieved the task.