First impressions have the greatest impact, and nowadays, those impressions come overwhelmingly from search engines. The first thing most customers see about your company is not your web page, your blog posts, or pictures of your product, but the results that come up on Google and Bing. This means that if negative reviews or bad press come up in those results, you’ll have a hard time winning them over as customers. But through comprehensive reputation management, you can use branded organic SEO to improve the caliber of your search results, so your first impressions are always good impressions.
SEO-related reputation issues take many forms. One common issue arises if there are negative reviews of your company online. Whether written by an angry client or a dishonest competitor, these reviews often come up right next to your website in relevant searches, and they affect potential clients who see them. Even if a client doesn’t assume the review is true, it will influence them subconsciously, leading them to look for signs of trouble when they view your site. They’re thus much more likely to form a negative opinion about you, harming your odds of doing business with them.
Besides negative reviews, your site may be associated with bad press. Sometimes this can be reports of bad things your company did or was accused of doing. But it can also be things that are unrelated to your company but share some common words. Say you’re a law firm called “Miller & Coorhees, PLLC,” and a report comes out that the brewing company Miller-Coors did something irresponsible. Because your name sounds similar to theirs, stories of the scandal could come up in searches related to your company, causing you to lose business over something you had nothing to do with.
The key to controlling bad search publicity is in SEO brand management. The right branded SEO tactics cause positive search results to appear with your company while dissociating you from negative ones. The most effective methods include:
Zero Gravity Marketing offers comprehensive reputation management services to protect your company from even the worst search results. To learn more about how we improve your image, visit our website today.