The goal of online reputation management is to help companies clean up their top ten rankings by performing search engine optimization (SEO) on websites that are positive to the business, which in turn push the negative sites down, and out of the top ten rankings.

Today, the most common method to find out more about a company is to do a Google search, and evaluate the results. Due to the way Google ranks websites many companies are plagued with negative forum posts, articles and other uncomplimentary content about their business.

The goal of online reputation management is to help companies clean up their top ten rankings by performing search engine optimization (SEO) on websites that are positive to the business, which in turn push the negative sites down, and out of the top ten rankings.

1. Online Reputation has a Dramatic Effect on Revenue

Seven years ago a company asked for my expertise to help improve their online reputation. When potential customers searched on their company name, seven out of the top ten search engine rankings were negative. After careful review of their rankings, and prior year revenues, I determined that they were probably losing over $1,500,000 a year in sales due to negative search engine results. The company confirmed the fact that my estimates were indeed accurate — but low.

2. Monitoring Your Reputation

At a minimum you should be monitoring your company’s online reputation by doing periodic searches of your company name and product names in Google, and other search engines like Yahoo and Bing. You can also sign up for Google Alerts which will send email updates whenever your company or product names show up on websites, blogs, forums or news sites.

A recent review of search engine rankings for multi-level marketing companies showed that over 56% have negative websites in their top ten search engine rankings. Changing these results for your company can get you a step ahead of the competition.

3. Negative Websites

Once you have negatives websites in your top ten search engine results they are very difficult to remove (but not impossible). Be especially watchful of these websites:

• ripoffreport.com
• scam.com
• complaintsboard.com
• mlm-thetruth.com
• mlmwatch.org
• consumeraffairs.com
• quackwatch.com
• worldwidewarning.net
• friendsinbusiness.com

Brand owners need to resist the temptation to write rebuttals on complaint websites. Each time a new post is made on these negative sites, the site has the possibility of ranking higher in the search engines. Part of a search engine’s algorithm looks at the frequency of keywords on a website and the consistency of new content. When a debate takes place on a website using a consistent keyword phrase (your company or product name) that website will have a better chance of ranking higher in the search engines for that same keyword phrase.

When you discover websites with negative comments about your company or its products it is very important that you do not post rebuttals.

If you believe a website is violating your copyrights or disseminating defamatory comments, you may also want to consider sending a “cease and desist” letter to the website owner, forum administrator, or even the company that runs the servers where the website is hosted. If there is clear copyright infringement you may be able to cite the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

4. Positive Websites

In order to fill up the top ten search engine rankings with positive sites you’ll need to identify or create websites that reflect positively on your brand. Websites that tend to rank well include:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Squidoo
• Twitter
• Hubpages
• Wikipedia
• Independent Distributor Sites
• Company Blogs

A recent study by the e-tailing group reports that “Five out of 10 social media tools evaluated in the study are being used by more than 50 percent of brands and retailers, with the Facebook Fan Page topping the list with an 86 percent adoption rate, says the report.

“First, brands want to be involved to put their own spin on their products and services and mitigate any ‘brand degradation’ [online reputation] from consumers already using sites such as Facebook.

“Second, retailers want to be seen as up-to-date in their online presence so as not to appear as using antiquated marketing techniques. The No. 3 reason cited by participants in the study is the fear that their customers will leave their [website] for others that are more socially engaging.

“Aside from increasing sales, the study also found the primary goals for using social media marketing is to increase customer engagement, ‘mobilize advocates to drive word-of-mouth’ and to increase brand loyalty.”

5. SEO Basics

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of organizing a website so that it will rank high in search engine results. The first part of this organization involves structuring the website content so that search engine spiders can easily index the content. The second (and even more important) part entails developing a large number of keyword specific inbound links to the website. Relevancy (ranking) by the search engines is determined by both the content of the site and the number of separate and relevant inbound links pointing to the site from other websites. These inbound links are generally referred to as back links.

A website’s link popularity refers to the number of links pointing to the website, from other websites. The search engines consider a website important and will rank it higher for a specific keyword phrase if other websites linking to it contain the same keyword phrase. Generally the more one-way back links a site has, the better it will rank in search engines.

One-way back links are generated by manually submitting your website to web directories, social bookmarking websites, and blog commenting. This is an extremely time consuming process and is best accomplished by online marketing firms (like Big Blue Robot) that specialize in back link development.

6. Building a Positive Online Reputation

The first step to building a positive online reputation is to determine which are the most popular search terms related to your company. These most likely will include your company name and primary product names. You can also determine actual searches by using the Google Keyword Tool.

Next you should—if you haven’t already—immediately set up a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn corporate page and webpages from the “Positive Websites” listing above. YouTube videos always rank well, just make sure to tag (title) them with your company or product name. You should also review the top fifty search engine rankings for your company name and make a list of other websites that reflect positively on your business.

Once you have a list of positive websites you then need to begin the search engine optimization process which includes monthly back link building for each of the positive sites.

7. Big Blue Robot

The best metric of our work is our many satisfied customers. We have used the exact methods detailed in this paper to help a number of companies improve their online reputation. A partial list of our clients includes:

• USANA
• Neways
• Team National
• Sozo
• Tahitian Noni
• Control4
• Cymphonix
• Revinetix
• StoresOnline
• Fibernet
• Ancestry.com
• APX Alarm

In addition to our online reputation management services our proven SEO methods, with link building teams in China and India have helped over 250 websites achieve Google top ten rankings.