Bad PR, negative press and damaging reviews happen. You can’t always prevent it but you can mitigate its effects. This is where online reputation management comes in, using detailed, effective methods to deal with bad media exposure. Anyone using the Internet knows how quickly anything can go viral, as videos, photos, and tweets have all have made front page, headline news regardless of whether it’s an individual in the public eye, mega-corporation, or small business.
Once the damaging information is out there and gains traction, you’re already behind the eight ball and are playing catch up. Timely, professional, and targeted online reputation management helps you manage the effects and take charge of your message.
Let’s discuss how online reputation management (ORM) is a key component of your web search marketing strategy, how reverse search engine optimization (SEO) fits into your ORM efforts, and how online public relations differs from ORM.
What is SEO and How Are These Techniques Used for Online Reputation Management?
Too often, businesses engage reputation management after negative results dominate the search engine landscape and have gained momentum. It’s preferable to engage in proactively preventive ORM; however, using SEO techniques can help push down the negative mentions and get them off the first page of search engine result pages (SERPs).
Proactively managing your online reputation should already be a part of your social marketing strategy. Optimizing the content you produce to rule search engine results minimizes the effect of negative publicity.
The Online Reputation Management Aspect of Search Engine Marketing
An effective search engine marketing campaign serves to build trust and create a positive reputation among current and future customers. The appearance of bad reviews and negative comments on search engines can undo the hard work of your marketing strategy. Add to this the increasing prevalence of results from social media sites, and a negative tweet or rating posting has the potential to reap damaging effects that are tough to minimize once they’re posted.
This is why ORM is a crucial aspect of your marketing efforts. Without it, you don’t control the content and site results surrounding your name or business, and are prone to being the victim of bad press.
Online Reputation Management is Different from Online Public Relations
It’s easy to confuse online public relations efforts with ORM strategies. Though they’re similar in their goals and have some elements in common, there are subtle differences which are important to make note of. In public relations the goal is to deliver your desired message to your online community and get feedback from users and clients. ORM calls into play a more directed effort to minimize the effects of bad PR and monitors conversations about and mentions of your business.
With constant monitoring of what’s being said about your company and by whom, you have the power to respond quickly and effectively to control the conversation. Therefore, public relations and online reputation management should both be used as part of your online marketing campaign.
Online Reputation Search Engine Optimization: Cornerstone for ORM Strategy
Part of online reputation management technique is using online reputation SEO strategies. In contrast to reverse SEO which is used to lessen the appearances of negative publicity, ORM SEO is the effort made to dominate the SERP landscape with your own content before negative press shows up and has an opportunity to gain traction. When you have positive, company-controlled and -monitored content ranking high on search engines, then it’s more difficult for reputation-damaging mentions to show up ahead of your positive content.
Online Reputation Management Protects Your Company
Your company’s web search marketing plan should involve the important aspect of ORM. When you use the multiple techniques involved in ORM, you protect your image from the negative effects of damaging publicity. Reverse SEO tactics decrease the search engine rank of potentially negative press that is already appearing on the first page of SERPs. Proactive ORM SEO techniques then protect against future instances of negative mentions, and prevent them from gaining visibility in search engines results. With vigilant monitoring of your company’s online presence you’ll ready to quickly recognize potentially damaging mentions and respond in a timely manner to mitigate the possible issue.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t acknowledge the need for ORM until after they’re already in damage control mode. Protecting the hard work you’ve put into your business or good name is best done with preventative action.
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