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Online Reputation Management: Creating and Protecting a Business Image

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Reputation is not only for individuals, but also for large and small companies. Reputation management on the Internet is achieved using special methods used by a number of programs and SEO optimizers. Usually the task of increasing the reputation or promotion of the company’s brand is to move its site up the ranking list or search engine list. In Russia, at the moment, up to 80% of owners of private companies use this method of advertising their own products or services, taking an example from the successful experience of Western colleagues.

There are several guidelines for how online reputation is built and managed, and how brands are protected.

Company website optimization

Using a few key phrases to search for a particular company, several pages of its website should be optimized. In this case, search engines will consider this site as the most authoritative source from which information about the company can be gleaned. One of the first factors that search engines look at when they choose among different options for displaying search suggestions is topic authority.

If several pages are optimized for the company name, then their position can be saved at the top of the list issued by the search engine. Thanks to this, the promoted site will not only flicker more often in search results, but will also lower negative information about the company that the owners cannot control.

Building online reputation is much easier if the company name is used in key places on the site – HTML title tags, and if possible, URLs, for example, on the "Contact" or "About us" pages that talk about the company.

Some companies talk about themselves on their websites in the first person (“we offer" instead of “the company offers”). However, the presentation on behalf of a third party is not only more competent, but also allows you to insert the name of the company into the text, and this will already facilitate its search.

Diversity of online presence

It is advisable to strive to actively capture niches according to 10 search criteria in Google and Yandex for the main key phrases. This, on the one hand, will demonstrate the “advancement” of the company in this matter, and on the other hand, it will significantly reduce the chances of negative information about a product or company to enter the top 10. It is impossible to completely get rid of uncontrollable unwanted information, since its sources are newspaper publications and negative reviews. But the owner can influence the balance of this information by posting positive data that is under his control.

Online reputation management video

To get into the top ten of a search engine, the reputation of a site on the Internet must appear not only due to the site, but also due to its presence in thematic blogs and various social networks:

  • In contact with;
  • Google;
  • YouTube;
  • Twitter;
  • Facebook.

Anchor links

On other portals, you need to place links to your own site with anchor text, but not backlinks. Anchor text is a phrase or word with a hyperlink. For example, if a job seeker clicks on a button with tips on reputation management, they are redirected to another page. Anchor text is used by search engines to determine the relevance of the page to which the link goes. And if several authoritative sites link to this article, then a high reputation on the Internet will increase the rank of this article. But it will be overkill if you make 60% of all links with the same anchor text, it is better to make them more diverse, otherwise you risk falling under the ACS. By using different relevant anchor text in the link body, you need to get links from multiple reputable sites.

Regular monitoring of the place in search engines

Such control is needed at least once a month – just type the name of the company in the search engine. But if the company is large and often in the news, then this should be done more often. With the help of Alerts and Google with the keywords entered in them, you can find out about new information that has appeared about the company on the Internet. Do not look only at the first page of the Google search engine. Despite the fact that most users do not look beyond the first page, pages with negative reviews can only be dug after 2-3 pages. Negativity can appear at any time due to rapidly changing ranking results, and here protection of business reputation on the Internet will already be required.

Online Reputation Management: Creating and Protecting a Business Image

Taking care of your offline reputation

If the presence of a negative reputation becomes the norm, then it is worth considering why this happens. After all, the reputation from the offline world enters the world wide web. If customers are treated well and encourage those who are willing to leave a laudatory comment, then the situation will improve. Therefore, if you care more about the real reputation of the company in real life, then its Internet version will begin to climb up.

Distribution of press releases

Even SEO-optimized press releases can rank high on Google for relevant keywords, which allows the company to get an extra position on the final search result. With the help of press releases, you can correct the emerging bad network reputation.

Wikipedia page

A Wikipedia entry about a company is likely to rank in the top five search results for a company name. You can check this on world-famous brands – in the first three searches, there will definitely be a link to Wikipedia. It is impossible to control entries in Wikipedia, since anyone can edit them, and this is the rule of this public Internet encyclopedia. If, however, blatantly false or negative information about a company appears on Wikipedia, then you need to contact the Wiki community in order to learn about ways to correct it.

Video about protecting business reputation on the Internet

Internet reputation monitoring

It’s important to look at all of the top negative posts from search queries, or at least some of them. The sooner they are noticed, the easier it can be to fight them. If a company has half a dozen negative reviews on the first page of a search, then it will have to work for more than a year to clear the first page of the search from them.

Reasons for the negative impact on reputation

There is a natural negative when a dissatisfied or annoyed customer leaves a negative review or when compromising information gets on the Internet. Usually such a negative does not pose a serious threat, but it cannot be ignored and one should try to solve the problem openly. If the client left negative feedback, then you should publicly and in the same source try to get in touch with him and explain why he is wrong here. If the client’s claims were justified, then you have to dodge and look for a third-party reason that prevented him from serving him well, and promise not to repeat this in the future.

As for deliberate negativity, it usually comes from competitors or disgruntled former employees of the company trying to take revenge. This is a much more dangerous negative that requires an immediate response. You need to calmly point out the incompetence of the complainant, and if there is reason to suspect a competitor of this, then point it out directly so that neutral readers of these reviews no longer pay attention to them.

If someone’s blog is the source of negative information, then in this case, protecting the reputation on the Internet requires contacting its author, the owner of the site, or the person who posted this information. You need to ask the author what can be done to change his negative response to a positive one. If this does not help, then it is advisable to leave a comment there with your version of events and remarks on the company’s attempts to correct the situation.

Posting positive reviews

The next step to increase reputation and positive impact is to post a bunch of positive reviews on various resources and promote these reviews in search engine reports. The more pages with neutral and positive reviews that move to the top, the less likely that people who are interested in reviews about this company will come across negative ratings. As soon as you fill the first three pages of search results with positive reviews, the chances that potential customers will stumble upon a negative one become negligible.

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