Bad Google Results Ruining your Reputation?
When you Google your company name, what do you see? You may be spending a lot of money on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your site and you may be offering a great product, but if your detractors are also using SEO, you may find that criticisms of your business rank just below or even above your own site. What can you do when Google results start ruining your reputation? You have several options:
- Use your own SEO strategy to keep your site and your feeder sites high on the search engine rankings. Your web design firm can help you get high search engine rankings, so that potential customers looking for your company online will find you – and not your critics – first. Keep in mind that this strategy, used alone, will backfire. Yes, you want good ranking pages that outrank the criticism. However, maintaining high ranking pages costs a lot of money and takes a lot of effort – all without addressing the root of the problem.
- Stay aware of negative Google results. Set up Google Alerts (at google.com/alerts) and Yahoo Alerts (at alerts.yahoo.com). You will be notified whenever ranking pages using specific keywords are used. You should set up alerts for your brands, product names, company name, and executives’ names. Each time these names are mentioned online, you will hear about it. Be sure to also combine your names with words such as “sucks” and “scam” to specifically find criticisms about your company.
- Participate in industry forums and online publications. Look especially for forums, ezines, and blogs that rank high in your industry. Make useful comments – not just marketing comments praising your company – and volunteer to be a guest blogger on the top blogs in your industry. All this will help establish you as a credible and trustworthy company, and that can go far towards negating some of that bad press.
- Address negative comments that rank high on Google. If you do notice negative comments about your company through Google alerts, do not just get angry. Instead, research the allegations made against your company to find out if there is any merit to the claims. If there is not, provide proof and ask for corrections to be made. If the complaints are legitimate, open a discussion with the disgruntled employee or customer. Be honest about the situation and listen to the complaint. Ask specifically what can be done to resolve the situation. Google can be just as powerful an ally for you as for your detractors. Simply start using the major search engine to your advantage.