Bad Press in the Search Engines?
Many businesses spend considerable time and money optimizing their sites for search engine rankings and designing websites that will draw in visitors. Unfortunately, as a company, you do not have control over all search engine ranking pages (SERPs). Even if you spend considerable effort on your SEO strategy, the first page of search results for your company name can include detractor’s web sites as well as your own. In fact, if you Google any top company – from McDonald’s to Starbucks – you find not only the official website on the first page of results, but also a flame site or a site designed to “warn” customers away from these companies.
It can be frustrating to build a great website only to see that someone else has designed a website to disparage your company or has created a blog post or has written a forum comment meant to put your company in a bad light. In today’s web 2.0 world, where anyone can publish their thoughts quickly – not to mention anonymously – you simply cannot afford to ignore negative feedback about your business, especially when that feedback ranks high on Google.
Negative comments that rank high on search engine results are a problem because they are so visible. Someone looking for your company online will see not only your official site, but also negative comments about your company. This customer will have to take both into consideration before choosing whether to do business with your company. Unfortunately, online reputations tend to be taken for fact. Any disgruntled employee, customer, or even competitor can post anything about you online. They do not even have to post any evidence about their claims about your company. Despite this, many people will tend to believe negative comments online.
Marketing professionals have run numerous studies showing that potential customers react more strongly to fear than to promise. That is, they are more likely to act on the idea that they will be scammed than on the promise of good service. Statistically, if a customer is faced with two claims about a company – that the company is a scam or that the company provides great service – the customer is more likely to believe the scam claim, since the customer reacts most strongly to fear.
While this is bad news, bad press in search engine results does not have to devastate your company. Once you start to become aware of the negative comments showing up on search engine rankings, you can take action. You can send a cease and desist letter to the owners of flame sites targeting your company and to blogs that post negative and untrue comments about your business. However, this tends to create more bad press about you. A better solution might be to confront the blogs and websites head on, challenging any untrue comments or misinformation. You can also use your own SEO strategy and your own blog to respond to detractors and to ensure that a Google of your company name nets positive comments and real information.