National Reputation breaks down a reputation management campaign: What it is, why you need it, whys effective and what techniques and tools you can use.

1. Shane Hampson

2. Online Reputation Management is the process
of suppressing negative remarks from the first
page of search results and creating resistance
for any future complaints to appear on that first
page of Google, Yahoo or Bing.

3.  ORM is an important piece to every marketing effort:
SEO, SEM, print ads, radio spots, commercials, etc. are
generating "buzz" about your business or product and peaks the
interest of potential business.
 Ask yourself this: if you have a great product and a great
marketing campaign you are getting consistent walk in traffic or
a good CTR (Click Through Rate) but you are not converting the
traffic in sales your probably missing your target ROI What could
be the culprit?
 Picture the first page of Google search results as your resume
meaning you have 7 to 10 spots to create a great first
impression, if that first page is revealing words such as
Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Rip Off, etc. it automatically puts a red
flag in your customers mind and they may choose to move to a
competitor who does not have anything negatively reflecting on
their business.

4.  ORM is going to take advantage of a combination
of proven techniques to "attack" the issue(s).
 Step One:
◦ Create content that has the potential to get ranked quickly
and has credibility (page rank) and then make it appealing
to the general public.
 Step Two:
◦ Get the content you created to rise in the rankings up and
above the negative results!

5.  Social Media
 Press Releases
 Video SEO
 Off-site content
 Microsites
 On-site content
 Positive Reviews Pro
 Linking

6.  Social Media Sites such as Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and
LinkedIn all offer business pages you can create.
◦ These have a great page rank in the eyes of Google.
 Twitter actually can out rank most social media sites but the draw back here is that
there is a limited amount of letters so if you have a big business name it may not
get optimized for the keyword you want.

7. A well written press release combined with syndication to the
proper sources can generate a quick ranking for ORM as well as
generate quality high profile backlinks to help your SEO.
 Press releases offer one of the best ways to boost your search
engine rankings and increase web traffic for your business.
Now more than ever, Google values websites with lots of
quality, newsworthy content that’s distributed around the
web.
 Our monthly press release marketing program builds on all
the best Search Engine Optimization and content marketing
strategies to help you increase rankings and web traffic.

8.  Video’s are another fantastic resource we have at our disposal.
 Google bought YouTube and has made it an integrated part of their
product line. (you can’t create a Gmail account without them trying
to get you to set up your YouTube channel)
 Video content accounts for more than 50% of all web traffic in the
world. That’s why Google places added importance on the creation
and promotion of video content
 YouTube videos can be embedded, tagged, titled and optimized for
the keywords you are trying to protect.

9.  Websites such as Squidoo, Slideshare, and PitchEngine that already have a
great page rank with the search engines can be utilized with the proper
content and keyword utilization (don't keyword stuff though).
 The combination of high page rank, the availability of custom URL’s and
organic strength can be a phenomenal tool to be utilized.
◦ Organic traffic to these individual sites is extremely beneficial in helping you achieve
the desired rankings.
◦ Q and A sites with organic community involvement (real users responding) can get
you great rankings.

10. If you have been targeted by one of the major search engines as an
auto suggest for a harmful term (ex. Example company scam) then
a Microsite can be beneficial for you to sustain long term
protection .
 A great technique for microsites is creating an EMD (Exact Match
Domain)
 Exmple: if the keyword your trying to clean up is "example
company scam" you may want to buy and host
www.examplecompanyscam.com/org/net/etc.)
 Exact match domains get ranked very effectively but since
your starting from scratch it does take some time to see
results.
 EMD's are a great resource to spin a potential negative into a
positive for example, instead of the potential customer
seeing how you are a supposed scam they will see your
micro-site and how not to get scammed by someone in your
industry or field.

11.  Creating on-site content such as examplecompany.com/reviews
/blog can be very beneficial for eating up real estate on that first
page of major search engines.
 search engines already trust your site, if you apply proper white hat
tactics you should be able to get indexed by the crawlers quickly
and see rankings in a timely matter.

12.  The two main techniques to get these profiles
and webpages ranked above the negatives.
◦ Linking
◦ Organically (through community involvement.)

13.  Linking is the last point we will discuss but it is without a
doubt the most important. The techniques we have discussed
are designed to get organic rankings but linking is really the
bread and butter of every reputation management campaign.
◦ The goal of the linking campaign is to link to all positive and
neutral information surround the negative complaint(s) in
order to suppress the negative into the 2nd pages of search
results.
 Linking is essentially a big popularity contest, you want as
many votes of confidence as you get…..
◦ Here's the catch though bad links (links not relevant, or
from bad neighborhoods) can actually hurt you more
than help so make sure you are getting quality inbound
links.

14.  Organic community strength combined with a high PR are
some of the reasons websites such as Rip Off
Report, PissedConsumer and Yelp are such a pain in the side
and very hard to budge.
 Ever heard of fighting fire with fire?
◦ The same techniques used that brought the negatives up the
search results you can bring your positive content you created to
the top of the search results as well via organic strength.
 Increase your popularity (Friends, circles, followers, etc.)
 Get your content as many re-pins, Likes, Follows, retweets, etc.
 The more comments, shares, times embedded, etc. the better!

15. I hope this presentation was helpful for your
reputation management campaigns.
If you believe in keeping a clean reputation and want
the help from a INC. 500 marketing firm please
contact National Reputation
Free Customized Quote:
Phone: 805.410.7984
Email: shaneham@nationalpositions.com