– Pushing Down Negative Reviews which Impact Your Business –

Online reputation management is an important part of any business and with the increased use and more prominent visibility of Google Places and maps, having a good reputation in Google Places is a must in order to get the most out of your Google places listing.

PYI has been working on developing a method for some time now where reviews can be “pushed down”. What this means is, the negative review will still exist, but it will not be as easily and readily visible as they are now.

You will notice that on your Google Map reviews you will see a “More Reviews” button – where reviews exist but are not visible “on the first page” of your Google Map Listing. PYI have developed a unique method to “push” reviews underneath positive listings, so they are onto this next “More Reviews” page. This page naturally sees less views from online users (much the same way that being on the First Page of Google will get your website more clicks than if it is on the second, or third page, etc. of Google results.)

This is something PYI has been working on for some time now, and which we have seen some success with even after Google’s “Places” Algorithm change.
If you think this is something that could benefit your business, please do not hesitate to contact us for a free evaluation.

Of course, our number one concern is the effect negative press can have on your business and its prospective success moving forward. As a cutting edge web reputation service we understand the tricks, tools and techniques of the trade required to get your name back up the top of the digital pile and keep it there. We undertake a variety of methods in order to achieve this – the registration of your business name is one factor that can beat out competitors and avoid confusion or association with lesser companies, while domain name registration and forwarding can funnel traffic to your website that may have ended up lost amongst a list of Google results. When it comes to managing an online reputation, PYI are number one. We stake our reputation on being the best reputation managers in the digital marketplace. We utilise SEO techniques to boost your name and bring all of the positive press to the public’s attention, while simultaneously pushing down and eventually blocking out all negative press, slander or other unwanted attention.

With the rise of social networking and the increasing lack of privacy or implementation of confusing privacy settings, protecting your name has become more and more difficult. Additionally, the increasing popularity of online message boards means that users can speak anonymously without fear of repercussion. Personal reputation is linked to your name, and as such becomes difficult to manage. When it comes to reputation management, online communities and networks can become a chain reaction of bad press. We understand the rapidly evolving social networking landscape and counter any unwanted PR, negative or perhaps simply sensitive. As with many of our tactics, search engine reputation management can be an effective tool against bad personal PR. We have what it takes to rebuild your personal brand and elevate your name back into the positive realm.

We pride ourselves on a complete and comprehensive online reputation management service – as such, we put extensive amounts of time and effort into understanding your brand, researching your sector and putting into place a long-term publicity program. While the digital marketplace may seem ephemeral and fast-moving, the complete and effective management of your online reputation requires skill and foresight. Most online reputation services seek the quick fix; PYI makes sure to plan out a successful digital reputation strategy that will ensure your business’ name stays in the good books for as long as possible. We interface with you, your staff and relevant industry figures in order to promote your online reputation and manage the online reputation you desire. We make sure that any campaign we implement will last, and will continue until all negative press has been pushed to the bottom of the pile and your name is once more associated with positive feedback and good publicity.

If you’re a business with a dire need for our services, it stands to reason that your brand may have already suffered some negative press or even slander. It may have been oversight, but you may have already failed to protect the online reputation of your business. Our company is skilled in the art of reputation repair – we have the facilities to turn things around for you and your company, and with time and talent rebuild your online reputation. One of our main focuses is the process of search engine optimisation. Known as SEO, this field – expanding in importance by the day – is paramount when it comes to understanding internet media and culture and, more importantly, when it comes to making sure your business is perceived the way you want it to be perceived. We wouldn’t be the highly-rated reputation management firm we’re known as today if we weren’t one of the best in the sector, and our co-operation with SEO marketing company ROI.com.au puts us ahead of the game. We can rebuild your reputation. We have the technology.

As a premier, cutting edge reputation management service we understand what is required to keep your name in a good light – our team is incredibly well-versed in the implementation of positive publicity strategies. When it comes to the promotion of your website, publicity through positive reinforcement and successful positive campaigns is one of the most useful strategies available. Reputation protection doesn’t just involve quashing the less-than-desirable negative feedback, it means implementing a great, positive campaign. Less successful reputation management companies tend to focus on the negatives – we build up the positives too, making for a well-rounded service that benefits you. Through our utilisation of search engine optimisation, our carefully crafted campaigns will boost your name and associate your company with the best aspects of your services and your sector. It wont be long before your business is associated with positive press and positive press alone, keeping your reputation strong and your business successful.

At PYI, we understand that reputation management is a tricky issue at the best of times. The management of reputation in the digital mediascape – either for individuals or on a company-wide level – is paramount to success. As a reputation management company, our focus is on garnering positive feedback and promoting positive results when customers search for businesses in your field and your business specifically. We enact a complicated reputation management strategy that will direct the public away from negative press, false testimonials or internet slander and towards the positive aspects of you or your business. Our online brand monitoring team will assess your situation and put into action myriad structures and campaigns and techniques in order to bring your name back to where it should be – at the top. Our strategies involve a range of tactics, from domain name registration to search engine optimisation, we ensure an effective ongoing campaign that meets your needs.

ReputationSearches.com has launched a search engine that only focuses on returning results that are negative publicity such as complaints, bad reviews, negative press, negative blog posts, negative government listings and pretty much any negative stuff that can be found about a person or company on the net. These guys are probably the first reputation search engine ever, or at least the first one I have come across. The problem is I don’t think it works very well for Australian business’ or names as I have tried all my reputation management clients and it returns nothing relevant or actually to do with any of the business’ or names I’m working with. But if this were to work much better and the word got around this could pose a big problem to deal with in the reputation management world.

The good reputation of a brand name can take many years to build and can be easily destroyed in no time at all. A very important part of all brands reputation is online, and monitoring it is a must if you want maintain a good reputation. In order to monitor your brand name you must identify all the relevant key phrases associated with it.

Some examples of relevant key phrases could be:

• Your company name
• High profile employees
• Brand names

The most important key phrase to monitor is usually the company name. Once you have identified all these there is a great free tool provided by Google called Google Alerts that you can use to monitor your reputation. To use it simply fill out the key phrases and your email and if or when there are any new listings showing up for any of the submitted key phrases you will get an email.

This is a very easy and effective way to monitor your online reputation.

Many posts I have read say that when performing online reputation management the most important thing is to make it look as natural as possible. That is, try and make it look like all the results have appeared organically and are of a diverse nature, instead of it looking spammy and obvious that you are trying to push negative publicity down the results. I totally agree with that but if you are employing someone for reputation management services this may not be entirely practical. To create a diverse lot of sites and posts would cost a lot of money and time. So I think the most important thing to do is to create whatever listings work even if they look obvious and spammy to get the desired result, which is to push negative publicity down the search results. I’m sure more damage will be done and more money will be lost with the negative search result appearing high in the rankings compared to a group of average looking websites.

In this article I will run through the various ways to increase the visibility of your primary domain name. These techniques can be very effective for both reactive and proactive online reputation management projects as you can take up most of the screen area above the fold relatively easily with your primary domain.

1. Google Adwords Adds – Bidding high enough on Google Adwords for your business name will display your add right at the top. If you trademark your business name then this will prevent anyone else advertising on Google Adwords on your business name.
2. Google Places Listing – Create a Google places listing and when someone searches your business name a large map will appear in the search results displaying your business information and the location of your business.
3. Sub Domain – If you have a sub domain for a particular service or product this can be a strong site and in most cases can rank quite well for your business name
4. Sitelinks – If your primary domain has been around for quite a while and is very strong sitelinks may appear. They take up more space below your primary domain and draw more attention to it. This means Google thinks your site is the most authoritative site for that search term and once you have sitelinks they can be edited from Google webmaster tools
5. Official Domain Home page – Your home page after a while should easily rank very well, hopefully #1 for your business name
6. Internal Page from Official Domain – One of your stronger internal pages if optimised properly can create a duplicate listing for your primary domain.

Sometimes an online reputation management scenario may be near impossible to complete no matter how much money is spent on it. Some examples of these situations are as follows:

• Many different high ranking negative search results – If there are a whole heap of them it can be very difficult to displace them all.
• If there are many negative news results – As news sites tend to be very strong and they are updated regularly these can be also very difficult to displace
• Deliberate attacks – If someone who knows SEO, has a grudge and optimises the negative sites very well then these can be near impossible to remove
• Government Sites – Depending on how optimised a negative government listing is will determine how hard they are to remove, but in general they are the most trusted sources in Google’s eyes and can be very very difficult to remove.

In some cases where negative listings may be very difficult or impossible to remove there are still some things that you can do to minimise the impact they have. One of which is to just optimise one explanatory page and try to get that to rank 1st.

When we talk about online reputation management we usually think about negative listings within the Google and other search engines web results, but what people seem to miss which is really quite important, is the online reputation within the Google Local results. Having a good reputation in this area may even be more important than the normal search results. With Google local search being such a great product that drives a lot of traffic to your site, you should not overlook reputation management on it. An example of a negative publicity in this area could be a negative review which could deter potential clients away.

Contact PYI for monitoring and reputation management services

One thing I have noticed recently when working online reputation management is that there needs to be a balance between obtaining double listings and the number of keyword rich domains that are used. Let me explain this a bit further. If you have one keyword rich domain it is quite easy to get it ranking highly for that keyword and if you create a new page or post on that domain with similar content then you will have a double listing ranking highly. But, then if you go ahead and create another keyword rich domain that will start ranking highly and you may lose the double listing on the first domain and the problem is the second one may take longer to rank higher than the thing you are trying to push down.

A really good and effective online reputation management tactic is to gain double listings in Google. Double listings count as 2 individual listings so technically if you were to get double listings on 5 sites then you would be taking up the top 10 rankings. This can be very helpful when engaging in online reputation management. If you already have a relatively strong website ranking then this is the easiest way to gain another high ranking page. Simply create another page on the strong site with similar content to the first and within a few days in most cases you will have yourself a double listing.

If you find yourself in the situation where there is negative publicity appearing the Google rankings for your business and it is producing a negative effect. You can either try and fix this problem yourself or hire an online reputation management company such as PYI to do it. If you plan to do it yourself you will probably read guides that say to create social media profiles, sites and business listings which is a good start but this may not entirely solve the problem. This is where a company such as PYI will be able to help, as PYI have the experience, methods and a proven track record in bumping the bad news. This type of project is a time critical project so why take the risk in attempting to do it yourself ?

When you find yourself in the situation of having highly visible negative publicity showing in the Google rankings you will have to perform reputation management and you may have people asking you how long it will take for the listing to be removed. The reputation management jobs varies a lot and depend on how much time and effort you put into it. One thing you can do is assess how strong the negative listing is. Things to take into account for this are whether the key phrases are written in full, if they are contained in the title, description, any headings, the url and how many times they appear throughout the page. Also you need to take into account the domain strength, for example .gov site is usually going to take more time to bump off than a .biz site.

When you are undertaking a reputation management project you will probably notice that the results that appear in Google.com are different to the results that appear in Google.com.au and the results that appear in Google.com will be different depending on where your ip is. You can test this out using web proxies that are in different countries. Ok so what does that mean for an online reputation management project. First of all it all depends on the negative listing you are trying to bump off, if it is targeting Australia and it is a .com.au domain name then it will be much easier to bump off the rankings in Google.com because of Google localisation customisation, and it will be therefore harder to bump off Google.com.au. Two sets of listings can be created to make the process more effective, but usually any listings you create targeting Australia in this case will find their way to the top of Google.com anyway. But their are always cases to prove this wrong.

According to topseos.com.au, PYI.com.au is the number 1 reputation management company in Australia.

Following up from yesterday when we were talking about the use of keyword rich domain names for reputation management and how effective they are I forgot to mention one thing. What I have found is that you can only use domain names to a certain extent before they stop ranking. What I have found is that you can only have 3 or 4 domain names targeting the same thing before they stop being effective. This isn’t totally proven, just something that I have observed. All the domain names being on one ip may make them less effective as well.

The single most effective thing you can possibly do to counter online negative publicity is purchase domain names that contain your name or business name. Domains are well known in seo to rank highly for their name and many companies purchase domain names simply to get quick and easy traffic from the keyword that is in the domain name. This is no different when using domain name strength for online reputation management except that there is usually a lot less competition for a business or personal name.

A good tip for online reputation management is to make good use of positive online references. You should take advantage of anything positive about your brand or business, written or posted anywhere on the internet. If you happen to find positive references or reviews, use them on your business site or blog about them. Potential customers usually will trust the reviews or references of other customers more than what you say about your own business, so make and effort to highlight any positive references by customers when they are made and this will help your online reputation.

A good tip for online reputation management is to continuously monitor your online reputation as often as you check your emails. If you are searching your main business keywords regularly then you will be aware of any negative publicity that may arise overnight and can get started on minimising the impact as early as possible. It may be much easier to get on top of negative publicity as soon as it arises rather than finding it much later.

There are various tools on the internet that you can get that monitor all this for you, some are free others at a cost. I think all you really need to do is search your main business keywords in Google and check if there is any negative publicity on the first two pages.

A great place to start creating a positive reputation of your business online is the most obvious, your own website. This will be the first point of call for any new employees, prospective customers, the media and anyone else that may be interested in looking up your business. So your very own website is where peoples first impression of you will be made. So dress to impress, have all the information that anyone would be looking for and more. Include links to positive news articles and reviews so people won’t need to go anywhere else.

When it comes down to keeping a positive reputation in the spotlight you should always assume that every phone call will be heard by someone else, every internal memo leaked, every email forwarded to someone else and every chat at the water cooler shared with other people. Even if you have the most stringent polices in the world harmful information if talked about will spread and will eventually find itself on the internet, either through a news article, blog post or a forum post.

So this reiterates the need to be completely transparent, the message you convey on the inside should be the same as the outside. This is a good way to prevent any possible online reputation problems.

Do you know your weaknesses? These could be product flaws, parts of the service you offer that aren’t up to scratch or one of the management team that may be likely to say something that they will regret.

You probably won’t be able to fix your companies flaws right now, but accepting they are there and acknowledging that fact you are in a better position to deal with any possible negative publicity and the reputation management job.

When there is negative publicity out on the internet about you or your business ideally you would want this bumped to the 3rd or 4th page so nobody ever sees it. This, at first seems like a good idea but is it really necessary? According to research only around 10% of people searching ever visit the second page and much less visit the third. If these 10 or so % bother you and the negative listing must be bumped to the 3rd page of Google you should be aware of the large amount of work needed to get this result.

Say the negative listing was ranking number 1 for the search terms. To bump this to the second page online reputation management needs to be performed on 10 listings. But to bump it to the third page 20 listings would need to be created/optimised. A variety of listings need to be created to push strong negative listings and you can only register so many domain names before they become ‘stale’. On average it would to 4 times the work to bump a negative listing from the 1st to the 3rd compared to 1st to 2nd.

If you find yourself in the situation where negative publicity about yourself or your business has found its way into the limelight your first reaction will usually be to rebut what has been said and try and explain yourself. This is probably the worst thing you can possibly do when it comes to online reputation management. Why? Well you may think that explaining yourself and giving people another view on the situation may have a good effect. If you do explain yourself you may increase the online relevance and strength of the negative listing and may open yourself up for more negative publicity and reactions from the original and other people. All this activity on the one negative listing may make it very difficult to push down the listings when you come to deal with it.

The first place to start assessing your online reputation is by looking at the first two pages of the Google search results, you don’t really need to look any further than that because Google users rarely go beyond page two. The keywords you need to be checking for any possible negative listings are these:

• Your personal name
• Your business name
• Brand names
• Product names
• High profile employees
• Any possible nicknames of any of the above

Once you have looked through the first two pages of the Google search results for all the above keywords you should have a good assessment of your online reputation situation and will be able to start the online reputation management process.

Online reputation management could be one of the most important things to consider these days. Everyone uses the internet as the first point of call to find out information on anything, which includes individuals and businesses. As a result sales and contracts can be won or lost simply with what information is found. So if there is a negative listing that ranks in Google for your name or your businesses name it has the ability to deter any potential customers which can result in the loss of huge amounts of money.

Potentially, for a tiny amount of money compared to what is at stake online reputation management can be performed which will minimise the negative impact of a harmful listing. Contact PYI for more information.

If there is a negative listing about you or your company out there on the internet and it ranks well for your business or personal name then you would want it as far away as possible so the minimum number of people can see it and it does the minimum amount of damage. But where is a suitable place to push the negative listing in terms of Google rankings?

If you look at the following graph it shows you the traffic distribution by Google ranking.

Based on this graph only 10% of people ever visit the second page of Google, so this is where I would recommend pushing negative listings to.

Online reputation management shouldn’t always be a reactive project but rather a proactive project. What I mean by this is that when most people take on a reputation management project it is because a negative listing has shown up in the search results and they start the project in reaction to this. Instead of waiting until a negative listing pops up you can proactively fill up the top 10, 15, 20 search results with positive listings about you or your business, and then if a negative listing does get posted online more than likely it will not show up on the first page and if it does it will be a much easier and faster job to bump the negative listing.

One of the first and easiest steps in an online reputation management project is to register your personal/business name in the following 5 essential social media sites.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Naymz
• LinkedIn

Everyday new social media sites pop up and if you don’t act quickly someone will register your personal/business name before you do, and you don’t want that to happen.

When using these social media sites for reputation management you want search engines to see as much as possible to help boost the rankings, luckily all the above social media sites have privacy options and settings to achieve this.

Wednesday, 18 August 2010
If you are undertaking a reputation management job the major key to success is creating as many different sites, business listings, blog posts, forum posts, etc as you can and filling these with all sorts of different content all with the main theme of your reputation management job’s targeted keywords. Using the same topic for all your sites, listings etc will not work as Google will try and bring you the most relevant results and having multiple listings with the same information may hinder your reputation management attempts.

Whether or not criticisms against Nikki Mallon were justified or not, jobs and even loyal customers were both threatened by a lack of active monitoring through online reputation management of “Browne & Co.” even on their own Facebook page. Social media, at its powerful core, is engaging the customer, hopefully in a positive manner. Therein lies the power of social media.

“Bitch Boss” aside, “Browne & Co.” had control over their properties, a Facebook and Twitter account. They could have, for example, set privacy settings on Facebook to prevent posts on their Wall or they could have responded in a more positive way than deleting posts which can be seen as suspicious. Of course, this case was a PR nightmare but it could have been emphasized by the company that the TV coverage was “all in fun,” and reinforced by a 20% discount for all Bravo/”Tabatha’s Takeover” viewers. In fact, business could have been increased through the far-reaching goodwill of social media.

Of course, you cannot control every source online, but there are ways to counteract them. It all begins with online reputation management.

Having your own online PR nightmare and not sure where to start? Well, first put on your business’ best face then look up online reputation management services (you can link this).  While online is only a small portion of your overall brand reputation, social media is indeed critical nowadays. It can be an opportunity rather than a thorn when managed well.

This case just shows how much being hands-off online reputation management can ultimately cost you.

Bravo Channel’s “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover” is a reality show that aims to improve struggling salon businesses one at a time by literally taking over the business and giving real-time help, including marketing direction, a physical makeover of the location,  and human resource intervention, among other guidance to improve business. The host, by the way, is a no-nonsense, “tell it like is” beacon much like the Simon Cowell of the beauty service industry.

“Brownes & Co.” was owned by Nikki Mallon who had a “Big Brother”-type management style that employed cameras to monitor her employees.  During her once a month visits to her business, Nikki would often criticize without the intention of it being constructive in any way. Of course, if anyone was in dire need of a makeover, it was this business.

Unfortunately, the TV exposure got tongues wagging not only on Twitter but on Browne & Co.’s own Facebook page. If you use Facebook, you know you need to be a fan or hit “Like” to access and post on a Facebook page. Furthermore, the wagging tongues zeroed in on the “bitch boss.” On the other hand, attesting to the power of social media, hundreds of people became “fans” of “Browne & Co.” after the broadcast very quickly—all sharing negative comments about Nikki Mallon.

Worse, sites like Yelp that carry reviews of restaurants and other services were also out of control with “Nikki”-bashing. While much of the Facebook comments were deleted eventually, remnants of the negativity surrounding the business stayed. There were even reviews from people who never visited the salon in Florida.

For a small local business, this could be the death toll of an already struggling business (the premise of “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover.”

People are talking on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more. What are they talking about? They are buzzing about your company!

Sure we recently covered social media and protecting your brand with a trademark (you can link this).  Well, now we are talking about social media and protecting your brand with online reputation management.

If you think you are too small and “local” to be threatened by the global marketing juggernaut that is social media, follow this:

Brownes & Co. is a small beauty salon business in Florida. Unfortunately, in late 2009, everyone was talking about them nationwide on Twitter and Facebook—in a negative context. It not only became an online reputation management disaster but an overall brand catastrophe that snowballed fast.

Therefore, if your business has a problem with its reputation (and to check if you do, Google your business name and see what the first page of results produces), here are some strategies in reputation management to take.

1. Review the negative content about your business (follow the Google tip above if you don’t know where t o begin). Are they merely lies or do they hold some truth in it? Are the comments libellous? For libellous content, you can email the webmaster of the offending website to ask the libellous comment be taken down if the comment was made by a member. In the case that the whole website is dedicated to negative content about your business then you have a bigger problem that you should still address in order to improve your reputation. Listen especially to what is being said and review each complaint before you act.
2. Fight the negative with positives. For example, send out a press release; ask it be posted on the online source of the offending comment(s) as a rebuttal in the interest of fairness. After all, it is your reputation you are defending. It is especially important you target the key phrases the negative comments are appearing on like your company name.

All in all, remain ever vigilant about what is being said about you online. Here are some places to look:

• Blogs
• Search directories
• Review websites
• Public Relations hubs, article hubs
• Social networks
• Newsgroups

In severe cases, check into using a reputation management service (you can link) to do the job of controlling your business’ reputation.

Reputation management is comprised of a) being vigilant about what people are saying and b) controlling what they see.

Unfortunately, most people who are most vocal are the dissatisfied and not the happy customers. Therefore, before one opinion snowballs by even ten, reputation management is an effort to do old-fashioned damage control with a twist. And the twist is, where in the past businesses could not personally address the disgruntled customer without knocking door-to-door, the Internet and social networks happen to be a two-way street.

A solid plan for reputation management for your business can support and enhance all your efforts starting from your business plan down to your Customer Relations. Likewise, a poorly planned one or the complete absence of one can sabotage even the best of businesses and the most promising of products.

How can a negative or positive brand image break or make a business? Up until now, literal word-of-mouth where neighbours could comment on things over a cup of coffee and even comment on the coffee brand they are enjoying or not enjoying was a mechanism for accumulated perception/reputation. Next, came the office water cooler where office mates would discuss their latest buys, movies they liked, music they hated, and more.

Over the course of a day, decisions were made over whether to become a customer, not become a customer, or worse, become a competitor’s customer. With the advent of the Internet and now, social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, word-of-mouth became exponentially bigger and more influential.