I was recently approached to offer advice on improving someone’s online “reputation” in search engines (called quite simply “search engine reputation management“. A SEO company in Scotland said it couldn’t be done. Pah! I’d done it with my own name a few years back using quite ethical means (yes I am a megalomaniac - at one time, when you typed in Shaun Anderson, I had control over every listing on page 1 of Google & MSN (Yahoo never played ball) - I’m over that now, thankfully). And online reputation management seems to be all of a sudden a big thing, these days, so i bet that incompetent seo company is aware of it now! You see, the company in question had some bad / unfair / critical / unsavoury (delete as necessary) competition for their brand name, and this featured right below their own website listing in Google. In fact looking at the top ten, they had quite a few articles they didn’t want the brand associated with.

The business itself was in no way unethical, just in a controversial area that drew even my Granda’s opinion on the subject, so i offered some advice. Naturally when someone is investigating your business using nothing but Google, they might only check a few of the top ten listings. This means there is a chance you can control this.

What can you do? You can’t delete the offending article, you need to beat it down in the serps! even better, why not try and “own” that whole google serp?

1. Optimise Your Main Site. At a minimum, ensure you get 2 listings by writing at least two good authorative articles on your site about your company. If successful, you’ve just doubled your exposure and now have 20% of the availabel Google serp.
2. Mini-Sites. Can you honestly segment your business, or separately promote your products as a separate site? You can? Well bung up a few mini-sites. Yes, if you get a double listing for those too, and you get a few links to them (even from your main site), you only need 5 sites to eradicate all competition from the top of the serps for your trademark term. Beware! All these sites need to have original content to keep those positions.
3. Forums. Join forums, using your trademark term. Within a couple of months these pages / profiles will rank too, muddying the waters for casual investigators of your company / brand.
4. Blogs. Comment on blogs (see above advice for forums)
5. Articles. Write a few articles about your product from a neutral point of view, syndicate.
6. Press Releases - Submit your press releases to news sites etc.
7. Web 2 Bookmark Sites. Join. See Above.
8. Rss Feeds. Use them. Other sites will start to rank for your term, below yours, if you have any authority.

Ok. So now you have control of 18 of the top 20 positions in Google. Now optimise the sites that DO praise your product. Put up an “in the news” page. Link to those articles you like. These should, in time, help those articles rise through the serps. Ask your seo to throw a little link-love their way to help consolidate these good reviews in the Google serps.

Bam! Online Reputation Management! There’s more, but the above advice can do it in itself in most cases, especially when rinsed and repeated.
Of course, the odd uncontrolled article will bob in and out of the serps, and you’ll need to live with that, because nobody can control Google completely forever, whilst all the time keeping your fingers crossed the BBC doesn’t link to you calling your product a piece of shite! Because that will fuck up your online reputation, and even a sneaky SEO would have a time budging that one!

Did I say rinse-repeat?

Of course, don’t let the above stop you making a brilliant product or giving money to charity and any number of good things that will actually get you some REAL good press and reviews. Combine this long term, and the above short time, and Google will promote your company exactly the way you wish it.