Editorial Articles

With budgets being slashed and Europe officially in a recession, consumers are “wising up” and performing more research than ever before. They want to know they are getting the best product for the best possible price and will turn to the search engines and other online sources to make sure that they get it. For that reason alone it has never been more important to take hold of your perceived online reputation.

Whether you’re a celebrity, corporation or an individual trying to carve a name for yourself in the crowded signals of the online world, you will have undoubtedly come across search engine reputation management over the past few years. From the Wall Street Journal to some inspiring drawings by the head of web spam at Google, it has been one of the most interesting areas of search marketing development in recent times.

Reputation management comes in many forms; from a bolt on service, to a supplement to your search marketing campaign, to an integral part of your multi-channel branding exercise.

A common theme across this fledgling part of the search marketing industry is the idea that the removal of negative results and optimisation of positive results is a silver bullet that could instantly clean up your perceived image online. Looking at the well-quoted Cluetrain Manifesto gives us some insight into why this may be a very short-sighted approach, and jeopardise your reputation and brand in the long term:

“People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors.”

People know that even if you’re a corporate entity you will make mistakes; they even expect them, and are inherently suspicious of corporations and their messages in what is essentially an ungovernable medium - of which search is only one part. While you might have successfully managed to banish those bad apples to the third page of relevant searches, do you know what people are saying about your product right now in forums, on Twitter or in an obscure enthusiasts blog?

Discussion on these sites could easily be the bad results of tomorrow... catch them early enough and you could prevent them seeding further discussion and gaining more attention, links and therefore rankings. Left alone they could lead to dozens of negative results climbing the rankings towards that feared first page, effectively creating more and more competition for your own positive results. This in turn will gradually make it more expensive to maintain your perceived positive image as the slope gets more slippery.

While reputation management is relatively new to mainstream search marketing, there is a lot to be learnt from other more established mediums. For starters we need to analyse as many data points as possible to get a meaningful report on your reputation. This is crucial to a successful campaign and by neglecting this step there is a danger of either drowning in noise or missing out a key development and not being able to deal with an issue as it develops.
In search terms, this means we need to identify what types of sites are likely to generate negative results, monitor these sites and respond to issues as they arise. As Google have publicly stated, their strategy to clean up the search results is by favouring big brands. It’s worth keeping in mind that many of these “brands” have large communities attached to them which could harness a significant amount of ranking power and turn into the equivalent of a 500 pound Gorilla negatively promoting your reputation.

With that in mind our aim is to understand more than the intricacies of search engine optimization, social media and the internet per se. We also need to understand your position in the market and the main sites or data points where you should focus your monitoring efforts. Only in-depth research combined with this thorough understanding of your products and the medium will lead you down the path of a truly successful campaign.

Author: Peter Twiggs, Lead SEO, Stickyeyes