Your advertising may be what people see first, but it just sends people to the online hub of word of mouth: Google. While you may own the top several links, the rest are going to be from Wikipedia, news articles, blogs and other things you don’t control.
What to do:
- Always ask for online reviews. Google often displays reviews in search results, so make sure your biggest fans are sharing their opinions and ratings on places such as Yelp to ensure you’ve got plenty of honest, happy reviews showing up.
- Fix the negative stuff. If a negative blog post is ranking high for your search results, be sure your side of the story is in the comments. Even better: Earn the “update” blurb on the post from the original author because you fixed the issue and made it right.
- Get out there. Create blogs, communities, forums — all the stuff Google loves — so that you can earn more top results for your brand and your industry keywords.
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Thanks for this info. I have just started bloging in the past couple of months and these tips are always helpful. Thanks again for sharing.
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why are all these comments just links back to the original article?
if you are skeptical about what the author writes, do google search on jiffy lube reviews
This is good advice, but you really need to do a lot more to ensure that the front page of Google looks positive for brand-related searches. The best method is usually to implement a full online reputation management campaign. This not only includes the advice that was provided in the blog post, but a variety of other strategies including:
- Link Building: Generating high quality external links pointing to positive content will help to increase their rankings. These links should be relevant to the website that you are optimizing for.
- Microsite Creation: Creating additional websites (on separate servers) that portray your brand in a positive manner is highly effective from a reputation management standpoint. With a microsite, it is always better to get a domain that contains your company name (i.e. if your website is http://www.mycompany.com, purchase http://www.mycompany.net for a microsite).
- Implement Social Networking Strategies: Have your company become active on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (if applicable). Offering valuable advice and dealing with any "negative buzz" head on really does go long a way in altering brand perception. Plus, these sites do show up in Google Rankings (especially if you get a custom Facebook URL).
"getting out there" is really great advice that the poster provided. The more you do, the more likely your brand will maintain a positive image.
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Good post Andy !
But what’s all this cr…p in the comments about ?
“This comment was originally posted on Twitter”
I like to read what other people think and get inspiration. Some good real comments from joelf and Dave – then a load of crapola.
Am I missing something here ?
John,
You are not missing anything. We have added comments/mentions about our blog posts from Twitter, Digg, other sites via BackType because we understand that not all the great commentary will reside here on our blog. We've tried to separate out the "traditional" comments so that they are most visible and a real discussion might still occur. We are constantly looking for new ways to enhance this blog– and making this clearer remains on our "to do" list. Thanks again for reading– and especially commenting.
Thanks for the tips :0)
Brett Maas
http://www.brettmaas.com
http://www.brettmaas.net
http://www.brettmaas.org