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reputation management

Do It Yourself (DIY) Reputation Management?

Yesterday I received a phone call from a man who had been arrested and acquitted on charges against him.  He explained his situation and how he was in the wrong place and looked similar to someone the police were looking for. Regardless of his innocence in the matter, two local newspapers picked up the story and published his name, mugshot and details of the heinous crime speculating that he could be the suspect.

In an effort to clean up his name defamed reputation he contacted the newspapers and they refused to retract the story, remove his name and mugshot or help him in any way.  He contacted me for reputation management.

He had already started working on his own reputation and after 3 days he had an almost complete article on WordPress.com.  He explained how he built the site but it wasn’t showing up for his name.

It is truly a good start to DIY reputation management, but it’s far from complete.  When I take on a new client I will typically create 20+ new sites all with unique content.  For one inexperienced person to attempt that would take them a week or two.  Then comes the real work of building links to each of those properties.  Without proper link building your reputation management campaign will never get off the ground.

DIY is great for some situations, but if your name or business name is showing up on real sites like a newspaper, blog, Yelp, RipOffReport or Pissed Consumer, you’ll need a real reputation management consultant to help clean it up.

By |April 3rd, 2013|Reputation Management|0 Comments

What is Reputation Management?

Reputation management is a process to remove negative information about you or your business from the first page of a search engine. Since Google.com has the majority of searchers, I focus on moving your site off the first page of Google.

Your online reputation management (ORM) is very similar to your reputation in real life.  What people think and say about you or your business can be harmful.  Can you imagine someone saying something slanderous about your and then putting it up on a billboard? You would likely want the billboard company to remove it, but they won’t and there is nothing you can do.

Then you have an idea.  You call the billboard company and offer to pay more than your slanderer paid.  The billboard company accepts this proposition and takes down the negative statement.

This is a rough idea of what reputation management is.  I will move everything negative off the front page so you’re only left with good information.

What about review sites?

According to many clients I have talked to, sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor seem to magically publish good reviews when you’re a paying customer and remove good reviews if you are not a paying customer.

Instead of playing that game, I prefer to just push these sites off the first page.  Then you don’t have to worry about them or any other sites like them.

What about Mugshots websites?

Mugshots.com, Arrests.org and other sites that publish mugshots should be ashamed! If you make a mistake should everyone in the world know about that for the rest of your life? Is it the first thing people should see if they Google your name?

Mugshot sites that charge you a fee to remove your name is almost equivalent to extortion and they’re even being sued in some states!

Should you pay to get your mugshot removed? Absolutely not! If you pay to get it removed from one site, what about the other sites? Before you know it you’ll be paying every site out there and that still won’t ensure that there won’t be more that pop up in the future.

By controlling the first page (that’s what I do!) you can essentially block any additional negativity from creeping back in.

Why only the first page?

Studies show that 98.5% of people click on a link on the first page.  Moving a negative article off the second page is double the work, but only a 1.5% return.  It’s just not worth it in most cases. Here are a few links showing data from first to second page listings. 1, 2.

By |March 22nd, 2013|Reputation Management|0 Comments