When it comes to advertising and building a brand online, reputation is everything. Though it may take years and several happy clients for you to establish yourself as a trusting brand and service, there is always the potential for negative feedback and people out there just making it their mission to tarnish your name. Just as quickly as you can build your reputation online, someone can come along and bring it down even faster… even if the information they are posting isn’t true.
Think about it for a second… is there anyone from your past, maybe a client, friend or even someone who is jealous of your success, that could potentially damage your name or brand online? In the end, all it really takes it a few high end and well established web sites to start posting negative reviews and content, that can rank really high in the search results and do some damage.
So what can you do?
That’s where reputation management comes in. With the usage and power of the internet growing larger and larger every day, it’s more important for every day small businesses and even Fortune 500 companies, to make sure they have a great reputation online. Through the use of reputation management services, anyone can help improve their reputation online, and lower any fake or negative comments/articles out there about their company.
How does reputation management work?
Let’s take a look at a case study of how Reputation Changer, one of the top reputation management firms out there works, and how they are helping their clients deal with reputation issues.
Case Study: UWC Corp received malicious listings online that were showing up under their company name: UWCCorp.com. In less than 6 weeks, Reputation Changer completely surpressed those listings from page 1 of Google and repopulated new / positive listings. With a brand new, very positive online reputation, UWCCorp.com saw an immediate spike in revenue.
A few weeks later, UWCCorp.com started to see an improvement in their search results, with more and more new and positive articles taking over the negative listings and pushing them down off the first page of Google.
You can take a look at the full slide show process and see a bi-weekly breakdown of how Reputation Changer dominated the first page of results for UWCCorp.com.
Improving Online Reputation through Google Suggests
While the majority of searching done online is through Google and looking directly for a company or brand name, have you ever thought about how much of an influence “Google Suggest” comes into play? When you start typing a search phrase into Google, it will start to suggest other alternatives or variations of what you might want to search for.
Another case study and winning example from Reputation Changer, is how they helped improved Michael Vick’s reputation through Google Suggest, which you can see in the screenshot below.
Have you ever taken the time to see what Google Suggest comes up with when someone is searching for your personal or business name?
Do Reputation Management Services Work?
Now that you have an idea how reputation management services can improve rankings, search results and how people can search for relevant information on a company, the best question to ask is “Do reputation management services really work?“. As you can see from the case studies mentioned above, they clearly do work, as the average person is most likely going to look through the first page of results to make a quick decision on whether or not they want to use a recommended service or company.
The business of reputation management is growing daily, and even Business Week has written a full article on the topic. In the article, a few interesting points mentioned where that there has been an explosive increase in reputation management over the past couple of years due to social media and the amplified voices of individual internet users. It was also mentioned that typical costs for a small online company, can range from $1,000 to several thousands of dollars a month for search engine related reputation management.
What’s Your Online Reputation?
When is the last time you took some time to really look into your search results and see what other people are saying about your name or brand online? Reputation Changer focuses exclusively on managing the reputations of Celebrities, Professional Athletes, Brands, High Profile Individuals, and Fortune 500 Brands.
If you would like to see how Reputation Changer can improve your image online, please feel free to contact them and see what they can do for you. Mention ZacJohnson.com and you will save an instant 10% off your reputation improvement package.
Remember those banners that would flash non stop and say that you were the millionth visitor and were awarded a prize? Those banners were doing exactly the opposite of what we are talking about here. They were going after as much traffic as they could possibly get, then sending their visitors to an email/zip submit type of offer. The data provided usually has a very fast turn over rate, and is sold to multiple media/ad buyers.
One of the best ways to find an audience of people who are anxious to click on your little blue text links, is to provide them with exactly what they are looking for. Let’s take review and coupon sites for example. How many times were you searching for a product or service to buy, and you were just looking for the right review or coupon code? Once you found the information you were looking for, you would gladly click on a link in their web site to go forward with the sale or purchase.
Another excellent example of getting high quality click throughs is through the use of video marketing. We can relate to this method all too well. How many times have you received an email from another guru/marketer, and you have to wait and watch their annoying video before being able to click to the next page and/or place your order?
