Reputation Management: The Next Big “Thing” In SEO

In recent months I have been seeing a very common theme begin to arise with outside clients which is online SEO reputation management.  While reputation management isn’t that “new” to what SEO Specialists have to deal with, it is becoming a more frequent problem because of the high authority sites offering users to post just about whatever they want.  Here are a few of the strategies I have seen that have been used and my thoughts on their effectiveness.  For arguments sake, let’s assume our imaginary client only has one or two negative posts ranking for their brand name.  If you are dealing with a client that has 100 different Rip Off Reports you better be prepared to get your white hat real dirty if your wanting to get rid of those (good luck).

Cloaking:  A very black hat tactic in regards to reputation management.  Cloaking is software that will take the search engine spiders to a different page then what actual users will see.  This will make the search engines think that the website they are visiting is actually very relevant to the client brand name when “real” users see something completely different.

My Thoughts:  While it can be a successful tactic I consider this a temporary solution that can carry very bad consequences.  The reason it is temporary is because search engines are constantly evolving to try and eliminate this sort of manipulation which means you will constantly have to adjust this strategy.  If not, you risk the chance of your client’s website and related URL’s being flagged by Google and other search engines.

Spamming:  Spamming can be “overstuffing” your content to try and appear relevant for certain keywords.   Spamming can also come in the form of flooding comments section and different wiki sites with a backlink to the site you are trying to have rank for your branded keyword.  The thought is the more backlinks to another site will push it up into the top 10 SERPs effectively pushing the negative press down.

My Thoughts:  This is placed in the black hat category but I don’t see it as shady as things like cloaking.  I don’t think it is that effective unless done on a very large scale which means your comments will probably be placed on sites that don’t actually relate to your brand or industry.  Therefore, you actually lose relevancy in your backlinks and risk hurting yourself in the SERPs.

Hidden Text:  This practice involves taking the websites you want to rank in the SERPs and creating hidden text which can make your site appear to have more content about the specific keyword than it really does.  Very black hat.

My Thoughts:  Don’t do it.  If you don’t get flagged immediately, you will eventually.  This is far too old of an SEO tactic and too risky to the site you are using this on. 

Optimizing Public Profiles For Brand Name:  This is the tactic where you create profiles on very authoritative sites and try to optimize them to rank for that specific keyword.  It can be social media sites or other sites that allow you to create the public profile with a unique URL.  Through backlinks and proper optimization techniques you can get these pages to rank and push the negative press down.

My Thoughts:  This is probably one of the most legitimate forms of reputation management and has the least likelihood of violating Google guidelines.  The downside?  It’s probably one of the most difficult and will require the SEO specialist to get really creative with backlinks.

Paid Links & Other Forms of “Payment”:  This can include paying websites and bloggers to throw a link up on their site with your desired anchor text in order to make specific pages rank higher in the SERPs (pushing the bad ones down).  The other “payments” I refer to are when you contact website owners that might have some of this negative press on their site, and offer to pay them to take the content or page down.

My Thoughts:  While paid backlinks can be effective you risk violating Googles search terms and being flagged in the results.  The argument on whether paid backlinks are OK would need to have another blog post dedicated entirely to it.  As for payments, I would suggest everybody be REALLY careful in how you use this tactic.  The scariest thing about offering payment to the site owner is you won’t be positive on how they will react.  If they truly have an issue with the client or brand they might say screw you and could post your emails and “bribe” to take what they see as the truth down and off their website (see the Cash4Gold fiasco as an example).  This approach would need to be approached in a very safe and careful manner.

There are plenty of other tactics but I thought I would just throw a few of these out there since we hear about them in the world of SEO.  If I could offer one piece of advice to anybody dealing with an online reputation management problem is to try and resolve the issue with the involved parties.  You might not be able to make everybody happy but it says something when a client tries to reach out and make things right with those who feel they have been wronged.  And what do you do if you have 100’s of different websites talking about how you rip people off?  Change your name and quit ripping people off!