6 Effective Strategies For Online Reputation Management

A negative online reputation can drive a business into a death spiral. However, improving your online reputation will drive more traffic, customers, and, ultimately, more revenue for your business.

With over 90% of consumers reading online reviews before visiting a business, if your business gets hit by a negative review, it can feel like the end of the road.

However, thank goodness, improving and protecting your online perception is always possible. Web Drive SEO explores 6 effective strategies to help you manage your online reputation and help your business shine again. 

6 Tips for managing your online reputation

1. Boost positive organic search results rankings

Since you can’t actively remove negative information about your brand on Google, you can use effective SEO techniques to boost positive results to drown out the negative ones. 

By increasing the ranking of positive search results, you can take up more real estate on the first page and create a more positive and trustworthy image for online consumers.

You can also ask happy customers to leave reviews so there is always a steady stream of positivity about your products and services. Not only do these reviews show up in search results, but they also give potential customers the confidence to buy and trust your products and services. 

2. Be active on social media & review sites

Set yourself up with social media accounts. This comes with risk, but not having them doesn’t mean people aren’t talking negatively about your business.

Keep your company active on your social media and review sites to respond to both negative and positive comments. This helps your business to stay in control of your reputation.

Responding to positive reviews shows you appreciate your customer’s support while addressing negative reviews shows you care about your consumer concerns and aim to improve your products or services. By actively monitoring and managing reviews, businesses can boost their SEO performance while establishing a positive online reputation with consumers.

3. Set up a Google My Business profile

If you don’t already have a Google My Business Profile, this is another area of the branded search results you can own.

Your Google Business Profile listing could be the first result a user sees when searching for your brand. Your GBP allows you to create a business description, add photos, and create posts. You should use all of its features to provide a positive sentiment about your brand and entice searchers to click through to your website or call you.

Google posts: 

These posts are small snippets of content that will appear directly on your Google Business Profile listing. They allow your brand to inject updates, timely offers, and articles straight into the Google search results without waiting for them to rank organically. This is another way to aid reputation management.

Reviews:

Customer reviews can also appear on your Google Business Profile listing. If a user leaves a review, there is little that can be done to remove it. However, since you can respond in GBP, If you respond effectively, you can turn a negative experience into a positive one.

Questions & answers

Google Business Profiles also feature a Q&A section where the public can submit questions to your listing.

This is a good opportunity to understand your target audience’s interest. It is crucial that you stay on top of any questions asked so you can ensure the answer is accurate.

Remember, the goal with online reputation management is to rank your positive results over the negative ones, your business profile will take up positive real estate on Google’s first page if you make sure to keep an eye on this corner of the SERPs.

4. Address and suppress negative search results 

There are several effective ways to suppress negative content. For the fastest and most effective results, you can get professional help from an SEO or online reputation management company. Alternatively, you can use the following techniques:

Keyword research

In-depth keyword research can show you where high-volume searches display negative results for your brand using a tool like Semrush. You should also check the people who ask results for your brand to see negative questions that people may be asking. The goal is to uncover medium- and long-tail keywords related to the main branded terms that generate negative results.

Once you have identified these keywords, you can remove the negative results from the first page by creating SEO content around these keywords. This will help you to gain positive rankings in the featured snippet and for as many spots in the SERPS above the negative result to dilute the effect. This can take time and a lot of energy, but the effort pays off. 

Build reputable backlinks

Get backlinks on all of your positive content to push that content higher on the SERPs. Make sure to use a white-hat approach to build backlinks from high-authority sites to avoid penalties and further damage to your site.

Investing in link building can help boost your website trust, which is a key factor Google uses when ranking content. 

5. Address content on all platforms.

You can’t fix your brand reputation by only addressing content on one platform. You will need to address content on all fronts. That includes social media sites such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to online review sites, including Google and Amazon.  Make a comprehensive plan to suppress all the negative information about your brand.

Social media sites have high domain authority and will almost always rank for brand searches. Fill the image section with positive visual content by using alt text and image titles with keywords for every image you post on your website or on social media. Publish video content on YouTube to represent your brand in a favorable way.

6. Make a positive noise in the news

It can be a significant challenge if you are trying to cover up a negative news article published against your brand. Instead, work on being newsworthy for good reasons. Gain press about your charitable work or your involvement in helping to protect the environment. Publish PRs to promote positive news about your brand.

The main point with online reputation management is to fill up the first page with positivity about your brand over the results that you can’t control.

Set up a brand alert.

Use Google Alerts or another brand monitoring tool to update you when you’re mentioned online.

It may be a negative review, or simply your company opening hours may have been misreported. 

This alert will enable you to nip negative information in the bud and correct wrong information or a false accusation before the damage is done. If corrective action is taken immediately, negative content may never have a chance to become visible on the front page.

Conclusion

Online reputation management helps you stay in control of what people are saying about your brand and helps you fix issues before they spiral out of your control. ORM ensures that when people search for you online, they only see your brand in a positive light. “A reputation takes 20 years to acquire and five minutes to lose” (source: Warren Buffet). So take these 6 online reputation management tips and regain control over the reputation you have worked so hard to build.

FAQs about online reputation management