Date
Apr 15
In the last post about ethical search engine reputation management, or SERM, the point was to make you aware that somewhere, people are talking about you. People are posting their opinions, both good and bad about your products, your services, your employees and your marketing. With a host of new social networking sites based around product, service and business discovery, Yelp being the relative new-comer and CitySearch.com being the more established network, people have been expressing their opinions for many years now.
In the past, sites like CitySearch relied upon word of mouth marketing, traditional marketing and business development and sales to create a massive, location based network of any business you'd want to find information about. Within the past few years, they've actively been integrating SEO into their site structure. Their goal is simple.
They want to rank in the top 10 results for your business name.
Again, if you manage your business reputation well, provide good service and actively reach out to the communities you serve, there's very little to fear. However, other operations have risen that use the power of search engine optimization to provide a platform for users to do nothing more than bash your business.
- P!ssed Consumer
- Rip Off Reports
- Complaints.com
These are networks that, on the surface, seem to provide a platform for people who have been burned by companies to vent their frustration and their anger over being mistreated by a company. On the surface, they want to appear that they leverage their large networks of motivated consumers to bring about positive change in business. However, in reality there's no approval process, there's no fact checking and if you want your negative listing removed, well... you'll have to pay for it.
Companies like these use deceptive SEO tactics to rank well for your business name and the end result is that all too often, I've seen competitors used these sites just to bad-mouth a legitimate company. While it's fair to say that some complaints on these customer complaint networks are, in fact, valid complaints; the company uses black-hat SEO techniques to rank and they use their site almost like a virtual extortion ring. That's right, if you want to "deal with a few complaints", that's only $99.00. If you want to post a rebuttal to the post and let them monitor your reputation, that's a mere $4,999 per year. If you want something a bit more custom, then you'll have to work it out with them.
So, if you've found your business on the sharp end of a consumer complaints network, what is there to do?
Taking Legal Action to Protect Your Online Reputation:
This probably not the most efficient way to deal with the situation. First, above and beyond the fees and time spent of legal advice, since one of their chief defenses is that all the content is user generated, the fight will have to prove that a representative knew about a fraudulent claim and let it happen anyway. This will be very difficult to prove, there's no guarantee that it will be in your favor and you've spent more money and more time on an issue that's yet to be nailed down in current law debate.
Maybe Paying the Exorbitant Fees Will Make it Go Away:
Remember, just to post a rebuttal on the site will cost almost $5,000 and the complaints will still rank, it will still affect people who are considering your services.
You Can Use Social Media, Search Engine Optimization and Other Tactics to Push the Results Down:
When faced with negative comments from complaint networks, it's generally best to go after it with a three-pronged strategy.
1. Use social networks against the results: you can create profiles across the varied and market vertical oriented networks to not only create a larger web presence for yourself, they provide a way to connect to new customers and distribute your content further across the web.
2. Create microsites: these sites should never just be a duplicate of the existing site, they should be filled with fresh and unique content that's focused on a single target. Your business' name.
3. Create and distribute unique content: Do you have some good company pictures of a 5k run you did? Did you take a training video? Do you have white-papers or "how-to" documents? Do you have any media that's just lying around? Use it. Post pictures to the dozens of picture sharing networks, post videos to the numerous video sharing networks. These established networks have already figured out how to rank well, they already have some authority in the search engines that will transfer some of their authority to the media that you upload.
Lastly, you'll need to monitor your results. Don’t expect that you’ll see immediate change in the search engine results page (SERP), but over time you’ll notice that the effort you spend now in creating a larger online network and presence will start to pay off.
At VisionPoint Marketing, we have years of the technical experience to create, distribute and measure your online reputation efforts as well as the creative messaging experience to strengthen your brand on and offline.
