| Picture this: you own a successful business. Your | | | | for your company name or product, at least half of the |
| product is clearly superior to your competitors', and it's | | | | first few pages of results contain negative reviews or |
| more affordable as well. Your business plan is strong, | | | | opinions. This is crucial because less than one in a |
| and your capacity for expansion is nearly limitless | | | | hundred potential customers will look at any site |
| because your online sales are solid. You pride yourself | | | | beyond page three of the search results. |
| on your value and service and willingly post customer | | | | Your online sales plummet. Not only are you losing |
| feedback, comments and reviews on your own | | | | money right now, you're also losing the opportunity to |
| website. | | | | impress these people and gain their repeat business. |
| And then in happens. One of your competitors, | | | | Even if your online reputation improves soon, these |
| frustrated at consistently coming out second best in | | | | customers have already gone to your competitors, |
| sales, decides to sabotage you. Posing as a customer, | | | | and assuming they receive decent service, there is a |
| they log onto various online consumer review | | | | pretty good chance they will never do a web search |
| sites--possibly even one on your very own website, | | | | for you again, and never hear all the good news about |
| and start spreading negative information. They may | | | | your product. |
| claim you exaggerate in your advertisements, that | | | | Finally, to cap it all off, the lack of customers means |
| your product is shoddily built or fails to perform at all, or | | | | you have fewer people who can be impressed and |
| that they never received their order but were charged | | | | write positive reviews, which is going to slow the |
| for it anyway. They may lie about your customer | | | | recovery process dramatically. |
| service, claim you refused to honor your promises, | | | | What can you do to prevent this happening to you? |
| kept them on hold, or refused to answer emails. | | | | The good news is there is a simple answer: online |
| If they're really dedicated, they may create or utilize a | | | | reputation management. This service looks through the |
| popular blog to discredit you as well. Some of these | | | | search results for your product and company, and |
| sites receive hundreds or even thousands of visitors | | | | isolates the sites which contain positive information. |
| each day, and some of their fans might reprint or | | | | Then, using a variety of techniques, they build these |
| summarize the negative content on their own sites, or | | | | sites up in the rankings, moving them forward on |
| through social networking sites like Facebook. | | | | Google and other searches. Boosting these positive |
| Before you know it, unfounded complaints have | | | | sites makes the good information more available to |
| blossomed into negative information scattered across | | | | your customers, and pushes the negative ones back |
| a hundred websites. Now when people search online | | | | into those little-seen later pages of results. |