| The Web gives disgruntled customers the power to | | | | Check your stats. This will tell you keywords that are |
| destroy your business. Right or wrong, negative | | | | leading people to your web site. Then use Google |
| information about you or your business never goes | | | | Alerts so that you will know when a web page |
| away. Thanks to data distribution technologies such as | | | | appears that references your business. |
| RSS (just a form of XML), negative information posted | | | | 2. Then start building pages on your own web site that |
| in a single location can be spread to hundreds or | | | | are optimized for your target keywords. Follow the |
| thousands of other sites instantly. One bad review can | | | | basic rules: name the pages with the keywords, and |
| be disastrous. | | | | use the keywords in the page titles, page headers, and |
| The first step in fixing your search engine reputation is | | | | in the copy in bold. |
| to try and make your customers happy. Do they have | | | | 3. After building the pages on your own site, you |
| real reasons to be unhappy? If so, fix the problems. | | | | should build pages on other sites that Google considers |
| The problem is that even if you fix the problem that is | | | | to be "authority" sites, such as popular social |
| causing your customers to be angry, those web | | | | networking sites. Google tends to rank such pages |
| pages that contain bad reviews still exist, damaging | | | | highly, so they will probably rank faster than your own |
| your reputation. So what do you do? You can hope | | | | pages. Make sure to optimize your social networking |
| that potential customers don't find the web pages that | | | | pages for the same or very similar keywords used in |
| contain the negative information, or you can take | | | | step 2. |
| action and make it a lot less likely that most people will | | | | 4. Now do some article marketing, directory submission, |
| find those pages. | | | | social bookmarking, and various other strategies to |
| Research has shown that the top five search results | | | | give some "link juice" to the pages you created in the |
| on a typical search engines results page receive a far | | | | steps above. This will help those pages rank faster |
| greater share of the traffic than lower ranked results. | | | | and higher. |
| Results on page two and beyond receive much less | | | | That's all there is to search engine reputation |
| traffic. Therefore, if the web pages that contain the | | | | management. Easy, right? Uh…no. The fact is that it is |
| negative information about your business are ranked | | | | a heck of a lot of work. You can do it, but you might |
| much lower than other web pages about your | | | | save yourself a lot of time and frustration by hiring a |
| business, many fewer people will find those web | | | | search engine optimization firm to do it for you. |
| pages. So what do you need to do? Very simply, you | | | | Companies well trained in the search engine |
| have to push those negative pages below the first | | | | optimization field will have tools and strategies to see |
| page of results. | | | | results much quicker. |
| So how exactly do you go about building web pages | | | | Search engine optimization for the purpose of |
| that will rank favorably enough to push down the web | | | | improving your online reputation is serious business that |
| pages with the negative comments? In a nutshell, it | | | | should be performed by serious companies with a lot |
| works like this: | | | | of experience. Contact Nashville environmental |
| 1. Step number one is to get as good an idea as you | | | | marketing firm to get started cleaning up your |
| can what search terms people are using that are | | | | reputation today. |
| bringing back web pages that contain negative content. | | | | |