My brand is being trashed… what can I do?
The rise of blogs, customer reviews, photo- and video-sharing sites, and other online social media have empowered consumers/competitor and partners with a new power.
Further, with search being able to index all the blogs and comments into one organic list it can result in either a positive branding exposure or a negative one…a very negative one….. So, it depending on the sentiment of those writing, reviewing and comments on company and their brands that really control the brand experiences in today’s search engine results.
There is much written about how to build positive brand using Search Marketing but this blog will outline what to do when you get negative attacks on your company and brands
Over the past 6 months a relatively new area in Search Marketing has emerged- that of Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM). In order to combat a negative campaign we must consider more than just SEO. The company (or the search marketing company doing the work) needs to quickly neutralize all offending content. The quickest way to do this is to use sophisticated SEM techniques. This strategy is singularly the most important area necessary to produce the desired result promptly.
Firstly, data mining processes need to be employed to monitor (in real-time) large numbers of search behaviors and search trends. Once the search technology has identified trends or patterns in keyword searches that highlight negativity campaigns, a reputation protocol must be rapidly adopted to start combating this. It is important to note that offending content is often found on keywords used by shoppers earlier in the buying cycle than those found on a branded search. Complaints can sour customers before they even discover your brand has a desired offering.
Once the keywords have been identified, bid maximizing tools should be used to monitor, report and purchase pay-per-click (PPC) search ads in an automated fashion. PPC ads change by time of day. Some keywords disappear as budgets expire. PPC ads from your competitors or trademark infringers tend to disappear on weekends or evenings, and reappear during business hours. The purpose of using technology in a reputation management strategy is to ensure that timeliness and effectiveness are central to this strategy; also ROI can be easily determined.
Search reputation management involves three primary components:
? Prompt identification of negativity trends and pattern in keyword searches.
? The use of SEO to try and displace information found in organic search results.
? An immediate action to counter offending content by using SEM to display positive information or to drive traffic to sites (micro) that counter the negative messages.
Remember, finding the negative campaigns is only part of the solution, using sophisticated searchmarketing techniques is a core component in combating this increasingly frequent problem. For more information you can read -
