As a company we are trying to move away from the prevalent bio model in Online Reputation Management campaigns. The bio model is really simple and I would say it’s used in 90% + of ORM campaigns. The process goes something like this,

1) You have a writer on staff go to the client’s web site and learn about their business. You then instruct the writer to write X number of articles per month on the client.

2) The unique articles get routed to your programming team who uploads them to unique web sites on unique hosts. These sites may be pat of a large network of sites owned by the ORM company or setup on new domains.

3) The new sites are sent to the link building team who then builds links pointing to the new web sites on a recurring basis. This step is crucial for faster indexing by Google and higher rankings.

This is your basic ORM process. It definitely works… Some clients have to be more patient than others but this process repeated on a recurring basis will suppress unwanted publicity in the search results.

Steps 2 and 3 will always be crucial unless search engines like Google go crazy with their algorithm updates. If that does happen than it’s just a matter of adapting those techniques to the algorithm movement.

Step 1 though can be greatly improved upon if the client is willing to spend a bit more time and effort on their ORM campaign. Writing numerous bios is fine but the drawback is your search results get filled with alot of sites that say pretty much the same thing.

In Repumatic and our High End Reputation Hawk campaigns we are trying to move away from the bio model all together. For example in Repumatic Nonprofit, a network of charity themed web sites are created for the client on domains like charityreport, charitypromo, charitynews, charityinsights, etc. The idea here is to post about promos and discounts on one of the sites, PR on another site, industry insights on the charityinsights site, etc. This type of content will effectively promote the nonprofit and they can even inserts keyword links on their new sites leading to their dot org that will move their site higher in search engines (SEO).

This should culminate in search results that the user finds very useful and informative. This makes the user happy and search engines like Google happy. This process should also result in protected search results, improved rankings for your web sites in search engines, and a greatly improved customer acquisition process when potential clients Google the name of you or your company.

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

Okay, so keyword Identification is an extremely crucial element to ORM. You need to know what keywords people are typing in to search for you or your business. If you don’t know than you can only guess. So, here are two quick ways to help you identify your keywords.

Step 1) Pull up this Google Keyword Tool. Make sure to uncheck the default box on the left hand side that says “Broad”. If not you are going to freak out a little bit and think thousands of people are searching for you. So instead click on the “Exact Match” check box. This is like telling Google you want to know how many people are searching specifically for “Atlanta Georgia”, not people searching for Atlanta, Macon Georgia, Georgia Mountains, Georgia on my mind lyrics, etc which is Broad match.

Step 2) Go to google.com and type in your name or your company name and you will see Google start autofilling search suggestions. These are keywords people have searched in the past.

There are alot of other tools out there, some paid and some free. But I have found these two steps to be the most expedient and accurate.

Now simply create a list of your top 5 or 10 key phrases and rank them in order of importance. Save it! That’s good data.

If you are concerned about your business 9 times out of 10 your most searched phrase will simply be the name of your business. You will probably have additional keywords like review, news, contact, locations, support, scam, etc. The Scam keyword does not mean people necessarily think your business is a scam. It’s actually becoming a common search keyword for people looking specifically for negative publicity under the name of a person or company.

Have a great weekend!

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

Diversion Campaigns are rare but nevertheless interesting. This is usually how a diversion campaign is born,

1. Someone posted something about you or a family member that you consider to be private.
2. You were unsuccessful in having the private content removed through typical avenues like DMCA notices.
3. You do not want to create new, factual content about yourself or the family member to suppress the unwanted web site in the search results.

In this situation a diversion campaign is probably your only option. So, here is an example,

- Your personal cell # is all over the frontpage of your search results on different sites. You decide to flood the internet with combinations of your name and hundreds of different phone numbers. This will likely cause anyone trying to get your # to become agitated, confused, and move on.

You get the idea… It’s typically a campaign designed to confuse people who are trying to access your private information online. For the most part I would say they are fairly rare. Before you launch a diversion campaign you should really exhaust all avenues in having the content removed. Repumatic contains some free guides that will help in removing private information from the net.

You can actually send in a request to Google to have private information removed from their search results. Unfortunately, that only works if the offending site has posted your  social security number, credit card number, copy of signature, that sort of thing. You can check it out here - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164133

There are also some tools out there that are either free or inexpensive that aid in removing private information from the web. From what I remember Reputation.com has a product that is geared toward online privacy.

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

 

To an extent! When you have no way to approve or deny the comments in your search results than they are your worst enemy. Remember, lots and lots and lots of web sites out there would love to rank high under your name or the name of your business. Why? Because all web site want one thing – traffic.

Traffic typically equals Money in one way or another.

So let’s say I want to grab my share of traffic under your personal name, let’s call you Dexter Migosh. So I have this web site called peoplefindergalaxyworld.com or something and create a web page on that site that says, “Looking for Dexter Migosh?” Great! Here is some public information about Dexter Migosh.

Now, I need to invite user comments. If people comment on the page than that can definitely  play a factor in my web page moving higher in search engines like Google under, “Dexter Migosh”, which as we know means more traffic. Now someone who hates Dexter decides to Google him, clicks on the link to peoplefindergalaxyworld.com and bashes him in the comment section of the web site.

A search engine spider revists the page and probably thinks to itself something like this, “hmm there is some new stuff here on Dexter and evidently people like to read it. After all they are clicking on it and staying there for a while. This page deserves a push up the ranks into the top 3 under Dexter Migosh.”

So, what can Dexter do? He can reply to the comment which will help peoplefindergalaxyworld.com rank even higher under his name! The web site is happy because now they are getting lots of traffic! People who are searching online for Dexter and even Dexter himself went to that site twenty times last month because he is worried more people will post. If your the the owner of peoplefindergalaxyworld.com and you setup pages like this for a million people then you have some serious traffic on your hands. The other happy party is Dexter’s hater because his or her comments are front and center for the world to see when people search for, “Dexter Migosh”.

Seem a little unfair if you are Dexter? Kind of has multiple forces working against him here wouldn’t you say?

So…. Here is we are going to use this to your benefit with Repumatic. As you may know by now Repumatic automatically creates a network of 10 sites under your name or your business (expandable to 20) that you fully control trough one simple window. We are working on the ability for Repumatic users to enable commenting on all of the sites in their network. But! Here is the major difference. You have control. So, somebody goes to one of these sites and has something to say about you than you have the ability to approve or deny those comments. This way you still reap the benefits of your sites improving in rank due to commenting, but avoid the major dangers.

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com

Well… really powerful in some cases and not so much in others. Let’s say you have a site appearing at # 8 in your search results that shows the exact location of the silver you hid in your backyard. You tried contacting them to have it removed but the site is on a server somewhere in Hong King and the odds off your complaint even being read is probably 1 in a 1,000. So, you want it out of your top 20 or 30 results in Google and have to take matters into your own hands. This would be relatively easy and free with a tool like Repumatic but let’s say you are really paranoid and don’t want to create an account on Repumatic or hire an ORM company. It freaks you out.

Alright so, a key thing to remember is links are like votes. Google see links pointing to your positive web sites and the big G is like, “hey this web site (your positive one) must be relative for this term (your link text), maybe I should move this web page higher in our search results when someone types that term (your name or company name) into our search box”. That’s definitely over simplification but it will work for the purpose of this post.

Technically you could open up a word doc and start your own link building campaign. You go through your top 30 in Google and make a list of all the URLs (ie www.linkedin.com/user/james) that you like. Then you need to hire a company to build links around the internet pointing to that list of URLs. It will probably cost a few hundred dollars and take less than a month.

This only works with really simple cases like the one described above. In reality you should want to create new content that you have control of in your search results. The concept of Repumatic is to put multiple sites that you have full control of into prominent positions in your search results while giving you the ability to manage that network of sites through one central control panel. So, when someone does say something crazy about you or posts your SS# online you have a buffer of strong sites in your top 20 and hopefully the unwanted new content will not even make it into your first 2 pages in Google (where 99% of users stay. In a weird way this industry is built on a lazy habit – 99% ish of people do not go pass the first two pages of search results.).

Founder of Reputation Hawk
Creator of Repumatic
Blogging @ Reputation.biz
Have a question? Check out ormforum.com