We provide quality online reputation management suppression and repair services that get you results.
Our service helps companies, businesses, and individuals take charge of their internet reputation in Google.
Why Choose Us?
What sets us apart from corporate reputation management firms:
- No long term contracts – all our deals are month-to-month
- Results-based – you only keep paying if you’re happy with what we’re doing
- Talk directly to us – when you contact us, you speak directly with the guys in the trenches, not some sales person who’s paid on commission and has no idea what strategies actually work
- Creativity – we are nimble innovators, if we find a new strategy we think will help our clients gain control of their reputation, we do it! (12-months later the big firms follow our lead)
- Cost – we encourage you to shop around. Contact other firms and ask questions about their exact approach to content and link building. We’re confident you’ll choose us.
For a free consultation, please complete the form or call us.
Learn More
- Introduction To Online Reputation Management (ORM)
- Effective Suppression Strategies
- Strategies NOT TO USE
- Optimizing Content For Online Reputation Management
- Link Building
- Get Started
Introduction To Online Reputation Management (ORM)
Online reputation management is about taking control of your brand – whether it’s your company name, business, or personal name.
It’s about protecting yourself against negative news articles, complaint sites, scam claims and bad reviews.
Much like you try to control your advertising message, sales team and public perception of your business, the internet is a huge factor in determining how you are perceived.
We help you take control of that perception by pushing negative content off page 1 and beyond, where most people won’t see it.
Effective Suppression Strategies
We’re 100% transparent with what we do. Below are some of the strategies we may use for your campaign, depending on your specific needs and budget.
1. Exact Match Domain (EMD)
This is one of the simplest strategies to use for online reputation management. It works great for both brands and individuals.
An exact match domain is when your keyword exactly matches the domain name. For example, if we’re working on a keyword campaign for ABC Electric Company, then we’d want to purchase and build out a website for abcelectriccompany.com.
We’d do the same thing if we were trying to push down unwanted content for an individual. If we’re helping “Joe Smith” get control of his reputation in Google or Bing, then we’d purchase joesmith.com.
Add content and build a few links to exact match domains and they should rank very well in no time at all.
If you can’t get an exact match domain, get a close variation or a partial match domain.
2. Partial Match Domain
A partial match domain is when the keyword we’re targeting is included in the domain name.
If we’re running a campaign for “ABC Electric Company,” we might consider purchasing:
- abcelectriccompanyscholarship.com (a site about their scholarship program)
- abcelectriccompanycares.com (a site about their charity work)
- abcelectriccompanyemployees.com (a site where employee information and reviews are posted)
Follow a similar ORM strategy for individuals. A campaign for “Joe Smith” might include the domains:
- joesmithscholarship.com (his scholarship site)
- joesmithblog.com (his personal blog)
- joesmithhobbies.com (a site where he blogs about his hobbies)
Partial match domains are also a good alternative when the exact match domain you want is not available (someone else already owns it).
Premium content is one of the most powerful parts of a successful reputation management services. Premium content is feature articles that meet the following criteria:
- Placement on high domain authority websites such as newspapers, huffingtonpost.com, forbes.com, etc. Ideally, we’re looking for the highest possible domain authority, sites that are at least 60 or higher.
- Control – we want the feature article to contain your keyword in as many on-site optimization places as possible. We want every possible advantage and getting your keyword into the title, H1 and text on an authority site is huge.
Premium content isn’t cheap – some article placements cost $5,000 or more – but the nice thing about this type of top tier content is that it can rank organically with very little effort.
Imagine a feature article about you or your company on a site like The Denver Post! Colorado’s premier online newspaper boasts a Domain Authority of 88 (as of this writing).
A well-optimized article on a trusted website like this will usually rank on page 1 or 2 since it has such high authority with Google.
Depending on your company’s budget, we make premium content insertions an integral part of your campaign.
4. Social Media
The only social media sites that rank well as of 2018 are Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Each of these platforms allow you to get your name or business name into the URL and you should definitely take advantage of that. These social media accounts are low hanging fruit you’ll definitely want to claim and be active on.
5. Scholarship Program
We were one of the pioneers of scholarship programs. Now, everyone is doing them.
But they’re still hugely effective.
A scholarship program is good for public relations and it’s great for online reputation management!
The basics are:
- You agree to give away a $1,000 scholarship
- We create the program either on your existing website (website.com/scholarship) or as a standalone site (yourkeywordscholarship.com)
- We perform outreach to hundreds of colleges, universities, and trade schools informing them of your program and asking if they’ll link to it
There are several benefits, including:
- Lots of links from valuable .edu domains (usually 40 – 100 inbound links)
- All of these links boost that site or page right to page one of search results
- Hundreds of students will apply for your scholarship
- Good PR for your business (you can pitch the story to local newspapers for bonus coverage) which results in more links and perhaps a feature story on a premium site
A scholarship program takes several months to complete and the benefits are long lasting.
*An added benefit we often see is the word “scholarship” will begin to appear after your company name or personal name as a suggestion in Google Autocomplete. This is especially helpful if you have negative suggestions such as “lawsuit” or “arrest” showing in Autocomplete that you want to hide from customers and business partners.
6. Book On Amazon
Why would you want a book on Amazon?
Because Amazon is one of the strongest sites in the world!
It’s a creative and innovative strategy we’ve been using for years for our clients. And because the Amazon.com website carries such high authority with Google and other search engines, your Amazon link will usually rank very well for the keyword we are going after.
Now, you might be thinking, “Wait, I’m going to be an author?!”
Yes, you are. And the best part is we handle all of it for you.
We choose a topic that’s germane to your profession and get it written quickly. We add a great looking cover and then put it up for sale on Amazon.com.
This is another strategy we’ve been using for years and it’s so effective that other ORM agencies now use it, too (or hire us to implement it for them!)
And publishing a book puts you in line for possible syndication to book review sites like goodreads.com.
7. Course On UDEMY
UDEMY is a site that allows you to publish and sell educational and training tools. You can sell an online course on how to be a better fisherman, how to invest more wisely, or you can sell a yoga course.
As you can imagine, it’s quite a bit of work to design and develop an entire online course for UDEMY, but once in place, it is permanent, and it is another website that has a high trust factor with search engines like Google.
8. Review Sites
There are a lot of independently owned review sites online. Some require a paid subscription and others are free. Depending on the niche you’re in, review sites should be an integral part of your reputation management campaign for two reasons.
- Some review sites like Yelp, Facebook, TrustPilot, and Reach150 rank very well in Google
- “Review” or “reviews” is one of the most common predictions that shows for businesses in Google Autocomplete. Thus, if you’re trying to take charge of what people see when they Google your brand name, your #2 priority is probably going to be grabbing control of what they see when they Google your brand name + reviews.
If you need help getting more reviews, let me know. We can make this process easy as part of your campaign.
9. Business & Niche Directories
Make sure your business is listed in the top internet business directories like Yelp, Yellowpages.com. Manta, and others.
When you claim your listing, fill it out completely – provide business description, social media links, images, and videos. Whatever options you have to fully complete the listing, make sure you do it.
The more content you add, the better chance it will rank.
In terms of prioritizing which business directories to start with, simply Google your company name. Then go through the search results and find the top ranked directories and start optimizing them. If you can add reviews, get reviews.
Make each listing robust and you might be surprised if Google rewards you by bumping the listing higher in search results.
Do the same thing for any niche directories, BBB, or chambers of commerce you belong to.
Once all of your top directories are claimed and optimized, we can help you fill them up with positive reviews that will make you shine!
10. Google My Business Page
I’m shocked that some businesses haven’t spent the time to claim and optimize their Google My Business (GMB) page.
If you’re operating a brick and mortar business with a physical location (or even an SEO and Online Reputation management business like me) from your home office, Google will let you claim your page, so that it can add it to its robust Google Maps directory.
The process is free and you can do it even if you operate out of a suite in a larger office, like Regis.
And while claiming your GMB page won’t push anything down, you will realize these benefits of ownership:
- Nice presentation – your GMB page appears right next to search results when you Google your brand name
- Reviews – Getting some positive 4 and 5-star reviews on your page gives an excellent first impression to customers
- Your GMB page might begin to show up in local search results – thus providing you with new business leads!
11. Interview Sites
There are a growing number of sites on the internet that allow you to self-publish an interview about yourself or your company.
Not only are these sites great for featured content, most of them will allow you to insert a few links to help promote other digital assets you’re trying to push up on page 1 of Google.
Publishing your story on interview sites is not a guarantee they will rank as these sites are typically not as strong as premium content sites, but depending on how strong your negative links are, you might be surprised to see a couple of the interviews pop onto page 1 or 2.
The key with interview sites is to vary your subject matter and make your content long and unique. Don’t copy and paste from one to the next and don’t stop at only 200 words.
12. Videos
Did you know that Youtube is the 2nd biggest search engine? As such, it trails only Google and of course Youtube’s domain authority always hovers at or near 100.
There are two ways Youtube can help your online reputation:
- Get your optimized channel URL – follow these steps to qualify for a vanity URL that contains your brand name and make sure to optimize it fully
- Create a video that targets your keyword – include your keyword in the title, description and tags to best optimize it for search results – then build links to it
In addition to Youtube, Vimeo is another strong video sharing site that allows you to claim and optimize your own channel, so you can target your main keyword.
My recommendation would be to make a different video for Vimeo than the one you use for Youtube. Transcribe each of your two videos and place the transcription in the description area.
These are the strongest two video sites that give you the best chance of seeing a video appear on page 1 or 2 for your personal or brand name in Google.
Yes, there are other video sharing sites, but I personally wouldn’t waste my time posting videos to dailymotion, metacafe or others. They just don’t appear often enough in search results.
You’re better off spending that energy building links and sharing your existing videos on Youtube and Vimeo.
13. Press Releases
I compiled a huge list of free press release sites years ago.
Unfortunately, the strategy of publishing press releases to unpaid sites no longer works.
Many of the sites on my list got penalized years ago and had to change their ways in order to try to recoup the money they were making on advertising from all the traffic they used to get.
There are several paid press release distribution services available (costs range from $50 – $200 or more per release) that will syndicate your news to hundreds of “news” websites around the world wide web.
This should only be viewed as a secondary tier strategy, though. Most of the sites where your release gets published don’t rank that well.
And because you’re publishing duplicate content, it’s highly likely that Google is only going to publish 1 version of your story that ranks well.
So, yeah, you’ll get some links, but I’m not sure they’re going to have much long-lasting power. And just because you’re releasing a story globally, don’t expect to see much in the way of business come your way as a result.
You’d be much better served writing and pitching your own release to targeted journalists or hiring a PR firm to help you. Since this isn’t our specialty, we don’t spend much on press releases, unless we can get the work done quickly and cheaply.
14. Optimize Existing Digital Assets
Any content you already have control of could probably be better optimized to rank in Google and push down the bad stuff.
What I would do is Google your brand name and take an inventory of all the websites and link below the negative links we’re trying to suppress.
Do you have control over any of them? If you have username and password access, follow the tips in our our Optimizing Content For Online Reputation Management section to try to make them rank higher.
15. Use Your Leverage
Any business you’re spending money with you can leverage for exposure that can help you with your internet reputation.
Here’s an example – let’s say you’re about to spend money with a local radio station to promote your services or products.
Before you ink the deal, ask for (insist upon) a profile page on their website. It could be called something like, “Advertiser Spotlight.”
Then write up a great story with a third party bio. It could be totally about your company or if it suits, it could be about why you chose to advertise on that radio station, what you’re doing, what type of service you’ve received, and the results you’re getting. It’d basically be a testimonial for them (which is why they’d want to do it.)
If you can’t get that, check out their website and see if they post testimonials from sponsors. If they do, ask if you can provide one. Even if you can’t get a full page on their site, maybe you can get a link.
Use this same strategy for anyone you do business with – whether it be an advertising partner, someone you purchase supplies from, or a local church or community organization.
Here’s an example of what we did for an SEO client of mine.
Strategies NOT TO USE
If you’re interviewing ORM agencies, you’ll want to dig a little to find out what types of link building and content strategies they’ll be using.
If they won’t share them, duck the question, or tell you it’s “proprietary,” I’d recommend steering clear.
Also, if you’re trying to do your own reputation management, don’t even waste your time buying:
- Article marketing – it used to work; it doesn’t work anymore. When was the last time you saw anything from ezinearticles.com in search results?
- Spammy blog comments/forum posts – computer generated automated links like this aren’t going to boost your positive links. I’ve purchased several Fiverr gigs that give you thousands of links like these and the problem is most of them are on de-indexed websites (which means they’ll never count). The ones that do get indexed carry no value with Google. Although they are cheap, you get what you pay for. Don’t waste your time (or your $5)
- Content on web 2.0 – while an exact match wordpress.com blog might rank, we’re seeing less and less of them. Have you ever seen rebelmouse.com or plurk.com show up in search results? There are a handful that still rank, such as slideshare.net, crunchbase.com, but most web 2.0s hold little value and Google knows it. There’s a reason why content on sites like these is cheap and easy and it most likely will not be effective for your long term ORM success
Optimizing Content For Online Reputation Management
Optimizing content for your keywords gives you the best chance of having that content rank well in Google.
While Google claims to have over 200 individual ranking factors that determine what content ranks on page 1, we adhere to the following basics which work very well.
1 – Keyword in SEO title. The SEO title can be seen by hovering your mouse over the tab in your browser – see image. This is one of the most fundamental signals to search engines of what your page is about. Not having your keyword in the SEO title is a big miss. I recommend putting it first, wherever possible. For example, if your keyword is “ABC Electric”, your SEO title should begin with “ABC Electric.”
2 – Keyword in URL. Wherever possible, include your keyword in your URL. Whether it’s in your domain name (keyword.com) or a slug (website.com/your-keyword/), getting your keyword into your URL is just another fundamental that gives you a leg up on your competitors and helps you rank for the keyword you’re targeting.
3 – Keyword in content. There’s no magic formula for keyword density. Those strategies went out in 2010. What you want to do is include your keyword at least once in content and try to do it in the first paragraph. You can include it (or variations of it) again, but don’t be spammy. If you read it back and it sounds like too much, then it is. Getting the keyword into content once or twice is enough.
4 – Keyword in H1 tag. The H1 is another important search engine optimization signal. I like to use either an exact match or partial match of the keyword as the H1 tag, thus not duplicating exactly what is in the SEO title.
For example, if you’re keyword is ABC Electric and that’s in your SEO title, I might make the H1 “About ABC Electric” or “ABC Electric Background” or “ABC Electric Holdings”. There’s no right or wrong answer, I just personally think it’s a good idea to vary it a bit.
5 – Content length. 9 times out of 10, longer content will rank better. Check out this research by Neil Patel or this research by Backlinko. Both analyses point to long form QUALITY content as being a very important ranking factor. In short, go above and beyond in your content development (1,000-2,500 words is what we aim for) and you give yourself an excellent chance of ranking well.
6 – Uniqueness. This should be a no brainer but I’m going to mention it because some people think they can just re-write, rehash or copy/paste content in order to reach the content length goals I just laid out in #4 above.
Your content MUST be unique. Google’s algorithm is smart – here’s how it works:
If you Google something, Googlebot tries to return a variety of search results that are relevant to the query. But it’s not going to return exactly the same or similar results. That would be a bad user experience.
Imagine if you Googled, “Ways to make money online” and every search result had basically the same information. You might get upset and either try a different query or switch to a different search engine.
This isn’t any good for us and it’s especially not good for Google if you switch to Bing!
Check it out for yourself. Google something and you will see that the content of each search result on page 1 is unique and different from the others (in most cases).
So, if we’re optimizing content for your reputation management campaign, each piece of content should be unique from others, in order to give it the best chance of ranking organically.
Link Building
The main off-page optimization strategy all ORM firms use is link building. There are hundreds of ways to build links – so many so that I’m not going to detail them here. We use what works and some of the most effective links we get for you come from private blog networks, blogger outreach campaigns, directory listings and contextual links from authority sites, such as a newspaper or huffingtonpost.
Getting a diverse number of links from a lot of different sites takes time and money, but done correctly, it’s the single best strategy for improving search results, according to Backlinko’s analysis of over 1 million in search results.
As mentioned above, avoid cheap or spammy links; they probably will not work. Of course, you are welcome to try.
For my time and money, I’d prefer to spend time optimizing content which I have good control over.
Get Started
Effective online reputation management is a lot like search engine optimization. You can do a lot of the work yourself, using the tips I’ve provided here.
If you decide you want us to handle it for you, we’d be glad to chat with you, answer your questions, and provide you with a proposal.
Plus, we can start most campaigns immediately. We look forward to working with you!