Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the crucial tools for online reputation management. Living in the digital world, it takes just seconds for the news related to your business to spread across all search engine platforms. Believe it or not, bad news spreads faster, and in order to push the bad reviews that have a negative impact on SEO will take lots of effort, and SEO reputation management techniques to bring your business’ online visibility to the top of the SERPs.
What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
For starters, let’s look into the definition of SEO.
SEO is the process of optimizing your brand’s and website’s visibility on various search engines organically and with paid methods. All of the SEO efforts are directed to driving your website to the top search results of Google and other search engines. It is a fact that if your listing appears in many places the chances of users clicking on one of them are higher. That’s the reason why SEO specialists put all their energy into organically optimizing the on-page and off-page SEO of their website in order to point the traffic towards their website.
What is Online Reputation Management (ORM)?
Online reputation management (ORM) is the process of ongoing activities in order to preserve a constructive overview of the brand on digital platforms. It is possible to implement via utilizing various methods. There are different aspects on why ORM — Online reputation management — is important for online visibility. First of all, it all brings to one tool that we use daily — Google. Google is the platform that is used the most for the search. When someone wants to know about the business, brand or has any questions, the first thing they do is google the keywords they are looking for. Imagine if your brand or website shows up first, and then your brand’s social media pages show up next with some stars under them, and even better — a third-party website mentioning your brand. Sounds good, right? What are the chances that users will click at least one of them, of course in 80% they will use the first five results by not even bothering to look for the second or third page of Google?
But imagine if some of the links that indicate your brand name include negative feedback or reviews about your brand. This brings a negative SEO impact to your website. No one wants the users to read the bad reviews. Bad reviews have their positive aspects as well. There are many ways to handle difficult customers and get most of the customer reviews, by simply and kindly replying to each and one of them, trying to identify the point of concern, and trying to resolve their problem. After the issue is resolved, you can ask for another feedback or review by simply directing them to the same platform where they left their negative feedback, but this time only to leave their positive reviews which will help your brand’s search engine reputation management.
Let’s look into some ways how we can optimize google search reputation management to benefit our business.
What is Search Engine Reputation Management?
Google search engine reputation management is the same as any other search engine optimization. One of the easiest ways of identifying what keywords there are talking about your brand is to simply complete a Google search by typing in your brand’s keywords. This way you can identify all the channels and resources pointing to your brand. By not finding the right keywords that indicate your brand, hire SEO service experts that will help you align your SEO strategy.
SEO Reputation Management Tools for Online Visibility
SEO reputation management tools are tightly connected to digital marketing management tools. They closely interact with each other. It is the search engines that replicate the efforts of SEO professionals and digital marketing specialists. Why digital marketing? Digital marketers play a vital role in SEO, by appropriately creating brand awareness across social media platforms and utilizing the right keywords they help and work with SEO teams side by side.
It is important that social media pages of the brand indicate the exact and the most up-to-date information related to the business. If Google sees that the business information, contact numbers, and other identifying information matches in most list management platforms, it helps the crawlers to better understand the code and organically boost the website to the top search results.
In most cases, marketers and SEO specialists utilize the following general SEO reputation management tools and SEO management platforms. Let’s look at some of them:
- Social Media Platforms: have high ranking authority and any backlinks linking back to your page and reviews left on the brand’s page have high chances of appearing on search results.
- Content Management: when they say “Content is King”, they are right. One can run ads and boost posts, but if the website is not optimized it can never generate value and bring organic traffic. Many agencies provide digital marketing services by writing branded content, SEO services, advertising, and more.
- Local Business Directories and Review Sites: did you know that listing your business in local business directories can optimize your search engine reputation management? Local business directories provide citations, via mentioning your business’ important information and providing citations. By users using the right keywords, they land on business directories where they read customer reviews with their user-generated content (UGC), which has an acute SEO reputation management impact on search relevance. This is where your brand needs to come in. By making sure all the reviews are appropriately replied to within 2-3 business days.
- SEO Management Platforms: are many but the most popular ones are Ahrefs, Google Search Console, SEMRush, Moz, etc.
Search engines and SEO strategies are ever-evolving. It is important to always be on top of the market and industry standards. Follow reputation brands that provide reputation SEO services or have a blog that provides useful information. You can always run ads and drive traffic to your website, but it is to the organic traffic and user-generated content that most of us rely on and read before completing any purchase. Make sure to optimize your website’s content with the right branded keywords to support your SEO reputation management for online visibility.
