SEO Step By Step Guide– 116. Is online reputation management part of search engine marketing?

Where does the scope of our search engine marketing and SEO end? Does our search engine marketing efforts also include online reputation management. Should we incorporate it as part of our SEO and SEM efforts?

Yes, online reputation management is certainly part of your SEM efforts. However, you need not go to a reputation management company and get a hefty bill. In most cases, you can get help from your SEO company to neutralize the effects of negative comments.

When a negative comment or a video or an image that could spoil your or your company’s image is circulated online, your online reputation could be at stake. When the negative blog post or negative review ranks high for a keyword that is relevant to  your services, products or your website pops up in the result, you can say that your reputation online is undergoing a crisis. To handle this crisis you can either go to a reputation management company to handle the negative reputation or if you want to save some money but at the same time you want the negative results from being displayed in the top positions, then you can approach your SEO company to deal with this issue.

How can your SEO company help you safeguard your reputation online? It is very simple; those negative feedback and reviews will be damaging only when they are on top. People normally don’t go beyond the first page to look for the information or service they need and even if they go beyond that they will at the most dig around in the second page so by pushing those negative remarks and feedback beyond second and third pages, you can be rest assured of your online reputation. How do we achieve this exactly?

You will be able to push your negative reviews down the results by creating profiles in social bookmarking sites using the keywords for which your website’s negative results appear. Remember it is not by posting positive feedback you will counter those negative results, you will be able to counter the negative results only by creating profiles in as many social book marking sites as possible using the exact term for which the negative results show up. You must remember that the social bookmarking sites that you are using should be a well established and indexed site. All the more better if it has a high PR. When people use those keywords or terms, your newly created profiles will show up in the results pushing the damaging feedbacks down the listing.

Since it is just playing around with listings, your SEO company can help you. However, you cannot expect your SEO company to deal with the other companies to get the negative feedback removed.

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