SEO & Reputation Management: A Comprehensive Analysis

Just like in the physical world, online reputation can make or break a brand.

A positive reputation builds trust, helps build lasting relationships, and ultimately increases sales and profit.

Internet users looking for your brand or services come across your pages and shape a first impression about your brand within (literally) a couple of seconds.

On top of your website pages, search results can show all kinds of content that relates to your business. From customer reviews, to media articles, social mentions, videos... you name it!

In this plethora of sources, you need to maintain a positive narrative around your business or effectively address any negative brand advocacy.

This is where online reputation management (ORM) comes in.

What Is Online Reputation Management (ORM)?

Online reputation management (ORM) monitors all online activity related to a brand or business and focuses on creating a positive perception of this brand.

To do that, ORM utilizes content marketing, social media, review management, media relations, and -above all- search engine optimization.

What Is Reputation Management In SEO?

Reputation management in SEO is all about monitoring and optimizing every detail of your online presence, ensuring your brand appears on the first page of search results with consistency, accurate information, and a positive narrative.

It only takes 5-7 impressions for people to remember a brand. So, cultivating positive impressions on every encounter with your business plays a pivotal role in your overall marketing strategy.

SEO For Reputation Management - Statistics

When looking into user behavior, statistics reveal the importance of SEO reputation management.

High Rankings

43.2% of internet users aged 16 to 64 use the internet to research products and brands.

So, helping your brand’s content get on top of SERPs for focused keywords increases brand visibility and also trust. After all, credible companies put effort into reaching and maintaining top positions.

Link Building

For 81% of consumers, brand trust is a deciding factor when making a purchase decision.

Among other things, off-page SEO helps spread your brand’s reputation and urges user mentions in various online sources, like social media, thus enhancing trust in your brand.

Content Optimization

Consistency in a brand’s online presence can result in a revenue increase of up to 23%.

A holistic digital marketing approach, combining SEO and social media content, email marketing, CRO, etc., establishes a cohesive online presence and messaging across all platforms and communications that captivates audiences.

This consistency strengthens our brand identity and fosters trust with our audience.
Hamed Moghtadaee, Content Marketing Consultant

Keyword Research

90% of worldwide internet users only look at the first page of search engine results.

Competitor analysis and comprehensive keyword research are just 2 SEO tools that can enhance your topical authority and show your content on the 1st page of SERPs for various industry-related queries.

Technical SEO

Users form an opinion about a website in just .05 seconds.

In this respect, technical SEO is a core component of a website’s success.

For example: slow loading times, dead links, dead-end pages, or poor responsiveness - all add up to a bad user experience that directly affects your brand’s reputation in a negative way.

Why Is Search Engine Reputation Important?

Even if you work hard to build a good online reputation for your business, bad reviews and unfortunate incidents can happen.

In the era of 24/7 live streaming and social shares, negative news travels in the blink of an eye.

This includes bad company reviews, unfavorable forum discussions, negative brand mentions on social media, and news articles criticizing your business ethics.

With trending topics and hashtags on the rise, you may suddenly face waves of negative talk around your business.

And remember: the most recent mentions always come on top - whether positive or negative.

But there’s more to it: from an SEO perspective, increased searches on trending topics make their way into Google’s search suggestions, news snippets, and People Also Ask questions.

What this means is that when your business reputation is at stake, users tend to make searches that include your “brand name + negative keywords.”

In such crisis incidents, SEO reputation fixes can significantly restore your brand's image.

For example, you can quickly write thorough articles explaining the reasons why an unfortunate event occurred and the steps you are taking to fix it. Then, ensure you spread the word accordingly and also rank your content as high as possible.

You can also proactively use SEO to better shield your online reputation and quickly repair it if necessary.

What this means is that if you already rank high for various keywords and types of content, then you can quickly spread your brand’s response to any unforeseen crisis.

Search Engine Reputation Management Tips

There are many different ways to enhance your search engine reputation management using SEO.

Maintain Positive Information On The 1st Page Of SERPs

Reputation management SEO means monitoring any type of content that comes up on the 1st page of SERPs for queries closely related to your brand.

To do so, you can use various SEO techniques. For instance:

• Continuously monitor and update your most prominent pages, ensuring they stay on top with fresh and relevant information.
• Optimize and boost content that talks about your brand quality, transparency, social responsibility, etc.
• Urge customer reviews or run review campaigns to attain a constant flow of positive mentions from people who have interacted with your brand.
• Boost your best social posts to appear on search results.

Outrank Negative Results

Search engines, like Google, list around 10 results on each SERP. Among them, there may be knowledge panels with Wikipedia or other information, Google Business entries, image search results, etc.

Search results vary according to your industry, type of product/service, search terms used, etc.

By having at least 9 pieces of positive content on the first page, you will eventually force Google to leave negative brand mentions back on the 2nd SERP page. And we don’t mean 9 different pages from your corporate website.

Actually, Google only lists 2 pages of the same website in organic listings. So, you’ll need to work your way around the rest of the results.

• Rank for a featured snippet in position zero.
• Show up with expanded sitelinks.
• Get into the People Also Ask section.
• Optimize your Tweets to appear in Twitter Feed results.
• Have your key staff publish influential LinkedIn articles.
• Optimize your Google My Business listing.
• Publish a powerful Wikipedia article on your company.
• Create a popular YouTube channel.
  

You can also work with journalists to publish company news, interviews, case studies, etc.

Monitor Content On All Platforms

ORM, online reputation management, in SEO includes monitoring and addressing issues on any platform, from Instagram and LinkedIn to Quora and News Sites - anything that can eventually appear in SERPs.

And remember: once you face a negative comment, it’s best to address it immediately with valid data and clear explanations.

This shows that your company cares about customer feedback, and even if there’s been a mistake on your part, you are ready to face it and fix it.

In this way, you create a positive image of an inconvenient situation.

And if you encounter unfavorable or unjust news in any media channels, you should address it accordingly - directly with the publisher.

Optimize Content For Potentially Negative Keywords & Questions

One of the best SEO reputation management tricks is to embrace negative keywords potentially connected to your brand and optimize online content for queries like:

• “Is [brand name] legit?”
• “What should you not buy at [brand name]?”
• “Does [brand name] actually refund money?”
• “[brand name] scandal”

Remember that providing content for such negative keywords on your company website is not always the best way around it. Instead, find ways to use these queries and keywords in forum discussions, customer reviews, 3rd party articles, etc.

Professional Reputation Management SEO

At Atropos Digital, we know it takes time and effort to build your brand’s online reputation. We are also well aware that a positive image can be ruined in minutes.

This is why we proactively form a solid SEO presence that can withstand the test of time.

For us, extended visibility and online reputation management are strategic assets for every business.

Working with Atropos Digital for your SEO needs comes with focused efforts on maintaining a positive brand narrative while increasing conversions. Book a strategy call.