Burying Negative Content – What to Do Versus What Not to Do
March 2nd, 2010 by
These days it is really easy to tarnish the online reputation of a company. Just one bad review or article posted on a high traffic web site is all it takes. In most instances it is impossible to have negative comments and stories removed.
The best way to fight negativity is through positivity. The simplest way to do this is to drown it out. Good news can chase bad news down the search engine ranks to the 2nd or 3rd page, where it is less likely to be found.
Here are some action steps:
1) Monitor activity- Find all of the sites where the bad news lives.
2) Stay calm- Be patient, it takes some time.
3) Post positive- Here are just a few ideas:
Create a social networking profile – Facebook
Create a business profile – Linked In
Start a blog – WordPress
Share photos- Flickr
Claim your identity- Naymz
Create a Wiki- Wetpaint
The number 1 thing NOT to do is search for yourself or search for the negative information. This is the fastest way to ensure it will NEVER go away.
It is hard work and extremely time consuming to bury bad press. I know it is tempting to look, but that one search can enable the bad news to resurface and erase all of the work that was already done, bringing you right back where you started.
Even if you do not have a reputation management issue at this time, please know if one does present itself, there are ways to fix it, as well as one major way to prevent it from disappearing!
Image Credits: Thanks to ladybeames and stevoarnold for the great imagery for this post.
[…] Negative Content – What to Do Versus What Not to Do to Bury It, http://www.searchinfluence.com […]
Can you elaborate on this piece of your article?
“The number 1 thing NOT to do is search for yourself or search for the negative information. This is the fastest way to ensure it will NEVER go away.”
Are you saying that searching for the negative information (or my brand which has negative information) will make it able to rank in a more lasting way? I didn’t think that searching for something will allow it to rank better for that search term?
Any help for a newbie is appreciated!
Hi Karen. Basically if you search for the bad stuff, Google will think that it is important information and they may make it a ‘suggested alternative’ search. It will tell Google that people want to find it.
It is important not to click on the bad stuff because Google uses click tracking (this tracks the clicks of links on your site) and may think the bad stuff is correct information.
Hope this helps!
I can understand the click tracking reason not to click on the bad information. But why not search yourself? And click on the good stuff on back pages?
Hi Charles,
In the instance we’re talking about the real problem is that it’s not just “name”, but “name” + nightclub (or similar). So what happens is Google begins to think that that’s a reasonable suggested search. So, if I searched over and over again for “will scott speaker” Google would likely suggest “will scott speaker” as an alternative to “will scott”.
It’s not just hte name search, but the name + search phrase which is a problem.
Hope that clarifies it.
Will
I would agree. I had a client that kept searching for their business name+death, because there was an accident at their business. Within a month, Google was giving there “business name” death as an alternative search.
I would agree. Backlinking using anchor text to your good press also helps TREMENDOUSLY.
I don’t understand – what is “..Backlinking using anchor text to your good press”? How do you do that?