Today, as quickly as one can type, "www," a brand can be crippled by negative commentary, a blog entry, or even the click of a camera phone. Managing a brand – if that’s even possible in today’s digital world – has never been more of a challenge. By adding listings which show up in search results for your brand, you can minimize the exposure of negative commentary by "pushing down" the undesirable results below the fold, or off the results page altogether.
The following is a handful of tactics that can help you combat less-than-positive results above the fold on Google:
1. Create and Distribute Well Optimized Press Releases
Newsworthy press releases can provide fresh content the search engines prefer to display and can push the negative commentary below the fold. As press releases are picked up by various news outlets, each of these domains has the potential to outrank the domains showing the negative results. Keep in mind: News agencies are highly critical of the stories they pick up, and only those that are truly newsworthy get maximized distribution.
2. Create a Sub-Domain to Host a Blog and/or other specific content
Search engines treat sub-domains as unique Web sites. By developing specified content on sub-domains, corporations can have multiple sites which rank for their brand name. Potential sub-domains include:
•Blog.corporate.com
•News.corporate.com
•Careers.corporate.com
•Philanthropy.corporate.com
Blogs provide another result for the search engines to display against your brand terms, in addition to your corporate domain. Remember: Blogs should be fed up to four times per day, and always by real people.
3. Create a Wikipedia Entry
Wikipedia does extremely well in Google for a variety of reasons. Developing a well written and keyword optimized Wikipedia entry, corporations have the opportunity to, in essence, create an alternate content site which is highly likely to perform well in the search results
4. Optimize Video Content, and/or Images
Images, videos, and news stories can take up valuable "top-of-page" real estate on results pages if and when they are well optimized for brand terms. By creating and optimizing video content, and images, corporations can use another tool to push negative search results off the page. Google may also display Google News articles in the results pages against brand terms, in addition to video and image results, thus pushing down the negative results even further.
5. Run a Paid Search Campaign Against Brand Terms
A paid listing adds another controlled listing on the results page (although not technically in the natural results, it is still a positive listing on the page, and depending upon the niche, some industries see up to 20 percent of clicks on paid listings, as opposed to the natural listings). In addition, the paid listing is guaranteed to be at the top of the page. Paid listings also allow for valuable real estate to "tell your side" of the story, and address a situation head on.
Is this practice being adopted by the mainstream business community? To determine the extent of this practice, I looked into the search practices of three companies dominating the news today:
1. Ford Motor Company. On the broadest search term "Ford," the company controls seven of the top 10 (page one) natural results, and has the No. 1 position within the paid landscape. When searching for "Ford Motors" the results were even more impressive. Ford directly controlled only five of the ten listings; however, three of the remaining five listings were positive news articles hosted by leading news sources, one was a well optimized Ford Dealership, and the final listing was a stock/financial news entry from AOL.com. What was impressive was the number of positive news articles (five) cited by Google.
2. Delta Air Lines. In addition to owning the top spot within the paid search space, six of the 10 listings found on the search for "Delta Air Lines" were directly controlled by Delta. Another three listings were present via optimized press releases and a Wikipedia entry.
3. Texaco. Performing a search for "Texaco", two listings are for the Texaco primary domain; two listings are for the Chevron primary domain; and two listings were for their credit card Web site domain. Of the remaining four listings, three were negative articles pertaining to lawsuits the company is, or has been, involved with. There was a clear lack of the use of sub-domains, optimized press releases, and a paid search campaign.
Like most things digital, reputation management isn’t being embraced by everyone. Whether this initiative becomes the next big thing, or simply a tactic to continuously take, only time will tell. Check back with me in 10 years.