Recently I had a chance to post at WPW some reputation management help for Rebecca Kelly from SEOmoz.org. Here is the thread from WPW:
Basically the problem with SEO brand management arises when bad press gets into the news websites and then finds its way to ranking high on the SERPs for product and company names. If (and when) this does happen how do you combat such a thing? How can you essentially push down ranking of a pesky blogger or news web page? Here are my Top 10 Reputation Management tips:
1. Try “employing” or offering other bloggers to step up and post about the client. Not so much PayPerPost or Review Me style, but emailing or calling them one by one and doing it the right way.
2. Another idea is to join forums and other websites which require a user name and have a indexable profile page. For instance if you look up my name: “Google+Search”>Jaan Kanellis” you will find MyBlogLog Community pages and many other websites that simply list a profile page. Of course your user name has to be the keyword/brand your going after, duh.
3. How about stock quote page? Is this client name/brand/keyword a public company? If so start linking to those stock quote pages from Yahoo and Google Finance.
4. How about getting Social Media websites to help like Yahoo Answers or Google Groups. Once the web page is created start by getting some links pointing to the answer/group page and watch it climb! This really applies to any sort of social media web page that allows you to author your own question/content.
5. How about getting news interviews, podcasts, etc on the subject of brand/keyword live online? Of course these will be primarily authored by the client and positive in nature. Getting the client to do them and making sure the interviewer posts them online is obviously important. Once live you can point to them from many different websites as a resource.
Basically the bottom line of my points above is to utilize already top ranking websites for your own brand benefit, while keeping the end user plenty happy with what they find in the SERPs.
More:
7. Buy, buy, buy domains around your target keyword/brand. Get them live with unique content and offer social interaction/Web 2.0 for visitors. They will rank faster than you can believe.
8. Create another controversy. Well this is very tricky, but rightly constructed it could over power whatever rankings are there now, that are in your way.
9. Try to avoiding the Quixtar route/press:
Quixtar Caught in Search Engine PR Battle
Quixtar Spamming the Search Engines?
10. Make sure your ruling the PPC spots. This can only help protect your brand and will help influence visitors to see who is the real website that they should be visited.
Update:
More solid articles on reputation management:
Ten Ways to Avoid a Google Reputation Nightmare
So what are yours?
