Good is every business’ best friend. It is Google who will decide which results are being shown for keywords, be they simple words, brand names, or even town names. Google is the overlord of the internet, and you must remain on their side.
Online Reputation
So how does this link to reputation? An online reputation management company will tell you that people who use the internet, which is virtually everybody, uses it either to find out the reputation of a company, or to smear or improve a reputation.
If you need to manage your reputation, therefore, you need to remain Google’s friend. Google is always looking at how to find results for certain keywords. This means that, if someone were to search for your brand name, Google will find them the most relevant things to do with your brand name. This could be a positive review, but it is equally likely for that to be a negative review.
The question then becomes how you can use this in your favor. You should, if at all possible, automate your online reputation as much as possible. Google Alerts are very important in that. You need to make sure that you have alerts set up for keywords that are relevant to you and your business, your company’s name being the most important one. Whenever something new appears online about your name, you will then receive an alert, be that a positive or a negative mention. And this, in turn, ensures you can take the appropriate action.
You can also request a more detailed daily report from Google, so that you can see what was said and when. If you are a company that is often mentioned, this is also beneficial because it will stop your inbox from clogging up, giving you a single overview at the end, or start, of each day. You should not opt for less frequent alerts, because that means that you could let something negative grow in popularity, instead of addressing it and pushing it back.
You can’t really remove anything that is posted online, unless it is posted on your own website or social media page. Doing so, however, is never a good idea because people will find out and will immediately lose trust in your organization. What you can do, however, is engage in steps to make sure the negative things are not found as quickly anymore. Replying to positive comments, liking them on social media, sharing them through your website and so on, and adding relevant keywords to them, is a fantastic way to make sure that they are pushed closer to the top of Google. While you should reply to negative reviews as well, in a positive way so as to show your clientele that you listen, you should stick to a few comments only, thereby making sure that the review doesn’t become easier to get found. And all of this can be done my simply setting up a Google Alert.