How to protect your Brand Online Reputation

How to Protect Your Brand Online Reputation?

Generally, large enterprises spend a big amount every year when it comes to brand reputation management strategies. You can think about some of the most reputed and renowned brands and you can guarantee that many thoughts go into how established and would-be customers view all these brands and the wider reputation of the company. So, is a reputation management strategy is a big concern for smaller businesses too? Absolutely!

If you have tried your level best to change a type of search engine optimization in online reputation management strategy, which makes your brand name appear in various search engines with the aim of populating the Internet with more positive or neutral content. Although the content that is harmful or irrelevant is difficult to remove from the internet, it can be "washed out", so that only positive and relevant content appears in search engine result pages. If the task of online reputation management is already a challenge for you, just imagine how tough it is for businesses that need to be highly engaged in search engines with the help of online search websites and forums with user-generated content marketing rankings have to do.

Can Your Brand Handle Negative Publicity?

No matter if small or large scale business you are running, negative publicity can be as devastating as healthy a good reputation can be. There are businesses that have a review site for the Reputation Management of their brand, such as Yelp.com, that shows for their business name and lists negative reviews posted by competition, former employees, or angry customers. You can be scapegoat of the website called Cheaterland and be frustrated about it especially when you haven’t done anything wrong. Many go through such incidents but few may know that Removal of Cheaterland Link from search engine results is the one best way to get rid of negative publicity.

Combating Negative Reviews

To counter negative reviews, some businesses have leveraged the system, encouraging customers with positive experiences to post on sites like Yelp.com, Google Places and Yahoo! Local. To deal with sites like ConsumerAffairs.com or negatively promoted forum posts, companies have created their own websites in an attempt to outrank them for their own company name. Review posting and website building are just some of the tools businesses use to manage their online reputation. The complete tool kit for online reputation management is presented below:

Here are 8 Ways to protect your brand’s reputation online: 

Web 2.0

Sites such as Aboutus.org, Wikipedia.org, Squidoo, etc. rank prominently in search engine result pages. However, even though Wikipedia is almost guaranteed to rank on the first page of the search engine for any company name, its content will be neutral and user-generated. If your company has had any negative publicity in the past, it may be best to avoid Wikipedia, which does not offer control over its content.

Youtube or Flickr

Creating Flickr images and YouTube videos that include your business or brand name well in the title rank. In addition to possibly being on the first page of Google search, images and videos can, and in themselves, create positive words for your brand or company.

Press releases

Using PR Web can also help you build articles that contain the name of your brand or business, which overtakes webpages or websites that are not very official.

Profile page

Business profiles on sites such as GooglePages, LinkedIn, and AOL Hometown can rank well in search engines.

Guest blogging

If your business is featured on a major blog or articles over the internet, do not at least push negative publicity, give your business links and traffic.

Remove content or add to the website

If you find negative information about your brand or company in the search engine result pages, ask the administrator of the website if the content can be removed. If not, ask them if they can write another article that mentions your business neutral. If they feature an article for you, that particular article can easily replace a negative webpage in Google search engine results.

Blog or subdomain

You can create a blog, which includes your business and brand name as well as subdomains, which gain some automatic rights from your parent domain. Also, this will help if your brand name is mentioned on the page of a web app you already have. For example, if you sell goods online, you can consider adding your brand name to some pages of your product. By doing so, Google can display all these pages when your business name is searched over Google.

Respond to criticism and take responsibility for mistakes

Once you start monitoring the online reputation of your brand and find that negative queries or comments are being made, you should respond to it in a very polite manner immediately. Negative comments or queries if left unchecked can spread like wildfire over the Internet and hurt your brand like never before. Responding promptly is the best way to minimize the overall damage as it ensures that your attitude is also seen by someone reading it.

If you make a mistake or do something wrong, you need to do it. You can offer real apologies to those who have been affected. Accepting wrongdoing, don't do it again, and modify business processes in order to make sure it isn't. You must be transparent about your business so that consumers can see the steps you are taking to correct the problem. Projecting openness and remorse will help you win back trust.

Conclusion:

User-generated content allows customers to publish their own views of a particular business and helps other potential customers to make any decisions about your brand. However, the fact that the affiliation of the reviewers and the validity of the claims cannot be checked, leaves the door open for unwarranted negative publicity, which can cause some businesses to shut down or face huge revenue loss. The above-mentioned strategies of reputation management can be used by businesses to effectively counter the effects of user-generated content. If you find this task difficult, you can hire a reputed online reputation management company that provides ORM Services and has a good track record.