There are over 200 million blogs online, thousands of review sites, sites specific to leaving feedback about companies, and thousands of forums on any topic imaginable.
People can talk about whatever they want, pretty much wherever they want, and with so many people "conversing online," a lot of that conversation is involving brands - their products, their services, and their business. Knowing how to 'monitor' the web is a very valuable asset, and with that there are 3 types of mentions you can find around a brand online:
- Positive
- Neutral
- Negative
Positive
This information is actually very valuable, as people won't always contact you directly to praise you. You may find out that your staff members are doing a good job or people really like a certain part of your product, which you may be able to include as a marketing angle.
Neutral
Neutral mentions of a brand aren't particularly useful, but they can be ones to watch. An example of a neutral mention is something like, "I bought a [product name] from [company name] today, hopefully It will work perfectly."These don't give you any indications of areas or that things may be going well or not-so well, but if you track the site (usually a blog or forum) then an updated feedback response may be imminent.
Negative
These are the ones that you need to pay the most attention to as they can really harm a company's reputation. Apple stock prices dropped $4bn in 2007 because of an inaccurate post on Engadget, the popular technology blog. Fortunately, Apple responded quite quickly to rectify the situation but it certainly left a dint in stock prices and their brand.
How the Conversation Has Changed
Before the web, people relied on newspapers, radio, TV, and peer recommendations to help give them an overall view of a product or service before using it. Now, people can just "Google it" and find out exactly what others think of something before they give out their hard earned cash and possibly make a bad decision.
If you own a business that has any presence online, you must be monitoring what is being said about you; otherwise, you could run into some serious issues. You don't know when somebody is going to complain about one of your offerings and possibly affect your sales.
Who Sees the Negativity?
Negative mentions can be made in numerous places such as the following (who sees them):
- Forums (forum members)
- Blogs (blog subscribers)
- Micro-sites (search results)
- PPC ads (sites that display Adsense / search results)
- Review sites (search results)
- Social networks (site members)
- etc etc.
The problem is, almost all of these can be found in search results. So, not only will forums users find out something about a company, but there's a chance the mention will rank for the respective keywords and non-forum members will see the negativity.
To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the term 'owning your search results', but it is relevant and makes sense. Your brand name is probably one of the top referring keywords to your website, but for those who don't click on the result that is you, where are they landing?
Owning your search results is about having the top results in the search engines about you as something positive in order to stop people being 'put off' by what they find or people hijacking your brand. I have my own thoughts on the 'ethics' of this...
Amazon (result) and eBay (result) are both great examples of this; I advise you to look at their search results for an idea of how well organised results around a brand term can be. So, how can you start to achieve similar results?
- Targeted Pages on Your Own site
For the majority of the people reading this, when people search for your name / brand term, you (as in a website you own / page you created) are going to be the first result.
One way to get another result for this is to create a highly targeted page around the keywords. For example, SEOmoz ranks for their name and has sitelinks, but a very optimised page around the SEOmoz brand (e.g., the About page or similar) may result in an indented listing.
What I actually prefer to focus on with these is specific pages around products or services. So for example, you may have a page about a product for sale that is quite popular. In order to get an indented listing for that product name you could create an FAQ or Images page separately that is highly targeted around the keywords.
- Promote Positive Pages
This is quite straightforward, so I'm not going to ramble on when it can take 2 sentences to summarise. Basically, if there are positive pages around your brand that aren't in the top results, throw some backlinks their way to try and improve their rankings.
Just make sure that the person writing positively about you isn't going to remove that page anytime soon or replace it with something negative ;).
- Create Content on Other Sites
Before I start (and this is a point I always make but I'll say it again), please don't use the following in a spammy or unethical way. I'm talking about creating content on sites like Squidoo and Hubpages, and to be honest, when I was focused on affiliate marketing these were some of the sites I used for backlinks to help me in rankings. Needless to say, I never felt good about that so I promote their ethical usage as much as possible.
What you can do on these sites is create highly targeted content on a subject of your choice, so of course you can create one around your brand or your industry. What I recommend though is creating a page that anyone can land on and benefit from. Let's say that SEOmoz were creating a page around their brand on hubpages. It would be nice to see information about them, but a nice extra would be if there was an "SEO poll" or funny conference images that people could enjoy.
- Make Use of Sub-Domains
These are thought to be classed as a 'new domain' in a sense; therefore, these won't become indented below other results. If you took a look at the results for the Amazon and eBay searches, you will notice that the majority of results are sub-domains on their site. Such things you could use one for include:
- Blog
- Forums
- Developer section
- Support section
- Promote Yourself
I see a lot of big brands with results that are from news sources or other popular websites. The reason these sites rank highly is because the domain generally has a lot of authority, and even just a mention of the brand name on a page can be enough to rank highly.
There's a great post about this over at 10e20 that I couldn't put any better.
- Profile Pages
These are not something I recommend creating in terms of defending your brand keywords; these are just a possible positive for taking part in niche websites. For a search around my company name you can see my Sphinn profile and possibly some forum profiles in the results.
These tend to do very well in results, but only register on these sites if you are actually going to use them. Sites like Aboutus.org also tend to rank very highly around brand terms because of the authority of the domain and the on-page optimisation / relevance each page has.
In Summary
Negative search engine results can really affect a company's sales online, but sometimes those negative search results are deserved, especially if a company is offering shoddy services or a crappy product. You can never substitute being an honest and professional company for relying on hiding the negative from view.
My first YOUmoz post was terrible -- I look back at it now and feel embarrassed for writing it; therefore, I put a bit more effort into this one. If you want to know more about me, I write about the subject of online reputation management and all it entails (SEO, social media, communication) at the ViperChill blog.
One of the brand names I work for had an issue with a BBC broadcast about a supplier of ours 5 years ago where our company name was mentioned inappropriately. The company owner decided to complain to Offcom (bear with me) and they found in my company's favour. Great? No. The Offcom adjudication document doggedly appears right on page one of Google for the company name, and looks like it's going to do so forever if 5 years is anything to go by meaning that an incident 5 years ago still haunts the company to this day.
On the flipside, negative comments can sometimes work in a positive fashion from a black hat SEO perspective. It's an oft used spammer tactic. Launch a site, then start posting on forums in a negative way about the site you launched. The forum moderators don't realize the backlinks are in fact SPAM, they see a real person trying to fight a "bad" website, and other people start joining in. The thread gets popular, more people join in and more backlinks appear. Google doesn't (or at least as far as I know doesn't) realize that all these backlinks appearing mean the target site is bad - it's simply buzzworthy. I'm not making any suggestion I use tactics like this - as I say it's black hat as far as I'm concerned and decidedly short term for results and ultimately self destructive.
This is a simlar technique to the one Max Cliiford used when asked to promote the original Grand Theft Auto. Instead of spending lots of money on a conventional advertising campaign, he used his contacts in the British press to start a campaign AGAINST this violent and controvercial video game even being released. And so the press start talking about it. Then the public start talking about it. The game got HUGE exposure and we all know just how successful that particular game franchise became.
I didn't know Max Clifford was behind the original GTA stuff. That's the work of a very bold and clever thinker.
Reminds me of a friend who was trying to contract me to build a corporate website for his new chain of pizza places. I did a google search for it to see if he had any information on the internet in maybe a directory or free website.
I felt bad for him, the previous owner had one of the locations closed down by the health board. Sure enough it was #2 in google.
This is a terrific post, Glen - I like how you intelligently address the value, challenges and opportunities surrounding brand managment in the SERPs. Hope to see many more like it (and certainly will go subscribe to Viperchill) :)
Thanks for the kind words, appreciated
This is the kind of post that YOUmoz was created for.
The necessity of reputation management becomes clearer as more social sites grow. People will be out there discussing brands, products and experiences. All too often those that are being talked about are the ones who decide to go against what you recommend here.
I was brought in recently to assist on a campaign where a company tried to go out use every profile name related to their brand on all major (and secondary) social networks.
While I would applaud the defensive stance of "owning" that name and by having a social profile on these sites, they failed in managing them. Soon they had haters befriending them and talking smack on their pages while they were ranking prominently.
An easy fix, but the simple lesson is that there's no half-assed way to pull it off. You're either committed to it, or not. You're guide here should help many get started on the right track.
Spot on! This applies to all companies and individuals. No one is perfect, you can find something negative about anyone nowadays. The way to come out of that negative state is by fixing the root cause.
SEOing/promoting your best pages which showcase your product, service, company in the best light is a good start however, if you never fix the issues that caused the negative feedback, then you are bound to start an epidemic that will dig its self so far down that getting back up to your good rep you once had will be much, much harder and more time consuming.
Nice post, thanks!
Artur
Excellent post with some excellent suggestions. My question is this: Why do visitors rank a site? They had a good experience (what was that experience), they had a bad experience (ditto) or they had no experience or one that lived up to expectations, aka, a neutral experience.
Enabling visitors to rank a site can be misleading because there’s no way to tell why they opted for a thumbs up or down. Thus, a site owner may be making the wrong site changes for the wrong reasons.
Visitor ranking also opens the door for competitor fraud if I, and both of my friends, access a site and give it a thumbs down, other visitors may follow.
Is there a way to employ site metrics to determine why visitors approve or disapprove of a site? If I assume it’s ambiguous navigation when, in fact, it’s an eight-page checkout, aren’t I making fixes that don’t warrant fixes and missing the opportunity to fix the real problem?
Positive, negative and neutral lead to assumptions that can create unnecessary costs and, as you so eloquently stated, bad web buzz. I think the best solution is to avoid visitor ranking altogether and provide a call center to make sure every visitor leaves feeling positive.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post.
webwordslinger
One of the most interesting comments I've ever read here, thanks for sharing it
EDIT: This was supposed to be a response to andy fletcher
Good points, very good points.
Lets see, is there anyone we know with a site containing a ranking system that may be able to provide insight on how to associate cause and ranking? Further more, how they have validated the cause behind the ranking and its relationship to SEO improvements based on said data.
Glen, I Agree with Rand. This is very well-written, logically ordered and provides som every valuable insight and how to. Promotion to main blog?
Seriously, I agree--this has promotion written all over it. What a great post.
I can vouch for the effectiveness of most of these tactics, in particular, creating content on other high-ranking websites (like this one! ;) ).
Would love to see that happen, sadly this went live over the weekend though so not sure if its possible
Great post. I think management is the key word here. With the instantaneous nature of web 2.0, companies need to stay on top of things and manage their brand, site and associated sites. I really like the tip about being aware of the positive reviews of your product/service and throwing them backlinks. I know it seems simple, but so many best practices get thrown out the window when people focus on the trees and not the forest. Thanks again!
I love the way people get into the social media you can see who really gets into the community o fit all. Thanks for the website its pretty interesting. Since you are involved in seo I wanted to tell you about the biggest seo index update in 10 years. It will change how we view keyword reasearch and competitive analysis in a wildly web 2.0 world. Called the KCI or Keyword Competitive Index it is the first web 2.0 seo index tool.
Lance Young
Inventor of the KCI
www.keycompindex.com
It’s sad to see big brands ignoring the basic SEO . Take Oscar Mayer, See the SERP #1?. No Title Tag, no Meta Description, it just look horrible.
Because of the negative content/results you can now find many SEO companies offering "Reputation Management" services. These services create lots of positive content that eventually "washes away" the negative content... At BuscaTuFranquicia.com, web portal with franchising opportunities for Hispanics, we are glad we never had to deal with negative news. Furthermore, we chose to partner with Hispanic Market Advisors for our Hispanic SEM service needs. so that together, we can keep up not only with our seo efforts but also with keeping our brand image and reputation in good terms/light
This article is extremely well written because it has a lot of valuable information in it. I like the images you posted on the article also because it gives the reader a photographic image of what your talking about. Very nicely written blog and I hope to read more of your great work.
Just have to say, "THAKNS!" for adding so much value to SEOmoz.
You migh consider submitting this to Marketing Pilgrim's Search Marketing Scholarship. Submissions due 5/23.
Great post!
"Apple stock prices dropped $4bn in 2007 because of an inaccurate post on Engadget ..." Very interesting .... i didnt know that! .....Funny how some things work ...
Thanks for the article! :)
Cheers
https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
Maybe someone with a not so strong brand but lots of subdomains can chime in if they've seen any sort of change (more or fewer brand subdomains showing up).
Glen, excellent article, congratulations, you deserve all the kudos you can get! :)
However, I would like to point something about subdomains on large web sites like Amazon, eBay and others.
The reason they do subdomains is because they have massive, huge data-centers with thousands and thousands of servers, as they have huge amounts of web traffic on different portions of their sites.
To concentrate all these different portions on a unique domain would be a wonderful thing not only for SEO reasons, but for lots of both technical and product management reasons.
However, to do so, they would have to spend a huge amount of money upgrading their front balance hardware. This is a costy piece of hardware/software that is used ideally to distribute a unique load among different serves, which is also the solution for not having your content dilluted on lots of subdomains.
I just came from a previous experience on a huge portal here on Brazil which does have thousands of subdomains, all created among the last few years -- every channel, everything slightest different would be created on a new subdomain. The reason? Easier for IT.
Now it seems nearly impossible to put everything together -- they're trying to reduce the numbers of subdomains, but I'm sure, like all other huge properties on the web, they'll never be able to concentrate lots of related content under one domain only.
You are possibly right, but to be honest I like to think certain things are 'cleaner' to have on a sub-domain rather than a sub-folder of the site and that may have been in their thoughts as well.
Sorry, Glen, but I worked with lots of huge operations and properties and never saw anyone taking SEO on account when deciding to create subdomain structured -- even because it's not a recommended practice overall. A 100% of the times these are IT based decisions which take account only infra-structure artifacts.
Subdomains are meant to be machines under a domain, and in no-way any ranking algorithm will endorse non-standard practices. They might be able to understand, but they'll never become a positive score factor.
Unfortunately I can't and won't disclosure the companies I've been working for/with, but you got to trust a stranger on this one.
Preferences aside, which each one may have yours, but sometimes we have to stick with the facts. :)
"sites like Squidoo and Hubpages, and to be honest, when I was focused on affiliate marketing these were some of the sites I used for backlinks to help me in rankings."
You are too honest :)
Kidding aside, Squidoo was broken last time I attempted to register... Are you still using it? Is it ranked as well as it used to be?
Awesome post btw...
"sites like Squidoo and Hubpages, and to be honest, when I was focused on affiliate marketing these were some of the sites I used for backlinks to help me in rankings."
Those kind of little revelations are the gold flakes that people like me are panning for here though. Seriously.
Not really using the sites anymore, I like to write about certain niches on them but don't really see a huge benefit.
I made a few thousand with affiliate marketing then realised I wasn't enjoying what I was doing so stopped. You may recall when Squidoo really tanked for a lot of keywords but it seemed to regain some trust after they cleaned up their spammy pages
Great article - it truly is all about reputation management these days. Love how this shows the ways to manage your brand in detail.
Great post Glen. The resources and blog post that you link to are outstanding as well. Well deserved promotion.
By The Way. Your first YouMoz post had useful SEO information. I think it only got the thumbs down that it did because what you were doing with it was spammy.
Anyway, you seem to have redeemed yourself whether you needed to or not. Good job
There are social media monitoring search and analysis tools that automate much of this discovery. www.techrigy.com has a free version (I work there but this is very relevant to your subject)
These specialized search tools are a combination of keyword search and analytics designed for tracking brands and memes across a part of the web that standard search can't keep up with. They offer sentiment analysis, demographics, geo-location and influence-ranking of participants and conversations.
Branding is very important to the blog,without branding ,the blog won't go far.It is something you are branding the products.
i think this is great having people talking about SEO on a professional level. As stategic online marketeer for many Dutch internet companies i appreciate the initiative. Let's make the web semantic! SeoSucces