When it comes to creating SEO strategies for 2011, online reputation management should be a critical concern. Because any well-founded SEO strategy reaches out to consumers across a wide variety of mediums and demographics, it can be relatively easy to gain formidable website traffic virtually overnight. However, if your SEM or SMO strategy isn’t planned accordingly, a great deal of that new traffic could end up being an online reputation disaster. If you’re setting SEO goals for 2011, this should be a central focus.
Conducting business behind a computer screen causes people to behave in ways they would never consider doing when in the flesh. In this modern world of scathing online critiques and hastily written consumer reviews, your online reputation can ruin your business in a matter of weeks. This is because today’s consumers are afforded easy options to quickly inform thousands of other people about their experiences with your company. In the past, it was simply too much effort for unhappy customers to write complaint letters or file cases with consumer reviews and reporting agencies for trivial issues. Today, a consumer can blast your company with a damaging review in a matter of seconds- even if they are incorrect, unreasonable, or fabricating information about their experience.
In order to survive and thrive in the intensely competitive world of search engine optimization, your SEO strategies for 2011 must include a carefully designed online reputation management plan. The following are vital factors to consider in an effort to maintain excellent customer service while still having strategies in place to mitigate the inevitable disgruntled customer:
*Know where and how to look for information. Information that can affect your online reputation can be found in many different locations, and unfortunately you must monitor as many of these as possible. However, you can automate this task by setting up alerts in search engines for keywords related to your company or brand. Yahoo, Google, and Bing all have alert systems that can filter data and keywords and deliver related messages right to your inbox. Additionally, you can setup RSS readers to link to sites and blogs of importance. You can even have one RSS reader that filters all the other RSS feeds information in order to streamline this process. Where feeds and alerts are not possible, manual monitoring of websites and blogs may be required. You should be seeking information in the following areas:
Blogs
Discussion Forums
Collaborative Sites
Consumer Review Websites
Traditional Websites
Social Media Networks
Social Bookmarking Sites
Article & Press Release Directories
Consumer Generated Media
Message Boards
*Damage control is essential. When you find instances of poor reviews or complaints about your company or brand on the web, part of your SEO strategy in 2011 should be to immediately take action. It doesn’t matter whether the customer is right or wrong; what does matter is your response or lack thereof. Once an unhappy customer has voiced their dissatisfaction publicly, all of your attempts to mitigate this bad publicity will be under intense scrutiny. Your responses will tell other customers and your competitors a great deal about you and your company. Therefore, responses that are rude, arrogant, dismissive, or those that argue with the complaining party are only going to serve to further damage your online reputation.
Your response to consumer complaints or negative reviews should always be honest. In fact, one of the best strategies to deal with unhappy customers is to admit when you are wrong. Even if you’re only wrong a little and the customer is wrong a LOT, you still need to take responsibility. One of the best statements you can ever make to defuse an angry customer and tell people watching that you’re genuinely concerned with addressing the issue is:
“You’re absolutely right- we made a mistake. That’s not how we normally conduct business, and we apologize. What can we do to correct the situation?”
This statement- or one similar to it- accomplishes many things at once. It tells the customer they are right, it features you publicly taking responsibility for the mistake, it distances the mistake from your customary practices, it publicly and genuinely apologizes, and it lets everyone know that you’re ready to do what it takes to right the situation. This is exactly the type of online reputation that you should be creating. When looked at correctly, it’s easy to see that in reality unhappy customers are really just opportunities for you to show off how much you really do care about the relationship you share with your consumers.
SEO strategies and online reputation management has a much more sinister side than just customers who are unhappy about typically minor issues. Some of the most damaging effects from your online reputation can come from your former employees and your competition. Both of these groups may engage in vicious practices in order to smear your brand or company. Often, the complaints and allegations are entirely fabricated, but this still does not stop nasty rumors and negative posts from quickly going viral and being accepted as truth by your targeted markets and niches. When this occurs, managing your online reputation can suddenly become quite tricky. Effective techniques to combat malicious attacks such as these include:
*Ask for the information to be removed or retracted
*Request that your responses be published and linked to the offending posts
*Create a blog, website, or forum of your own to add your responses and generate support
*Communicate correct information and your responses to websites or blogs that may have linked to the original offending negative reviews or complaints
*Consult an attorney/Litigation
Because of the likelihood that negative information about your brand, products, or services will go viral, it is critical to monitor your online reputation and enact damage control tactics as soon as there is a problem. Otherwise, things can get out of control, and your good reputation can be buried in the search engines under mountains of bad reviews- whether they’re accurate or not.
*Be the best in your business. This sounds like a lame motivational slogan, but it’s probably the most important part of an SEO strategy that includes an online reputation management plan. By only offering the highest quality products or services and backing them up with excellent customer service, you be accomplishing two important steps at the same time:
1.) You’ll be generating scores of positive reviews, comments, and meaningful links across the web and on the ground. Consumers who are quick to write bad reviews are also just as quick to write about their positive experiences with you.
2.) You’ll be burying any negative reviews deep down in the search engine’s results pages. Because most consumers never look beyond the first page or two of results, if you get ten to fifteen positive reviews for every negative one, most people will never be able to see the negative results- at least not without first wading through numerous positive results.
Businesses and consumers alike understand that having an occasional unhappy customer is practically inevitable. Some people are just impossible to please, no matter how well you do your job. But if you intend to stay viable and create success with your SEO strategies in 2011, you’ll need to immediately implement an online reputation management plan.