Managing Negative Results on Google: Protecting Your Brand’s Reputation
Negative results on Google associated with your name or brand are not uncommon these days. It only takes one dissatisfied customer to start spreading negative reviews about your brand across various platforms, including major review sites, social media, and YouTube.
One day, you search for your name or brand on Google and see that most of the first page is filled with negative reviews and extreme complaints. This can be devastating—potential customers now see negative content when searching for your brand, leading to decreased leads and sales, loss of existing customers, and a tarnished reputation.
Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a service designed to eliminate these negative results and rebuild trust around your brand. Here are some steps you can take to improve the situation yourself.
1. Attempt to Remove Negative Results
The most straightforward approach is to contact the publishers of negative articles and request removal. A letter from a lawyer can be effective, especially if the article makes unsubstantiated accusations. Persistence is key—contact them multiple times and try to build a rapport. If successful, this can solve the problem.
If this approach doesn’t work, the next step is to push negative results to the second page of Google by improving your online presence.
2. Create Social Profiles
If you have a Facebook profile, create a business page for your name or brand. Organize the page professionally and add 4-5 new posts daily for a week. Repeat this process on YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as these platforms often rank well on Google searches for names.
3. Open Profiles on Bookmarking Sites
Profiles and posts on sites like Pinterest, Reddit, and Tumblr tend to rank well in search engines. Create profiles on these sites and write several posts mentioning the problematic name. Continue adding posts for several days.
4. Engage on Forums and Article Sites
Profiles and posts on forums and article sites still rank well on search engines. Create profiles using the problematic name on sites like Quora, Reddit, Medium, and Ezine Articles. Provide value by answering questions and writing articles.
5. Build Multiple Websites
Create 3-4 websites using different variations of the problematic name. You can use services like Fiverr to buy domains and build WordPress sites with at least 10 active pages each. Perform some basic SEO to ensure these sites rank well on Google.
6. Connect Your Assets
Interlink the various properties you’ve built. For example, link a Pinterest post to your Facebook page, respond to a Reddit question with a link to one of your websites, and include links to your Medium posts on your websites. This cross-linking helps improve the visibility of positive content.
Summary
Investing time in these strategies can help suppress or remove negative results, improving your brand’s online reputation. Continue to create and nurture these properties to maintain their positions on the first page of search results.
If the situation is too challenging to manage on your own, you can always
contact us. We have extensive experience in removing and suppressing negative results in search engines AKA
ORM service and would be happy to assist you.
