Reputation Management

Do you know what is being said about you or your brand online? The Internet is one huge community where consumers are making their opinions heard. With forums, blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter) and Web 2.0 resources providing platforms for consumer interaction and discussion, there could well be a groundswell of opinion or reaction building to your marketing initiatives which you could be blissfully unaware of…until the damage is done.

Take the example of Motrin – a Fortune 500 company – who ran a video ad on their website which some mothers took offense to and blogged about. Within days the message had spread across the Web and a virtual boycott was put in place. Despite the ad being removed and a public apology posted the damage to the company’s public perception was intense and likely to be long lasting.

Often, all it takes is a single post from one consumer for negative publicity to spread. How can you monitor your brand’s reputation online and intervene before an incident can snowball out of control? One simple way is to set up a Google Alert for your brand name. This will allow you to receive an email notification from Google whenever your brand is mentioned online. You can then go directly to the source and respond to the issue. This would give you the opportunity to turn a negative into a positive by instantly resolving any customer issues; but also to show your (potential) customers you care about them and appreciate their feedback.

Another method is to set up and monitor a Twitter search for your keywords and brand name.

Finally, you can use a specific Social Media Search tool like Whostalkin; by showing you who’s talking about your brand online, it will give you an insight on your customers’ feedback and the ability to react on a regular basis.

Staying on top of your reputation online is crucial, for small and large companies alike.

You may already know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation (or Optimization, depending on what part of the world you hail from). But what does that mean exactly?

Many people will tell you it simply means optimising your website so it ranks highly for a particular search query. That’s true…but SEO goes way beyond that. Rankings are just that…a position on a list. It’s very nice to be at the top or near the top of a list, but you should be asking yourself this…

• Does that ranking translate into increased revenue for my business?
• Is that ranking sending more visitors to my website?
• Are the visitors arriving at my site, as a result of my SEO efforts, interested in my offer i.e. are they targeted visitors?
• Are those visitors making purchases, or fulfilling the objective of my site?

SEO might start with rankings i.e. obtaining a desired position in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), but it finishes with converting a visitor to a customer. A #1 position in the SERPS and 10,000 visitors a day mean nothing if those visitors aren’t buying!

At SEO Global Network our objective is to help you sort through the myths, misconceptions and mis-information so you can adopt an SEO strategy which will result in increased revenues and profits for your business. Even if you intend to engage an SEO professional…knowledge is power…and the knowledge you gain here will enable you to make informed decisions.

SEO is both a science and an art. There is a lot of debate among professionals…often heated. It’s quite easy to proclaim yourself as a Google SEO expert. Many do, while other SEO experts denounce them as misguided or foolhardy.

Then there’s the whole “White Hat/Black Hat” thing (and various shades of grey in between). White hats essentially follow search engine webmaster guidelines to the letter…the good guys if you will, while black hats employ techniques the search engines disapprove of and may ban or penalise you if detected.

At SEO Global Network we welcome healthy debate…no matter what shade your hat is…but essentially we are all about long term, sustainable business results…conversions, revenues and profits!