How to restore your reputation online with SEO

The internet can be a negative place and individuals or rival businesses may seek to damage your online reputation. A reliable online presence is essential, so should you find your business is compromised by a negative online campaign, you should use SEO to restore your positive online reputation.

Create lots of positive content

If a bad story breaks about your business, you’ve got to publish all the positive content you can. Get out onto your different channels – blogs, social media, etc – and start creating good content. You could even discuss how you’re tackling the problem. Contact other websites and see if they’ll accept a guest blog. In every piece of content, link to someone who is saying something positive about your content. The aim is to bury any negative content about your business as deep down in the search engine pages as it will go. The further, the better.

Ask review sites to remove reviews

An angry customer may leave a damning review on sites such as Trip Advisor, Google My Business or other sites. Unscrupulous competitors, however, may also write bad reviews, purely to lure customers away from you and to their business instead. Your job is to investigate whether these reviews are legitimate and if you feel they’re not, ask the website to remove them. Be careful not to remove legitimate reviews. You could have another PR disaster on your hands if the reviewer finds out.

Add positive reviews to your site and other third party sites

Not everyone is going to be angry with you and your business. If a customer is happy with your service, ask them to leave a review on your website and/or on other review sites. You can ask a professional to help you incorporate reviews on third-party websites into your own website.

As well as the tactics above, you should remember to respond directly to negative reviews. If a reviewer is badmouthing your business in a review, acknowledge the review and let them know what you’re doing to address their grievances. Never, however, write any words that express strong emotion or might inflame the situation. Simply thank them for their comments and invite them to contact you directly so that you can discuss the problem privately and solve it.