Let me start by describing ORM (Online Reputation Management)

According Wikipedia:

“Online Reputation Management is a set of methods for generating a distinguished presence of a person on the Internet. That presence could be reflected in any kind of content that refers to the person, including news, participation in blogs and forums, personal web sites, social media presence, pictures, video, etc”

Let’s suppose you just closed a deal on the phone with a customer and he is ready to place his for the most expensive package that you sell.

Now Imagine, there is a negative review on your company by one of your unhappy client or your competitor has posted just to taint your company name, it is even worse if it is on first page of Search Engines by a search on your company name, Imagine your client reads the negative review , do you think the client will feel secure to place his order with you now? Chances are less.

Do a search on your company name or your personal name, what result do you see? If you are seeing negative result on the first page, your customers are seeing them as well.

What to do if you have negative results when someone does a search on your company name?

Here are few steps:

1-Obviously, treat your customers fairly, provide good customer service. If you fail to do so, one of the customer might turn out to be a blogger and would blog negative about your company which will damage your credibility. You should contact the blogger personally, make him happy and request him to remove it.

2-Write press releases and publish them on every PR website. Use your company name and the keyword in the release for which the negative review is ranked. Press releases can slide down the searches.

3-Create profiles on other websites, online profiles are good as long as they are search engine friendly, use your company name as your profile name. Here is a link of these profiles:

•Flickr profile
•LinkedIn profile
•MySpace profile and blog
•Friendster profile
•Yahoo profile
•Yahoo 360 page
•Technorati profile
•Bloglines blog
•43 Things page
•Typekey profile
•GooglePages page
•Blinklist page
•Blogger blog
•LiveJournal page
•Geocities page
•Fortunecity page
•Tripod page
•AOL Hometown page

4-Register on different online forums and contribute as much as you can, make sure whatever you contribute is worth reading is a good quality post. Forum profiles get index really fast in Google.

These were few tips that can help your business to fight against these negative comments/review or blog posts, just be careful whatever you do online, remember this is Internet and Search Engines like Google can index everything you say or said about you online.

Remember this quote by Benjamin Frankin:

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it”

Regards,
Zafar Ahmed