A simple brand search on Google can say a lot more about your company than you thought. Even the most customer oriented, successful businesses occasionally get bad reviews. A clerk has a bad day, you are inadvertently short-staffed, the computer system goes down, etc. You cannot have direct control over what Google displays in its search results. But there's much you can do to ensure that positive information appears on the top and that most negative information is pushed down. There's no guaranteed strategy to suppress bad reviews, but you can certainly do a lot to mitigate your online reputation.

Begin with an Online Audit

Conduct a search on Google, Bing and Yahoo to see how your name or brand appears. Also review your Better Business Bureau listing. Once you know what you are dealing with take the following steps:

1. Assign a Team to Clean Up your Online Reputation

The best strategy to remove adversarial information is to cordially reach out to those reviewers. Sometimes time gives better prospective. Is it possible to soften their attitude and work something out? Specifically assign the task(s) to an employee, an in-house team to work or hire the services of online reputation professionals. They will have to respond to all the customer complaints. Make sure you give them guidelines and authority to negotiate (read: solve the problem) on your behalf.

Entrust only seasoned diplomatic attentive listeners to the process. Give them tools to work with: refund authority, samples, freebies and/or special offers to placate aggrieved customers. Only after you are confident that the unhappy consumer has been satisfied should you request the favor of their amended review. Remember, even a resolved issue can work in your favor by demonstrating to your prospects that you care about your customers.

2. Take Advantage of Social Networks

While your designee works to clear the negative reviews, focus on building and expanding your social media presence. The objective is to degrade the rankings of negative reviews by legitimately flooding search engines with 'friendly' brand information/remarks. Go beyond the minimums on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn first by making sure that all your existing accounts have uniform, current and complete information and then expanding your presence further. This is especially important since Google and other search engines rank social media so highly. Regular updates can help lower those disadvantageous remarks' rankings.

3. SEO

Active SEO strategies play a similar and complimentary role by improving your brand presence thereby weakening contrary information. Adding copious site pages and improving overall site rankings often precipitate a deleterious effect upon bad reviews and competitors alike. While little will thwart earnest research about your company, casual searchers often will not go past the 2nd or 3rd page of search results, and it's quite possible to deluge those pages. Hiring the services of an SEO company is always a good strategy. Some online reputation management services can also run targeted campaigns to help fill search results with more positive information.

A combination of these techniques can often remedy all but the most seriously damaged reputations.

If you need 'heavy duty' reputation assistance the following firms are eager to serve you:

DefendMyName.com
Naymz.com
Reputation.com
Reputation-Sentry.com


► MORE INFORMATION:  The Top Ten Tips to Clean Up Your Online Reputation
► RELATED ARTICLE:  Is Your Web Site Properly Optimized?

About the Author

George C. Jobel owns an advertising agency and does web development & SEO consulting helping clients develop successful online marketing since 1995. The author of numerous articles and publications, George has taught web development and marketing classes since 2000. Reach him at his web site, or 603.491.4340.