SEO Online Reputation Management Strategies for Getting Rid of Negative Reviews 

For many business owners, there’s probably nothing more troublesome than getting negative reviews and bad press online. With how the Internet works these days, a simple mistake by your staff can quickly go viral and hurt your reputation, especially if you’re in a very competitive industry and your competitors are only happy to take advantage of your misfortune. Good thing SEO online reputation management can help you fix this issue and prevent negative reviews from damaging your online image and credibility further. 

Removing Negative Reviews with ORM

Online reputation management (ORM) encompasses various tasks and strategies designed to help you maintain an impeccable public image. A key aspect of ORM is managing search engine results to protect your brand or business’s reputation from negative exposure or lousy press online. 

Today, a growing number of consumers rely on Google and other major search engines to find products and services they need. If they see negative reviews or bad publicity attached to your business on search results, they are less likely to click through and visit your website. 

ORM offers a straightforward solution to prevent bad press on search results from causing you to lose potential customers. Basically, you should create enough content to push down negative reviews until they are no longer visible on the first page of Google. 

But before you do that, make sure to follow these steps first: 

1. Identify where the negative reviews are coming from

Find out where the negative reviews are coming from. Are they posted on a third-party review site? Or do they come one from someone’s blog? 

2. Determine if it’s just a single review

Often, business owners make the mistake of addressing only single negative feedback. They don’t realise that one person can create multiple negative reviews on various websites or platforms. Therefore, check if you’re dealing with numerous reviews to ensure that you won’t miss anything. 

3. Contact review sites

Once you’ve done your initial research, the next step is to contact the review sites where the negative feedback about your business is posted. Review sites are generally sympathetic to the recipients of negative press and are willing to remove bad reviews provided that they: 

• Are created by a fake account
• Contain profanities
• Are used as a negative marketing strategy and to promote someone else’s product/service
• Contain personal information 

Advanced Strategies for Dealing with Bad Press Online

If the negative review you received doesn’t meet the criteria above or you’re just dealing with negative press published on a news website, here’s what you should do: 

1. Optimise your website

Improving the content of your main website is a simple yet effective SEO online reputation management strategy for burying bad press or negative reviews online. You can do this by adding more details to your “About Us” page. Also, make sure to add organisation and address schema to your about page and then use the same schema to point to your social media pages. 

2. Optimise your GMB Listing

Make sure to claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing if you haven’t done it already. It can help you dominate local search rankings, especially if you’re targeting customers in a specific location. If you already have a GMB listing, make sure to optimise it. Complete all the required information and post photos. 

More importantly, ensure that the information on your GMB page is the same as that on your main website and social media pages. This will help tie all your web properties together. When someone Googles your brand or business name, one of your web properties will likely show up on top of search results rather than the negative review. 

3. Encourage customers to leave GMB reviews

Having lots of positive GMB reviews will help bury the negative review you received. It is because Google will always prioritise its review stars over those from other review sites. Therefore, ask your customers to review your products/services on GMB. 

4. Optimise your social media pages

Make sure your social profiles are highly optimised, too. When optimising your social media pages, see that your NAP (name, address, and phone number) are consistent throughout to create uniformity and avoid confusion amongst your target audience. 

5. Make the most of the video carousel

Consider setting up a YouTube account and creating at least three videos about your brand/business. This will enable you to take advantage of the video carousel on top of search result pages and bury deeper the negative press about your business. 

6. Look for other web properties that you can optimise

If you have other websites, go to the About Us page and create a comprehensive write-up about your brand. 

7. Publish guest posts on authority sites

Posting articles on authority sites is a great way to make the most of parasite SEO. Google usually prioritises search results from more trustworthy and popular websites. If you have content on one of these sites, they will likely appear on search results rather than the negative review. 

8. Obtain business citations

When acquiring business citations, make sure you obtain them from the most prominent online directories. Not only will this help remove the negative review, but it can also help you get more authority and quality referral traffic. 

9. Try to get as many good reviews on authority sites as possible

When it comes to search results hierarchy, quality always wins. Therefore, you should try to get good customer feedback on review sites with more authority than the ones where the negative publicity about your business is published. An excellent example of such websites is Trustpilot. 

10. Consider doing interviews and/or podcasts

If all else fails, consider publishing interviews or podcasts on your website. This SEO online reputation management strategy will enable you to take advantage of both the video and podcast carousels on search result pages. Alternatively, you can also do a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) as it can quickly go viral. 

11. Build backlinks

Link building will help you push your social media profiles while pulling down the negative review on search result pages. This tried-and-tested offsite SEO strategy can also help you build online authority and drive referral traffic to your site. 

Always Look After Your Reputation Online

Dealing with negative reviews can be tricky, but with the right ORM strategy, you can quickly bury bad press about your business. As such, be sure to consider the tips discussed above to protect your reputation online. 

At Springhill Marketing, we are only happy to help you create a more robust presence and maintain an excellent reputation online. Please speak with us today and let our team of SEO specialists create an online marketing strategy tailored for your business.