Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SESSF 2011! The Interwebz. It has changed our lives forever– the way we learn, communicate, share, and of course, shop. Thanks to powerful and ubiquitous e-Commerce functionality, we can buy sweaters, CDs, sex toys, even spaghetti take-out all from the comfort of our own homes, oftentimes in our underwear slippers.

Yes, the Internet has made shopping for this, that or the other thing easy as pie for consumers around the world. But it has also made it a potential minefield for brands. Bad Yelp reviews can populate and permeate like ink in water. Blog rants from dissatisfied customers can spring up like Super Mario Piranha Plants and gobble up slots on page 1 of Google SERPs. Or maybe the negativity takes the shape of nocent Facebook wall posts, flurries of furious tweets, etc. etc. etc. Such user generated content can track mud all over your brand’s carefully polished reputation, dissuading potential customers from buying your products or services.

The bad news: As a brand, you can’t really control whether or not such feedback exists on the web. The good news: There are actionable tactics you execute to not only save your skin in the face of an online reputation crisis, but help prepare for a similar flare up in the future, should one arise. The best news: Andy Beal, CEO of Trackur, was at Search Engine Strategies San Francisco 2011 to deliver a solo presentation jam-packed with tools, techniques & expert advice for Protecting Your Brand Online. aimClear live-tweeted this session via @beebow. Read on for the full effect.

Andy kicked off his presentation, aptly named, “Your Google Reputation Stinks! (Don’t worry, I brought air freshener!)” by answering what seems to be a burning question asked by many an attendee in the past. “Where the heck is your accent from?” Truth – Andy’s got a pretty funky hybrid accent that’s hard to put your finger on. He discloses it’s attributed to his being born & raised in England, and current residence in North Carolina. Alright, then!

On to the goods.

5 Keys to SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management)

1. Rethinking keywords. Instead of trying to get two of your website’s pages to rank for a couple of keywords, SERM is about snatching up lots of KWs that are generally not that competitive. (I.E., Your company brand, or an employees’s personal name). When doing KW selection, think about your brand, and the different ways it can be expressed, or searched for by a curious potential customers. What are people typing in Google when they want to research you?  Branch out – consider the name of your CEO, permutations and misspellings of your brand name, etc. Look at Google Analytics to understand what keywords are bringing people to your site. Consider these buckets when you move to optimize your content.
2. Make sure your site is spider friendly. Be sure your pages / URLs include your brand name.
3. Me, Myself, & Irene. Get skitzo with yourself. Think about, and write about yourself (your brand), in the third person. Move away from pronouns that side-step your brand (e.g.: “Our company does this,” “We are the best at that,”  etc…). Instead, continue to mention your brand in the third person.
4. Anchor text. Implement anchor text that highlights your brands, products, CEO name. This tells Google where you’re linking to. Encourage Google to keep those signals strong, that authority strong. Keep them informed about where your anchor text is going. (Big super secret-sauce tip: Don’t– DO NOT– use anchor text like “Click here.” Just. Don’t. Do. It.)
5. SuperBrand to the rescue! When you type your brand name in Google, you should always come up as #1.Why do you? Because you are the SuperBrand! Google has indexed your site, and algorithmically, everything points to you as most important result for that search.

Auditing Your SERP Assets
The first thing Andy recommends is to do an audit of the SERPs that come up for your brand name. This is known as a Google Sentiment Audit. Andy recommends you audit the first 30 results of your keyword. Despite the fact that most people usually check out only the first page of results (typically, 10), you always want to know any threats or opportunities bubbling outside the first 10. Woe to the marketer who neglects page 2 of the SERPs, only to have a stinky review ranked #11 suddenly pop up as #8 on page 1.

Create an Excel spreadsheet to house the data from your audit. Include the columns:

• Rank
• URL
• Page Title
• Status
• Sentiment

Status is broken up into three options:

• Owned = Branded content you own, e.g.: your company website.
• Control = Your brand’s Facebook page. You’re the one who controls it, but you don’t OWN it (Facebook could disappear some day. If it does, so does your FB page.)
• Influenced = You don’t own it, but you can influence it. E.g., a page about you written by someone your’e partnered with.
• Third Party = You don’t own it, don’t control it, can’t influence it.

Andy recommends following the 80 / 10 / 10 rule. Spend 80% of your time & resources with owned content, 10 % on controlled, 10% on influenced.

Sentiment is broken down into three options, too:

• Positive = Good!
• Neutral = Not glowing, but not exposing any skeletons in your closet. Neutral can also be used to categorize a result that is not about your brand at all.
• Negative =Baaaaaaad.

Be honest with yourself. Ask the questions, “Would I like my customers to see this?”

So. Perform this audit for the 1st 30 results in Google. Seek out the opportunities for optimizing. Is there a bad result ranking #8? A good result ranking #11? It doesn’t take too much work to push that #11 up onto page 1 of SERPs. Booyah!

Andy recommends performing this audit at least once a month, if the seas are calm. If you’re under attack, do it every few days.

Now, onto tactics that expand upon the basic 5 keys of SERM.

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it!” Take stock of existing web content.

Which pages are relevant to your brand? Which pages bubble outside of the top 10? It’s a lot harder to optimize your pages / audit your pages if you’re knee-deep in a crisis. Results are not instant.

“An Ounce of Prevention”
Don’t wait for a crisis to hit. Act now! Here’s how:

• Do you have other company branded domains? A .org or a .net, perhaps? Put some content there! (So long as it is NOT, NOT, NOT duplicate content. Andy strongly (and wisely) recommends preparing for / optimizing your content & assets now, before a crisis strikes.
  • Have a .org site? Put content on it that highlights whatever charitable work your company might do.
  • Have a.net site? Put corporate information there.
• One of Andy’s favorite tactics is leveraging sub-domains.
  • “They rock!” Sub-domains are treated as separate sites but still seen as linked in the eyes of Google (link juice, mmmm).
  • Andy likes using sub-domains for things like, “Careers” and similar information.
  • Best practice, Andy notes, is to limit sub-domains to two. Google has threatened not showing anymore than two, and, well, you never know when they might make good on that threat.

One of the keys for all of these tactics is you have to pass the Google Manual Review. Be wary of people who hate you & want to file Google Spam reports against you.

Also, remember: Any content you put on an external site has to have a legit reason for being there. It has to have depth, too! In other words, and again, to emphasize, do not just stock these sub-domains with duplicate content.

(Check out this Google SERP for “Microsoft”. The SERP is dominated by owned content. However, there are four sub-domains. Be careful!

So, moving on. What else ranks?

• WordPress.com- Useful for creating microsites, something specific for reputation management. Wordpress.com could be used for your blog, your charitable initiatives site, an internal conference resource, etc. Link to this site from your homepage, or a relevant page on your main corporate site.
  • This is a one-off event. You don’t have to maintain this on a consistent basis. It’s not like you built a blog. Unless you want to maintain readership. Reason you created it was for ranking purposes. not readership. so leave it alone after you create & optimize it
• Blogger.com- Nice alternative to WordPress.
• Facebook Pages - Your first goal is to create the page, then get at least 25 fans so you can claim your vanity URL. 1st goal – get at least 25 fans, then claim your vanity URL. After you do that, then decide how much engagement you want to devote to FB. This is more about a block/tackle tactic than a community management move.
  • Who knows? Maybe it will turn out that Facebook is exactly the right social media channel for you to connect with your community. The most important objective here is to get the FB page to rank for your branded term.
• LinkedIn – Great for personal reputation management. Like… your CEO… who was caught leading the strip club last night… carrying a goat in his arms… Anyway, with LinkedIn profiles, you can create vanity URLs, too. Stick in Mr. CEO’s name there. Write the profile in the 3rd person, to fill in his name in there as many times as possible. Your goal: keyword density.
  • While you’re at it, Andy suggests, get all your employees to create LinkedIn profiles. Give them some general guidelines. Link all the profiles up, point them back at the CEO’s profile and other corporate profiles.
• Twitter - Twitter has proactive reasons for engaging (customer support, ding ding ding!). To get your Twitter profile to rank, optimize it as you would any profile. Include your name, your bio, etc. (Do so accordingly if it’s a profile for a brand vs. a profile for that seedy CEO.)
  • Andy also recommends retweeting people who @mention you, adding a “Thank you!” or something like that. People like to be thanked, but by doing this, you’re also inflating the number of times your @BrandHandle / @CEOName appears in the SERPs.
• Flickr - “Who woulda thought images would make a difference in reputation management?” Andy poses. So, why do they matter? Google wants diversity in it’s SERPs. It’s all about blended, rich media. When optimizing Flickr, make sure to have brand name as the username, optimize your vanity URL, label (caption) photos with brand name. If you post photos of employees / employers, tag them up properly.
  • Tips for on-site employee bios: Don’t have one dedicated page for all of your team member / executive bios. Create a separate page for all the big gods. Optimize for each name. Add photos… embedded from Flickr. What that does is tells Google there is a third party resource associated with the image on your site.
• YouTube – Optimization very similar to Flickr. Create videos, tag them properly, embed them on your site.
• Wikipedia – WRONG! NOPE! DON’T TRY IT! Wikipedia pages rank extremely well for brand terms. But unless you already have a Wikipedia profile, it’s going to look really shady if, when you’re in the middle of a crisis, you create an account and create a branded page. Andy does not recommend doing this. Wikipedia is supposed to be an unbiased statement of fact. Even if you want to state the truth, someone will come & add in about that messy scandal you’re trying to cover up.

• WetPaintCentral.com – Rather than Wikipedia, use a site like WetPaintCentral.com. It allows you to create a WIki-like page (even down the layout & elements, very similar) but only you control the content. Furthermore, you can put your WetPaintCentral.com page on a sub-domain, and name it whatever you want.
• AssociatedContent.com - Andy seems a little wary of it. Some of the value of AssociatedContent.com is going down.
• GetSatisfaction.com – A two-birds-with-one-stone type deal. Allows customers / users to ask questions, request support, engage other community members as helpful resources. Andy suggests you go get yourself a free profile, see if it starts ranking. There is also a paid model that offers moderation functionality, etc.

A lot of these sites have free 30 day trials. Try them out. See if they work. Are they ranking? Is it worth upgrading to a paid account?

• Ning.com – UCool site! Used to be free, still affordable. Ning allows you to create a social network of your own. You can point a domain name to your Ning page, decide who gets to join (employees only?), etc.

From White Hat to… Grey Hat…
These aren’t black hat… but more of a “use at your own discretion” type stuff.

1. Business partners - If you have biz partners, reach out to them, ask for help / support. Ask to be mentioned on their site, on a separate page from other business partners. Slip in a little… “If you’re too busy, we’d be happy to write it!” Remember to write in the third person, and be thoughtful with anchor text.
2. Sponsorships - Get yourself a company profile on any page that you offer sponsorship.
3. Speaker Profiles – If you speak at a conference (big or small), ask for your own profile. Ask to write it
4. Affiliates - Great affiliate don’t just write banner ads, they write whole articles about you. Work it!

Danger Zone! Be wary with these tactics. When linking to others’ content, ask yourself, “Will it always be positive?” With paid posts, getting them in times of calm is okay, but in times of crisis, it could seem shady.

If you’re already under attack… Get an early alert system set up. Google Alerts or Trackur. Keep your finger directly on the pulse of your brand mentions.

Last minute advice:

• Look beyond the first 10 results.
• Don’t panic.
• You dont get it if you dont ask.
• Be benevolent.
• Look for legal loopholes.

Alright! Great session with tip-top advice on protecting your brand online. I feel safer already! Big thanks to Andy Beal for all the top-notch tactics.

Stay tuned right here in aimClear blog for more coverage of #SESSF.

A firestorm has erupted on the Mayo Clinic Facebook Fan Page wall. Whether the allegations against Mayo doctor Aivars Slucis, accusing him of being a racist are true, the spiteful rhetoric makes for one ugly fan page.

This is the double edged sword of user generated content in all it’s ugly splendor. If the content has cycled off the fan page, click the “older posts” button at the bottom for a most unbelievable ride through user-generated Facebook disaster-land.

We think there’s not much Mayo could have done to avoid this social-lynching. To Mayo Clinic’s credit they did not remove the comments and responded to it by way of a series of official posts.

Is this the new Ripoff Report tactic? Are Facebook Fan Pages the new hijack and ambush mechanism? Are there real dangers here for competitive espionage? Would you have removed the comments if you were Mayo Clinic?

Google.com/alerts has been the reputation monitoring rage for years now.  Most companies seem to feel safe under the Google alert notification blanket. It’s true that Google alerts keep reputation managers apprised of a lot of content, conversations, news, media, etc… However, Google alerts alone are far from a complete picture of what’s going on out there.  Social media “updates” can take days or even weeks to show up, if at all.  Don’t get caught unaware. This post offers a guerrilla list of RSS feeds, crucial for monitoring one’s reputation, can be used to mine extremely fast alerts from major sites including YouTube, Google, Facebook & Twitter.

Understanding Google Alerts
There’s a relatively new function in the alerts tool to preview alert-email content. Click on the “Preview results” link, change the “Email length” to “up to 50 results” and have a look to the right.  Toggle the “Type” from “Discussions” to “News,” etc… Test keywords you’re familiar with and take note of what’s not there. Google Alerts tell us what Google wants us to know about and are far from fully comprehensive.

Anyone a) depending solely on Google Alerts b) has Tweetdeck open c) cares about their reputation, knows that “as it happens” in this case does not mean instant. The big-kid tool making companies drill into individual APIs, aggregate them, alert reputation managers and make pretty sentiment reports.  These crucial reputation-monitoring APIs are easily accessible, in most cases, by a basic understanding of URL variables and RSS feeds. Compare the data you cull to Google alerts and you’ll find quick perspective on what content and activity has been missing from daily reputation screenings, threat and opportunity assessment.

We hope you enjoy subscribing to, filtering, monitoring and reporting on the RSS feeds highlighted here.  You’ll find that, when properly accessed and rules applied, they represent one of the fastest methods on earth to access the latest chatter.

10 Reputation Monitoring Feeds You Can’t Afford to Ignore
Remember that these links all are RSS feeds, therefore might not parse properly in your web browser. They are meant for pasting into RSS readers like GoogleReader, iGoogle, etc…

When URLs on this page resolve to a normal web page, just grab the feed from the URL bar at the top of your browser.

Google Alerts remain an important staple of reputation monitoring.  There’s a great tutorial for reducing Google alerts to feeds in our post “How to Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard.”

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YouTube RSS Feeds Users & Tags

RSS feeds for searches, tags or users, are easily accessible enter the username or tag as specified in the URLs below.

Tags RSS:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/videos/-/[insert tagname here]?client=ytapi-youtube-browse&v=2

To  create an RSS feed for the tag “monkey”, enter:  http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/videos/-/monkey?client=ytapi-youtube-browse&v=2

Full-text searches RSS:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/videos?q=[insert url-encoded search term here]&client=ytapi-youtube-search&v=2

To create an RSS feed for the search term “gerbil”, enter:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/videos?q=gerbil&client=ytapi-youtube-search&v=2

Users RSS:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/[insert username here]/uploads
To create an RSS feed for the user “YouTube,” enter:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/youtube/uploads

More YouTube preset RSS feeds, perfect for offline filtering

Recently Added, Recently Featured, Top Favorites, Top Favorites Today, Top-Rated

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http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=obamma

Swap the “q” Variable for your search terms. (Hint: try Advanced Search)

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Delicious Tags RSS

Delicious Specific User RSS

Delicious Popular RSS

Delicious Recent RSS

Look Up A Specific URL RSS

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Digg Sucks. Sure the former giant of all SMO giants still offers their preset categories Technology, World & Business, Science, Gaming, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Sports , Offbeat RSS. However, as part of the site killing overlapping gee-we’re-cooler-than-the-room and “we hate our power users” redesigns, Digg has eliminated it’s search RSS feeds.  Still, take the main or category feeds from Digg.com and filter it after downloading each latest article.

You could always scrape this page using mozenda, to DB, then generate the feed from the dataset http://digg.com/search?q=palin&submit=.

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http://code.reddit.com/wiki/API RSS

http://www.reddit.com/search/.rss?q=jonas+brothers RSS

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Search RSS http://friendfeed.com/search?q=jonas+brothers&format=atom

Since FriendFeed aggregates social channels already represented in this list,  obviously duplicates will be generated. We have FF on our  as another standalone measure of “buzz.”

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Facebook is a crazy-egg cluster F__k for reputation managers.  Google indexes updates to Fan Pages but not opted-in personal walls. Bing.com/social indexes both, but not always on the mid and long tails of activity.  Both Bing & YourOpenBook.org are easily scrapeable using mozenda.

Individual Fan Pages RSS Feeds are available from Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=atom10&id=18807449704

Scraping Opportunities For Personal Facebook Updates & Fan Pages
First, scraping Facebook pages violates their terms of services. Don’t do it.  Also, like Google and Bing, Facebook is the worst of those sites that work to prevent data extraction.

However, if you want the same data without pissing off FB, then scrape http://youropenbook.org/?q=jonas+brothers&gender=any.

and/or http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3afacebook.com+obamma&go=&qs=n&sk=&sc=8-21&first=11&FORM=PORE

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In major American cities, Yelp makes reviews available.  Filter these feeds for a great look at any emerging sentiment of Yelpers.  Other cities require scraping.

RSS reviews are “fed” for the following markets:

• Seattle RSS Atom
• San Francisco RSS Atom
• Boston RSS Atom
• Chicago RSS Atom
• New York RSS Atom

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Forsquare only offers personal feeds and are in Beta.   They’re of negligible value at this time in our opinion for monitoring. However we’re keeping a close eye and willing to dive into individuals as the data becomes more important.  If we were willing to violate FourSquare’s TOS, scraping is super-duper easy. We have FourSquare on the list because of the emergent nature of geo-location social media marketing technology.

Don’t forget to undertake data extraction, if you are more willing to take risks than we are.

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Board reader has relationships with and indexes a huge group of  forums and offers content that may not be indexed on Google.

Posts RSS http://boardreader.com/rss/seo.html?p=20&format=RSS2.0
Yuku RSS http://boardreader.com/rss/seo.html?src=yuku&p=20&format=RSS2.0

MicroBlogs RSS http://boardreader.com/rss/seo.html?src=tw&p=20&format=RSS2.0

Graphs http://boardreader.com/trendy/seo.html

Note the international segmenting in SERPs.

BoardReader’s Advanced Search options and corresponding RSS feeds make interesting SERPs, for the ability to pre-filter queries.

GoogleAlerts have become the defacto standard alert system for reputation managers. Still, this tool is far from total. it’s easy to aggregate feeds, filter them, send alerts and otherwise analyze the data. While high-cost tools are excellent at creating pretty reports, that’s not where we look for the fastest alerts on the Internet. We have access to nearly all the same data, absent a few deals certain players have with sites like Facebook.

In many cases these feeds, checked every 30-60 seconds and/or within the source’s suggested guidelines, yield incredibly fast alerts.  Though alerts are repeated as they show up in additional channels, this insight is useful in itself.  Happy feed hunting everybody!

Whether you’re talking about sex, singing, or social media, it’s a fact of life: people don’t like to hear they’re “doing it wrong.” But when it comes to tweeting– a communal activity that’s constantly expanding in both significance and scope– how can you define what’s right?  Everyone and their mother has an opinion about what it means to “use Twitter correctly,” particularly for businesses. Since Twitter is so versatile, the types of brands who use it so diversified, the debate about right versus wrong becomes more of a quest just to not be an oblivious jackass.

Seems simple enough, but we’ve watched businesses crash and burn thanks to a lack of Twitter tact. Social-savvy bloggers like Chris Brogan and Lisa Barone have taken the time to lay road maps of vernacular adoption and adaptation, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Read on for a summary of popular opinion surrounding appropriate tone and timbre for how to handle your brand when out in about in the Twitterverse. Were Emily Post alive today, she’d no doubt tweet these takeaways regularly… ever so careful, of course, not to spam the snot out of us. (I know. Eloquent, right? )

The old reputation management adage is “want to know how to get 2 FDA.gov, 2 WashingtonPost.com, 1 CNN.com & 2389 blog links this week?” The answer (of course) is to accidentally injure people with your product.  Trust us, getting the ensuing horrible results pushed off search engine results pages (SERPs) will be much tougher than placing them in the first place.

Clients come to us wondering why they are unable to easily squeeze down negative search engine results for brand names, after PR debacles or other difficult incidents. In other words after the news results clear the SERPs, why do negative .gov, news or some prominent blog pages STILL rank above corporate controlled or “friendly-sentiment” content for direct brand searches ( i.e. “Brand Name”)? Such questions torture CEOs and CMOs alike.

Simply put, in order to expunge any result from Google, content of equal or greater “relevance & value” must be created and/or built. Google’s index mirrors real-world authority and informational structures in physical life.  It takes a seriously powerful SEO event and/or incremental link building to usurp extremely high authority sites.

The reason FDA.gov content remains permanently prominent in Google’s index, speaks to the realities of physical life.  Have an objective look at at what news transients have affected search results permanently.  In most brands, it’s plain to see that the Google’s unpersonalized page 1 simply houses some of the top PR/social/news events all time for that brand.

We like to say that the events were either created “in-house” or “out-house.”

For instance, you can see that Dunkin’ Donuts has done an good job  brand building to blow ugly content far enough out of Google SERPs for the crucial keyword “Dunkin’ Donuts.” As with many major food brands, there are a lot of nasty results out there.  It’s cool that they’ve been able to generate more authoritative goodness buzz than all the icky chatter out there. They win.

The first questionable result, which is worse than neutral in terms of sentiment,  Shows on page 2. Otherwise page 1 is all about bakeoffs and selling franchises.

Kesso Foods on the other hand has not generated enough positive buzz in real life, to counter the results stemming from a recent FDA recall of ingredients in the SERPs. The same powdered milk FDA recall Dunkin’ Donuts had to deal with. Heck, they don’t even seem to have their own website. Check out position 6.

In fact there are 3 damaging results on page 1. That’s not what Kesso Foods wants their customers to see. Page 2 is really a bummer, with recall results totally obscuring good.

The bottom line is that all SERPs defense plans should be about creating indexable permanent PR/news/social events and hybrids thereof of good things.

Here are a few tips and tricks for doing so:

• Tweak content for the existing subdomains already in use and optimize them for ranking on the brand term. We see subdomains indexed alongside the mother domain for keywords. It only makes sense to optimize them.
• If there is a reasonable purpose for a new subdomain, don’t rule it out. They’re loosely associated with main domains according to latest correlation data. They receive and confirm some authority to/from the mother ship. Channel some power right out of the gate in the SERPs
• Be open to additional domains, using brand terms. Just make sure there is a legitimate purpose for the domain’s existence. Be very careful not to set up link farms.
• Work to an appropriate feed accepted to Google news. Though news rises and falls in cycle over the course of days and often does not remain, the transient wave impacts users’ daily perception of brand in the SERPs.  Also some authority news does linger and/or last permanently as representative artifacts of incidents and events.
• In order to counter high authority results, a brand’s high authority results must exist. In order to create those, links from high authority content must be built.
• In order to achieve this, significant public relations (or content followed by holistic link building) must be generated and synchronized with search.
• Integrate video creative and strategies with search objectives. Engage in YouTube and build external links to YouTube assets for indexing in Google’s organic SERPs by way of Universal Search. Surround the video with multi channel public relations when possible. Video buzz can garner major links to both YouTube and feed assets.  Either way it’s all good.
• Make PRs objective to build reasons for extremely high authority sites like NYTimes, WP, etc…to cite either events, methods, ANYTHING unique about the brand. Typical ideas include “value intersecting with quality in a recession,”  “brand’s approach in social media, the 7 classic nodes of public relations, etc…”
• Those efforts are can be rooted in the brick world currently with PR firm. Always encourage 3-way dialog between search objectives, brick PR players the community manager. Each needs to reflect to others’ to total benefit.
• While social media program can be glossy, engage customers to an extent and very pro looking, there is not always a systematic approach to engaging mid and big time writers who would write about the brand and link. Even in some established programs, PR benefits of social media programs remain to be mined.
• Take what Google and other mainstream engines freely give. Use social media profiles for their raw ranking power. Much has been written on this topic.
• Use a professional search-marketing agency to provide training in these types of strategies. Objectively (and respectfully), pros are the most equipped to provide these types of services and/or training.
• We recommend the community manager take training in using the feeds to bait writers, on and off line, who are included in Google News along with other feed marketing techniques.

photo credit: futureatlas.com

Ok, so the proverbial cow-flap has hit the golden fan. Page 1 of Google-unpersonalized now sports damning rhetoric about you for searches related to brand and product categories. It could cost tens of millions in reputation damage. Take a deep breath, gather wits, drink some decaf’ and ride into town,  let’s get started defending your brand.

First here’s a word about fancy reputation monitoring tools. We love em’. However know that they’re potentially awesome and  ruinous all at the same time.  It’s just too easy to feel safe when paying 7K a year for a catch-all tool.

The coverage doesn’t mean anything if one doesn’t monitor the appropriate grid of keyword threats. Automated aggregation while essential, sometimes empowers under-trained users to be more efficient mechanisms to miss critical buzz. To be fair, sometimes specialized filtering available on high-end tools catches some “finds” from amidst the noise which otherwise might have been missed. We don’t mean to minimize the importance of advanced monitoring tools.

The method prescribed herein is essential, at minimum as a free check-sum to paid tools. The keyword grid concept is critical no matter how one monitors. No matter the monitoring method,  ultimately we only trust humans to filter inbound alert feeds so we’d never give this “hand” method up. Since fancy tools for the most part depend on the same sources as free alerts, often we receive notifications faster.

Ok, there’s quick work to be done. Here’s 8 crucial steps we suggest clients take immediately when reputation management disaster triage is called for:

1-Define Filtered KW Monitoring Grid
Even if you’ve already got a comprehensive monitoring grid overall, it’s important to set up segmented alerts which filter from day-to-day brand buzz noise. We assume that someone is already monitoring alerts along the lines of ["brand sucks"] ["hate brand"], etc…

The starting point for any reputation defense is knowing what keyword searches to monitor and defend. Look for basic associations. Say the matter at hand is an FDA recall of chocolates which concerns your brand. Assume that there is 1 common misspelling of your brand and 2 of chocolate. In reality there are several other common misspellings for chocolate.

We’re looking for filtered trigger-phrases. The specialized keyword monitoring grid might look like for a chocolate recall scenario: ["brand recall"] ["brandMisspelling recall"] ["brand FDA"] ["brandMisspelling FDA"]

["brand chocolate"] ["brandMisspelling chocolate"] ["brand chocolates"] ["brandMisspelling chocolates"] ["chocolate recall" ["chocolates recall"]

["brand chocolat"] ["brandMisspelling chocolat"] ["brand chocolats"] ["brandMisspelling chocolats"] ["chocolat recall" ["chocolats recall"]

["brand chocolate"] ["brandMisspelling chocolate"] ["brand chocolates"] ["brandMisspelling chocolates"] ["chocolate recall" ["chocolates recall"].

["brand choclate"] ["brandMisspelling choclate"] ["brand choclates"] ["brandMisspelling choclates"] ["choclates recall" ["choclates recall"].

Since keyword associations are a big part of SEO, your in-house or agency SEO company can help you formulate the grid. Also use these keywords to set up fancy tools.

2-Set Up Nearly Real-time Alerts By Email
Start with Google.com/alerts and set up your monitoring grid. Put each keyword praise in quotation marks, which means that all words in comprising the keyphrase must be present on a page’s ranking attributes. Choose “As they happen” and “comprehensive,” which means alerts come nearly real-time across all verticals (blogs, news, images, etc…) Google indexes.

For Twitter aimClear uses the paid version of TweetBeep, which offers a 15 minute email alerts when any keywords are tweeted. There is no need to use quotes because the setup admin has recall great match type options (All of these words, Any of these words, None of these words, None of these words) There’s also other sweet demographic targeting features for nearly real-time Twitter alerts.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Forums and other walled gardens present different and difficult challenges. Such communities only allow selective content nodes of their sites to index in Google. This means you can incur lots of damage amongst hundreds of millions of users–and never see it in Google.

We suggest a daily hand-monitoring protocol in each walled garden community, where an actual user has a look at whatever internal SERPs, chatter and other bad talk can occur amongst users. Specific methods vary. Some communities can successfully be scraped and reduced to a feed by a bot after feigned login. Be careful not to violate any terms of service.

3-Setup Real-Time Alerts
For Twitter use TweetDeck, which is real-time after a minimal amount of transient API delays. After all the Twitter API at this writing is free, which means they don’t offer any quality of service guarantee.

With real-time alerts comes the need for real-time monitoring. During the teeth of any crises, where a 15 minute TweetBeep alert by email just wont do, have a smart marketing employee watch TweetDeck for main associations. For other walled garden communities, have a user logged in and watching.

4-Take Inventory of Web Assets
Reputation management is all about Universal SERPs that are friendly. You’ll want to leverage (potentially re-optimize) all available assets you control or own including YouTube videos, images wherever they are posted, blogs, feeds accepted into GoogleNews, sites, pages, social media profiles like Digg & Twitter, existing walled garden profiles, .pdfs, anything online you control or own. Organize them for your search team to evaluate and utilize.

5- Take Inventory of Other Digital Assets
Got any print-only owner’s manuals, white papers, spreadsheets, docs or technical specifications? How about videos from the last sales convention? Perhaps there is an offline archive of this year’s press releases. Ask “Is there any offline content whatsoever which could be leveraged in the SERPs online?” Organize them for your search team to evaluate and utilize.

6-Implement Daily SERPs Hand Monitoring
Create a daily SERPs Hand monitoring worksheet and watch it at least 2X a day. It does not take long to cycle though the filtered keyword grid. don’t forget to search unpersonalized so the SERPs you see don’t reflect your personal preferences.

Watch for threatening content, including any opportunistic PPC predators like ambulance chasing attorneys or competitors attempting to capitalize on misfortune. Though some news results might hurt, some or most of them will drop off in time. Watch for permanent artifacts like NY Times, Washington Post or FDA.gov, content likely to remain after the event is over.

7- Start Daily Buzz & Content Log
Any new content should be reviewed and logged. Watch for and flag misinformation, predatory content network ads and bad editorial content. Walled garden content goes here as does a summary of Tweets, bloggers and threatening users.

8- Define Stakeholders Who Gets Notified Under What Circumstances
Many projects have multiple in-house and consultant agencies which include PR, legal, marketing, C-level executives, advertising, etc…Each party is charged with protecting a certain aspect of the mother ship’s well being. Create a list of clearly defined boundaries for who gets called at 3AM on Thursday morning, who can wait until the next work day, what reports are weekly and every applicable in-between. This is best accomplished by a council meeting of stakeholders.

Forewarned is Forearmed
There is every kind of crackpot on the Internet, real loonies. Also bad things happen to great companies. It’s best to have your defense in place before the crises hits, a social media security system if you will.

When push comes to shove and you’re exposed, take these 8 steps as a starting place to empower your search and social teams. The 9th crucial priority is “response and management,” an entirely different animal than monitoring. The way a each individual company responds to PR danger is highly personal to the entity at risk. Take a deep breath, don’t panic and set gird your loins for best brand defense.

The Brand & Reputation Management session at SES New York 2009 took a deep dive into the ORM abyss. Coming from both legal & search marketing perspectives, the panel answered questions crucial to any business including:

• Can I use a competitor’s trademark when advertising?
• What is considered defamation & when should I engage professional legal help?
• Why shouldn’t I use my brand as a verb?
• Should I let others use my trademark?
• How do I manage damaging messages in the SERPs? Swimmin’ with the Big Fish

The panelist table was jam packed with a good line of paper name tents. Search marketers Kristjan Mar Hauksson, Lee Odden, Paul Elliott looked at things from a search marketing standpoint,  Mark J. Rosenberg from a legal sense and Lela Phommasouvanh integrated both. The session was moderated by Jeffrey Rohrs the VP of ExactTarget.

The information from the panelists was awesome, check out what they had to say.

When to Engage Professional Legal Help
What’s the difference between unauthorized and permissible use of a brand?

OK: Opinions and commentary are permissible and protected by the 1st amendment (the food and service was atrocious!)

Not OK: False or misleading information = defamation (false statement: I counted 7 rats in that filthy restaurant)

Defamation law suits are rising due to the ease at which online content can be generated and dispursed via blog, reviews & social communities. Don’t jump the gun! When you make a stink because of a false claim you may be causing more harm to your brand than help. Evaluate the author and his or her influence. Do they have influence with your stakeholders? How credible are they? Assess the reprocussions before reacting.

Don’t Use Your Brand as a Verb
From a trademark perspective do not use your brand as a verb, you want your brand to be exclusive & distinct. If your trademark is associated with similar products under the same category (Rollerblade, Jello, Band-Aid, Thermos, etc.) than your brand will most likely end up taking the fall in the SERPs when negative content is directed towards the generacized trademark, regardless the involved brand.

Letting Others Use Your Brand
When allowing others to use your image and/or trademark, policies should be in place governing how it is displayed. It is imperative to preserve your brand identity in all mediums and control how your brand is seen by others.

Drowning Damaging Messages in the SERPs
Grab the low hanging fruit. Set yourself up with Google local listing and various digital assets that fit your brand. Begin ongoing general promotion and publicity of news and press releases.

With a high authority site devaluing your brand, build up surrounding reviews and content to bring the value back up. A negative review surrounded by nine other positive reviews is important to alter the quality perception of the negative review.

Reputation Management Case Study
Paul Elliot shared an excellent example of how reputation management can drastically assist a company.

National City Bank: commonly refer to their brand as National City Corporation and this was what the SEO reflected in the meta tags. When search engines (SE) would crawl the site there was really only one instance of the brand name National City Bank and it was located in the footer.

An angry customer who happened to be a webmaster had a poor experience with the company and decided to take it out on the web registering the domain name fucknationalcitybank.com, acquiring a hefty link from dmoz and several others. The site began ranking second in the SERPs. What did Paul and his team do?

- Provided recommended meta tags, titles and descriptions to reflect the National City Bank brand name.

- Aggressive link popularity development program to increase high quality links.

- Began ongoing generation of promotion and publicity, including news, press releases, sponsored content and articles.

- Identified any and all violations or unethical online behavior on the disgruntled site.

The Outcome
- Disgruntled site had their dmoz link pulled after having found its involvement in purchasing several porn links.

- Disgruntled site is no longer discoverable via direct brand search.

- Meta tags, titles, etc., reflect the brand identity throughout the site making SE’s happy.

- Jefferey Rorhs owes Paul Elliot a steak dinner for betting he couldn’t pull it off.

Head in the Sand
With prospective and existing customers,  journalists, competitors, investors and potential employee candidates all online, you want to keep your reputation clean and accessible. Many companies fear the negative messages floating around out there and often ignore it when possible.

These negative messages should be viewed as another way to engage users. Becoming aware of the messages published about your brand will also allow you to identify evangelists and brand stewards. No matter how you slice it, the strength of the brand relies heavily on the ability to manage the reputation.

This post is a guerrilla tutorial for building a totally free reputation monitoring dashboard, suitable for personal/corporate use or reselling to an agency client.  You’ll be able to easily build a tool where nobody can even whisper your business keywords, in a positive or negative light, without your awareness.

Just about everyone subscribes to Google Alerts, free & comprehensive (news, blogs, video, web, groups)  alerts by email for  newly indexed keyword instances.  Things got exciting for reputation monitoring pros recently when big G rolled out SERPs notifications by RSS. Now any newly indexed  Google keyword instance can be monitored from the comfort of your favorite feed reader.

Other significant channels offering keyword level subscriptions, include Twitter and other content indexing services.  While this tutorial uses free Google products:

It’s the ethic of monitoring indexed keyword instances from multiple channels in an organized system of feeds, and delivering the results as actionable insights by feed reader dashboard, to quickly discover threats & opportunities.

This is what the end result will look like, a tabbed iGoogle dashboard, graphically customizable and suitable for professional monitoring.

While there are industry standard paid reputation monitoring tools sporting cool features, any person or business will made more powerful having someone in the shop able to wire this free puppy up. After constructing the dashboard outlined in this tutorial, use whatever feed reader you like. Again it’s the ethic of comprehensive monitoring by feed that matters here. Let’s get started:

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Create a Google account if you don’t already have one.

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Open an Excel document and create tabs, segmented by the following reputation monitoring categories: “Brand,” “Product,” “Personnel,” “Competition,” “Industry Phrases” & “Intent Words.” We’re going to make the Big List of keywords to monitor.

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Paste “correct” (the way you say it) brand name permutations into the ‘Brand’ tab. This is the easiest step of all.

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Open a web browser and navigate to MSN Keyword Mutation Detection Tool. Set a bookmark, you’ll be visiting this tool again.

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Type in or paste the first brand name keyword on your list. Go

The returns common iterations of a keyword. Copy them.

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Paste them into the brand tab on the Big List. Run the MSN Keyword Mutation Detection Tool again on the next correct brand word. Run them all. Paste them into the Big List.

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Trellian Keyword Discovery a paid service, has my favorite misspellings engine, which we sometimes use at this point.

However you can totally get by without paid tools. Finding hacks of your brand keywords is pretty obvious business.  Try stream of consciousness brainstorming and don’t be afraid of being silly. I can nearly always duplicate KW discovery misspellings by just free-forming.  Add these brand name keyword permutations to the Big List.

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Another great place to find insight regarding brand permutations is the organic analytics from your site. Here we drill into ever-ubiquitous Google Analytics. (Of course you actually have to have been running analytics on the site prior)  Click on Traffic Sources.

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Click “Keywords”

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View traffic from paid and non paid brand search keywords. Select non-paid for organic. [Please note: PPC data on phrase or broad match keywords often yields useful permutations as well.]

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Grab any heretofore undiscovered permutations by copying.

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Paste in any brand keywords noted from analytics to the Big List. Now it’s safe to say that we have most brand permutations.

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When done with brand keywords, repeat this process for every product to populate the Products Tab of the Excel Big List. Sure it’s time consuming, but take the time and it will be well worth the effort.

Do the products tab of the Big List now…

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Update on Progress! There are 4  tabs on our big list remaining,“Competition,” “Personnel,” “Industry” & “Intent.”

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“Personnel” Tab of Big List
“Personnel” refers to  C-Level executives, public spokespeople or anyone else we’d like to monitor. Often times this includes competitors primaries. There’s no need to go crazy with misspellings unless someone’s name is complicated. Just be sure to call “Russ” “Russell” and other extremely obvious nicknames. In our experience, overdoing scan-width does not equal finding much more dirt.

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“Competition” Tab of Big List
Monitoring your competition is useful for defending your own brands and products. We keep an eye on competitive brands by the same segments by which we monitor our own: “Brand,” “Product,”  “Personnel,” etc…

• Discover competitors’ promotional efforts as soon as possible
• Find their weaknesses, liabilities and advise your marketing efforts to best exploit the information.
• Learn about new important products and product categories.

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Finding Industry phrases is by classic keyword research process. Fire up the External Google Keyword Tool. We’ll this Google PPC inventory tool to find keywords SO commonly searched for, that they can be considered an “industry category” word. Short Short Short Tail = Industry

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Finding Category Words

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Type in as many categories as you know about in regards to your business.  When in doubt, use a thesaurus (for stemming). Make sure to check the “Use Synonyms” box, which will add Google’s stemming insight to the results.

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“Get Keyword Ideas” after confirming that you’re human.

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Click on “Sort by average volume.”

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Add the top 3-5 to the keyword bucket. They’re your industry category words for the Big List.

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Export to spread a .CSV file.

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Copy From Exported Spread Sheet and Add To  Big List Under the Industry Tab.

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The final tab for this dashboard build is for “Intent” phrases. Think about different ways customers say “you’re great,” “you suck” or ask for information with longer phrases.  There’s no need to go crazy with variations on the same keywords (singular, plural, etc…). Intent phrases are very long tail in themselves.

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Building the Dashboard
Now leave the Big List aside.  Open your igoogle dashboard. (Make sure you’re logged into Google and go to http://www.google.com/ig.) If you already use iGoogle, you’ll see your iGoogle homepage. Don’t worry, you won’t lose it.  This is as simple as adding new tabs in iGoogle, corresponding to the Big List tabs in the Excel doc.

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Add a New iGoogle Tab

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Name the Tab “Brand.”

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Create New iGoogle Tabs to Match the Big List Excel Tabs

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Now it’s time to set up our keyword feed subscriptions. Set Up First Google Alert. Go to Google Alerts and click “New Alert.”

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Type or paste in you first word. Sorry you have to set these up 1 at a time for EVERY word on all tabs. 1 Word at a time, starting with you brand keywords, create alerts. Choose “comprehensive” meaning all Google channels. Choose the “feed” and “as it happens” options.

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Right click and copy the link location of the of orange RSS button

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To get around a Google bug in some browsers, “clean” the URL you just copied  by opening new FireFox tab.

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Paste in URL copied from RSS button and hit “return.” (This cleaning step is only needed, for some odd reason, when using Google.)

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“Subscribe to this feed using “using Google” as feed reader. Check “Always use Google to subscribe to feeds” and click “Subscribe Now.”

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Select “Add to Google homepage.” “Google Homepage” is another word for iGoogle.

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Congratulations, you’ve created your first  iGoogle reputation monitoring gadget. You’ll see the new gadget added to the iGoogle dashboard on whatever tab you have selected. Cool!

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Create Alert for next word on the Big List.

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We’ll review. Let’s go through the steps again to add a Google Alert to iGoogle for your second brand word.  Click “New Alert.”

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Paste your next word into Google Alerts. Note: Two or more words require quotations.

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You know the drill!
The options are: Comprehensive, Feed, As it Happens, then click “Create Alert.”

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Copy address of orange RSS button with right click.

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Don’t forget that pesky Google Bug! Clean the URL, open new FireFox tab and paste the URL.

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Paste in URL copied from RSS button. Hit “return” on your computer’s keyboard.

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Add to Google homepage.

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New reputation monitoring gadget in iGoogle.

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FYI, There are cool gadget settings, available by clicking on any gadget’s little down facing triangle. Edit your settings.

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Increase the number of feed Alerts displayed.

One by one, add all the words on the Big List to the appropriate iGoogle tab.

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Other search services (other than Google) offer keyword level subscriptions. Twitter is quickly becoming an essential channel to monitor.  Navigate to http://search.twitter.com.

It’s really easy to subscribe to twitter search feeds using iGoogle.  While there’s standalone API applications like TweetDeck to watch feeds real-time. Many business folks want Twitter chatter included in their dashboard next to Google alerts.

Search for your keyword in Twitter Search.

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No need to clean, just click on ‘Feed for this query’

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Add to Google homepage (iGoogle)

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The gadgets are beginning to add up.

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Technorati is another blog search service, where posts are indexed that sometimes Google does not pick up.  Not every blog is in Google blog search. Technorati offers keyword level subscriptions by RSS. Subscribe to the entire Big List in Technorati.

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What you can’t see can hurt you. Hidden behind user names and passwords, some  forums and message board communities don’t allow Google to index them. Some push to opt-in to board aggregation services making these walled Garden sites’ chatter searchaable and, you guessed it, subscribed by feed.

BoardReader is a useful search utility, forums opt in to,  that picks up keyword mentions that Google does not see.

Search BoardReader for a keyword.

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Once results are returned, sort SERPs by “Freshness.”

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Click on RSS button

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You know the rest!

The board reader results are on the iGoogle dashboard not too.

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There you have it, your sweet reputation management dashboard is beginning to fill out.

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Interpretation tips:

• Skim the dashboard at pre-defined intervals.
• Don’t click on every link.
• Hover over to get text abstract, follow if relevant, use  your brain and check it out!
• Ignore spam as much as possible.
• Set up mission critical keywords as email alerts for archiving and fast notification. Subscribe to any keyword twice, once by feed and once by Google Email Alert. Not every channel provides email alerts. Third party tools make it possible in some channels like TweetBeep does for Twitter.
• Each search channel has a somewhat unique method to generate feed subscription links for keywords, including 3rd party tools to create RSS feeds for keyword level searches. Just figure out how to add new channels.
• Remember, iGoogle is just one feed reader. Use the reader of your choice if you already have a comfort level.
• iGoogle can be customized graphically with Artist Themes and Developers Tools. It’s actually pretty amazing to have tools like this totally for free.

The author wishes to thank @matt_peterson and @mannyrivas for their excellent help in authoring this tutorial.

]]> http://www.aimclearblog.com/2009/03/16/how-to-build-a-reputation-monitoring-dashboard/feed/ 88 http://www.aimclearblog.com/2008/07/08/reputation-crises-managment-8-seo-triage-tips/ http://www.aimclearblog.com/2008/07/08/reputation-crises-managment-8-seo-triage-tips/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:01:46 +0000 Marty Weintraub http://www.aimclearblog.com/?p=751 The “please can you help us” cold calls we receive from distraught business are increasing in frequency and frightfully similar.

The frustrated caller explains that some former employee, customer or other provocateur has published damaging editorial content which indexes prominently in Google for direct brand and other important keyword searches.

The results can be disastrous, ranging from bruised feelings to tens (or hundreds) of millions in lost sales. Whilst creating an intentional reputation monitoring/management plan ahead of time is certainly optimal, usually by the time we get the call the business is already bleeding profusely.

Depending on the SEO skill level of the villain, their determination and the authority of the site on which the damaging diatribe was published, the offending results can be buggers for businesses to cleanse themselves.

Enter the SEO sharpshooter specialist, focused on attaining organic prominence as quickly as possible under pressure. The objective is to push the nasty content as far down the SERPs as possible and, if necessary, debunk the credibility of the damning editorial.

Ironically the tactics we reach for in crises are very similar to any other SEO campaign. Competitive intelligence, content publishing, link building, taking inventory of digital assets for universal search and leveraged power of social channels are among classic tools of the trade. What differentiates crises management is the sense of urgency, pressure to perform, legal options and the obvious downside to failure. Here are 8 time tested tips for SEO triage sharpshooters:

1. Evaluate the authority of the page on which the negative content is published. As with any SEO assignment, start by taking a look at PageRank and inbound links profile using Yahoo Site Explorer and other tools. If the offending result is not on a site’s homepage, then take a careful look at older and similar interior pages along with their archives.
   
   Google’s algorithmic regard for any page tends to accumulate over time as a result of numerous factors, known and “black box.” Therefore it’s a good idea to keep in mind that any page’s clout might increase over time. Be advised and plan accordingly.
   
   Reciprocally if the problem content is currently indexing on a blog’s homepage, the difficulty may be mitigated when the post cycles off the homepage into archives. While the post is on the homepage, its content has the full “weight” of the homepage’s authority.
   
   This won’t be the case in archive unless the post generates great links. That said many blogs’ category pages, author and date archives accumulate PageRank and you might have to wait a while for the post to cycle even deeper into to site over time. (Note: PageRank isn’t everything but it’s better to have it than not.)
   
2. Since some offending results violate copyright or trademark laws, a strong understanding of and willingness to utilize legal channels can be important arrows in the SEO sharpshooter’s quiver. Sometimes the first salvo we fire is from our client’s law firm in the form of a cease and desist letter.
   
   Be aware of laws as pertain to protected marks and intellectual property. Certainly taking the legal route can yield results and sometimes the expense makes sense. Our legal team has scared many an idiot off our client’s back. Some rouges just don’t want to mess with lawyers and can be “encouraged” to take down their problem content.
   
   On the other hand be a realist. Some insolent jerk halfway around the world won’t give a rat’s ass about your attorney’s saber rattling. Sometimes firing legal missals can even result in your opponent digging in their heals with an intransigent disregard for reality.
   
   When nasty search engine results stem from social media channels, it can be impossible to locate the villain let alone engage them legally. Social site moderators often couldn’t care less because they thrive on the passionate engagement which surrounds controversy. StumbleUpon (eBay) is the worst as they are nearly completely unwilling to enforce Terms of Services as pertain to abusive “troll” users.
   
3. Determine the likelihood that the substance of proposed defensive content will further provoke and backfire virally. We find it’s best if newly created content and subsequent promotional activity do not appear to be directly related to the problem we’re competing with.
   
   My grandmother used to tell me never to “get into a pissing contest with a skunk. Even if you win…you stink. “Instead, create defensive content that builds on strengths of your business to contradict the negatives raised by a bad editorial. Build your content to outrank the perpetrator’s.
   
   Though we never take directly refuting offensive results off the table fully, one needs to be extremely careful. We don’t want 5 other bloggers to rally behind their jerky friend and take up a damaging cause they hadn’t even noticed before.
   
4. Unless you’re an expert, talk to a professional before engaging directly in social channels surrounding the problem results. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen a business person, who has no experience in social media, climb into a comments thread and make things SO much worse. There are very few instances when taking a step back and counting to 10 will negatively impact the end result of defensive activities.
   
   If you’re not a regular contributer in a specific social media channel, learning the vernacular while under duress is not the best choice. Also we’ve seen clients make legal mistakes publicly which made a difficult problem much worse. Call an SEO/social media expert. Call your lawyer. Have a glass of wine and some sushi. Chill.
   
5. If direct engagement in social channels makes sense, attempt to earn the provocateurs respect by your response. Every disaster is an opportunity in the making and vice versa. Whilst measured righteous indignation can be a powerful tool, start with classic high road messages of respect and understanding: “I understand your position,” “respect your right to express your feelings in public,” “am grateful for the opportunity to engage in a dialog” and “what can we do to make things right?”
   
6. Take the high road over and over. Then take the high road again. If that doesn’t work…you can always nuke em’. There are white hat methods and other, ummmm, not-white hat methods available to “eliminate” the problem. Given recent furor over public discussion of non-candy-ass SEO tactics you’ll have to contact me directly to discuss the options further.
   
7. Consider paid search as a stopgap and/or ongoing strategy. When weighing the cost of PPC to circumvent damaging organic results, paid search is often an attractive “lesser of all evils’ option, especially in the short term while waiting for other solutions to come online. Google’s content network, in the hands of a site-targeting expert, can be a highly effective channel-especially when clarifying or refuting mainstream damage in news, niche’ and social channels.
   
8. Get back to SEO basics. The best defense is a good offense. In reality it should be difficult for idiots to crack into direct brand search results if your website is optimized properly.
   
   One of our newer clients came to us under assault from a disgruntled former customer. It didn’t make sense at first because the offensive result was on a PR zero site with little authority.
   
   Upon evaluation we quickly ascertained that our client’s website was entirely a Flash movie, literally with no deep indexing. Solving the “crises” was as simple as re-publishing the site in HTML with Flash elements instead of a full Flash movie.
   

With the rampant proliferation of user-generated content, the opportunity for disgruntled malcontents to damage your firm’s reputation increases everyday. Make sure to evaluate the extent of the problem, consider legal options, and stay within your comfort zone. Take the high road whenever possible, treat your opponent with respect and consider paid search as a stopgap or ongoing prophylactic measure.

Above all, remember that when talking about reputation management in the organic SERPs, you’re talking on-demand SEO. The best defense is a robust offense so make sure the strength of your site’s optimization makes it harder for anyone to even get on the SERPs for direct brand search. Finally, don’t make things worse by biting off more than you can chew. Engage an expert instead.

Marty Weintraub is publisher of aimClear Blog and President of aimClear, a search focused advertising agency serving international clients from Duluth, Minnesota.