aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

An essential aspect of any reputation management job, is monitoring the never-ending flow of  content germane to our client. Most often the keyword monitoring “Big List” includes brand, products, C-level executive names, intent phrases and competitors’ keyword permutations.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

SEOs know the risk. It’s easy for determined malevolent-users to destroy reputations using social media. The ability of a provocateur to mess with a  brand’s reputation by social media profile, used to involve a fairly labor intensive research process. No longer…Now a quick scan is available for free .

CheckUserNames.com is a new tool from @streko, @graywolf and @itcn which quickly streamlines the search process for determining which social profiles are available for any keyword. Read the rest of this entry »

Association with domains perceived by Google to be in bad neighborhoods can get your domain blown out of Google or seriously crippled.. This reality has spawned a favorite tactic amongst malfeasant black hats, who use the wormhole to destroy competition. It’s happened to our friends and it can happen to you. Read the rest of this entry »

[Marty Edit: An original version of this avatar theory post created a different kind of buzz than intended when published on the homepage of SEOmoz/blog earlier this week. In it I quoted Matt Cutts from, what he perceived to be, a private conversation.

I apologized to Matt after he publicly unsubscribed to SEOmoz as a result. For those who don’t know, he’s Google’s highly visible ambassador of spam reduction and when someone (in this case me) quotes something he said said about spam– it can cause a fracas. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »