What is Search Engine Reputation Management?
Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) is essential to ensuring a positive public image for companies online. It involve monitoring and influencing the public perception of the entity and involves the further management of any negative search results or remarks related to it. SERM allows for businesses to address any negative feedback or search results quickly, helping to protect the company’s reputation on the Internet.
Search engine reputation management (SERM) provides an invaluable opportunity for businesses and websites to monitor the activities that influence their reputation – both favorably and unfavorably. Through SERM, companies can take advantage of a range of strategic techniques such as Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search Marketing, Press Optimization, Blogging, and Social Media to boost their reputation.
Why is SERM important?
Data from ReviewTrackers reveals that 94% of consumers have changed their minds about a business after reading a bad review. It’s important to be aware of this and monitor online reviews, as the reputation of your company has a direct impact on its market value. Plus, people increasingly turn to reviews from fellow users when searching for someone to work with. These sites have become extremely popular in the online community, as potential buyers examine reviews before even connecting with a brand.
Search Engine Reputation Management in Birmingham (Alabama)
Our team of experts can help you monitor and repair your online reputation, ensuring your best appearance to potential clients. Ignorance of your online presence is hazardous to your business, so it’s vital to remain aware and take action.
How does SERM Work?
Once a brand loses reputation, steps must be taken to restore its standing. People ask if they can alter their Google reputation and the answer is “yes”. Our firm helps brands rebuild their image through online reputation management strategies. Through search engine reputation management, we aim to influence a positive perception of the brand. SERM is multi-faceted and involves SEO, social media, content marketing, and PR. Here are some of the steps we take to achieve this:
- Optimizing website content
- Creating positive content about the brand
- Spreading the content through influencers
- Using SEO tools to reach the right audience
- Building relationships with customers
- Disputing negative feedback with facts
1.- Proactive Monitoring
To ensure the highest level of protection and improved reputation on the Web, proactively monitor your presence online. Utilize search engines to keep track of how your company is perceived, review blogs, read feedback and ratings from other various platforms. Over time, make sure you are present wherever your customers are engaging online. This approach will enable you to pick up and quickly address any pressing questions or concerns of customers – this can help to eliminate potential negative feedback.
2.- SERP Cleansing
A SERP (Search Engine Result Page) cleanse is a practice used to remove any unfavorable results from the pages of a search engine. In order for this to be successful, you must optimize at least the top ten search Results for your company name. Creating fresh content such as media coverage, reviews, testimonials, and guest posts is key to an effective SERP cleanse.
3.- Improve SEO
To improve SEO, it is important to:
- Analyse the existing website backlinks and work on improving their quality
- Detect and fix any broken links within the website
- Develop a content strategy and generate high-quality content
- Use relevant keywords which better target the target audience
- Optimize page and images for mobile and desktop search
- Improve page loading and response speed
In order to improve your website’s SEO, it is essential to analyze the current backlinks and work on improving their quality. Additionally, detecting and addressing any broken links within the website is important to ensure that users have an optimal experience. Furthermore, a content strategy should be developed to create and publish high-quality content on a regular basis and using relevant keywords to better target the desired audience. Moreover, pages and images should be optimized for both mobile and desktop users while improving page loading and response speed.
4.- Respond to Negative Content
When dealing with negative feedback on consumer forums or review platforms, it’s important to reach out to the unsatisfied customer in order to address their concerns and rectify the situation. Let them know their voice has been heard and apologize for any negative experience they may have had. Responding promptly and courteously to negative customer feedback can help to win back the goodwill of those unsatisfied, potentially promoting customer loyalty and a positive opinion of the company. Proactive monitoring of consumer forums and reviews can help to ensure any negative opinions are heard and addressed, and can ultimately save your brand’s reputation.
5.- Social Media Presence
Social media is an invaluable tool for cultivating an audience, authority and trustworthiness. It provides a great platform for interacting with current and potential customers, while also boosting your SERP rankings. The more engagement that occurs on social media, the higher esteem you are held in by search engines. The positive views and comments about your business or brand directly affect SERPs and improve your online profile.
6.- Push Positive Content
Social media is an effective mechanism to increase reach, build leadership, and increase trust. It facilitates connecting with customers and carries huge potential for improving SERP rankings. Generating beneficial sentiment and customer reviews for your business through social media contributes to greater trust placed in you by search engines. The more engagement you can earn on social media, the more trustworthiness search engines attribute to you.
Conclusions for SERM
Supervising your online reputation is the first step to getting started with SERM and it is an important action to protect your online reputation. This means to regularly monitor your social media pages and the activities online and offline that relate to your business. Additionally, to enhance your online reputation you must be active on social media. This helps to build a strong, loyal audience. Moreover, it is critical to pay attention to the feedback and comments from your customers. You should respond to both the negative and the positive comments to show transparency and to importantly gain your customers’ trust. If you desire, our SERM experts can help you to get the best results. Our international network of agencies has worked on more than 500 projects in over 30 countries.