What is Search Engine Reputation Management?
Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) is an essential component of online business success. It involves monitoring and actively influencing the public perception of a company on the internet. Its ultimate goal is to effectively handle negative search results and feedback concerning the business. By monitoring the company’s presence online and undertaking appropriate measures, SERM can drastically improve an organization’s reputation and attract potential customers. In this way, it could become a fundamental component of success for businesses operating in the digital age.
Through Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM), businesses and websites can be proactive in monitoring and managing their reputations. Strategies can include SEO, Paid Search Marketing, Press Optimization, Blogging, and Social Media, to help ensure damaging activities are swiftly responded to, and positive activities can be amplified to help build or maintain a good reputation. SERM allows firms to be aware of and take control of their reputations, with the power to ensure negative activities are minimized, and positive activities are highlighted.
Why is SERM important?
94% of people are swayed by a negative review they find about your business, so it’s imperative to monitor and manage your online reputation. Your market value is directly connected to your reputation, and people are increasingly relying on reviews when choosing with whom to do business. Online reviews can have a profound influence on modern consumers, which is why it’s necessary to stay on top of your online presence.
Search Engine Reputation Management in Garland (Texas)
Our team of professionals possess the expertise to analyze and maintain your digital reputation. It is essential for your business to be mindful of your online presence, as neglecting it could prove detrimental. Therefore, create a strategy to ensure that you are always in command.
How does SERM Work?
Once a brand has faced reputation issues, the next step is restoring their online profile. At our company, we help brands influence a positive view of their brand through online reputation strategies. We use search engine reputation management (SERM) to manipulate the public reputation in a positive direction. SERM combines SEO, social media, and content marketing plus PR to enhance the overall online reputation of the brand. We take the following steps:
- Implement strategic content marketing and promotion on the website and various social media platforms.
- Enhance SEO tactics to encourage visibility of positive content.
- Eliminate any negative posts or content with negative sentiment.
1.- Proactive Monitoring
To maintain and improve your online reputation, you need to keep an eye on it. Utilize search engines, blogs, and reviews platforms among sources to monitor the landscape. Additionally, your company should have a presence on online platforms such as social media or forums where your customers are engaging. You should be able to answer queries and concerns before they lead to negative feedback.
2.- SERP Cleansing
For SERP Cleansing, the aim is to clean the top pages of the search engine results of any negative results. It’s essential to ensure that the top ten search results for your company are optimized. To make this possible, you need to actively produce content related to your business, such as reviews, testimonials, media coverage, guest posts, and other relevant pieces.
3.- Improve SEO
Enhance SEO by making sure to:
- Increase relevancy and authority with content that is related to your target audience.
- Improve visibility by promoting the content on social media platforms.
- Boost ranking by creating backlinks from other sites.
- Reduce the impact of negative content by creating and optimizing press releases where you control the message.
To optimize your SEO efforts, aim to:
- Increase relevancy and authority of your website by creating content tailored for your target audience.
- Improve visibility by promoting the content across a variety of social media platforms.
- Boost ranking with backlinks from trusted sites.
- Minimize the impact of negative news by creating and optimizing press releases that share your viewpoint.
4.- Respond to Negative Content
Responding to negative content is critical in order to improve customer relationships, and there are several avenues to do so. Communities, forums, and review platforms offer a great opportunity to connect with an unsatisfied customer. By showing your concern and apologizing for their negative experience, you can go a long way towards appeasing and potentially influencing their opinion. However, if you are not actively monitoring the sentiment of customers, you may have to take drastic measures or risk your brand reputation.
5.- Social Media Presence
Social media is an effective tool to foster audience growth, trust and influence. By connecting with customers, increased engagement can help build SEO rankings and online presence. Positive feedback from customers boosts reliability in the eyes of the search engines, positively impacting search engine results page positions. Fostering trust and brand awareness enhances search engine performance.
6.- Push Positive Content
Social media has the potential to be a powerful tool to increase your audience, strengthen your leadership and boost your trust. With social media, you have the capability to connect with your customers while simultaneously significantly elevating your visibility on SERPs. Receiving good feedback and references for your business across social media channels will have a significantly positive effect on your search engine rankings. The more engagement you are able to acquire and amplify through social media, the more trustworthiness search engines will give to your brand.
Conclusions for SERM
In order to get started with Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM), there are three important steps to consider:
- Monitor your online reputation. This is especially important in order to protect your brand online and offline. Monitoring activities on social media and building a loyal following is key.
- Pay attention to customer feedback. Transparency is important in order to build trust, so attend to all comments, both positive and negative.
- Leverage SERM experts. Our team of reps can guide you through the process and has worked on more than 500 projects across 30+ countries.