What is Search Engine Reputation Management?
SERM, short for Search Engine Reputation Management, is an online marketing strategy that encompasses a range of activities. These activities include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid Search Marketing, Press Optimization, Blogging and Social Media. Through SERM, businesses can increase their visibility in search engine results, while managing their online presence to ensure they are portrayed in a positive light.
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 Hampton (Virginia)
Our reputation team specializes in monitoring and repairing your online presence. You owe it to both yourself and your business to be aware of how you’re perceived online. Ignorance can potentially cost you quite a bit – something you don’t want to risk. So stay informed and take action where necessary.
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
For effective online reputation management, it is crucial to first monitor it. Leverage search engines and different online resources such as blogs, review platforms, and more, and be actively present in the places your customers frequent. This way, you can address their queries and grievances in advance, and prevent negative criticism from accumulating. Ultimately, by staying alert and monitoring your presence you will safeguard and promote your reputation on the Web.
2.- SERP Cleansing
SERP Cleansing requires you to focus on optimizing the top ten search results for your company. To do that, aggressively publish new content, such as reviews and testimonials, media coverage, and guest posts. This will help to ensure that negative results are minimized or removed from the first few pages of search engine results.
3.- Improve SEO
To improve SEO:
- Use relevant keywords and phrases
- Update content regularly to keep search engines active
- Link webpages together
- Optimize page loading speed
- Keep titles and meta-descriptions concise and accurate
To optimize SEO, it’s important to use relevant keywords and phrases, update content regularly to inform search engines, link webpages together, optimize page loading speed for a better user experience, and create concise and accurate titles and meta-descriptions. Doing so will help to improve rankings of relevant sites and reduce the effect of negative content.
4.- Respond to Negative Content
Maintaining a presence on consumer forums and review platforms is key to gaining a better understanding of what people think of your brand. This allows you to respond quickly and appropriately to negative content, showing customers you have heard their thoughts and care about their opinions. If an unhappy customer has already left a negative review, you should reach out to apologize and try to resolve the problem. This provides a great opportunity to correct the issues the customer had and help to turn their opinion around.
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 is a great way to expand your customer base, enhance your reputation as a leader, and foster trust. It gives you a platform to reach out to customers, helping you to improve your visibility in SERPs. Growing positive recognition and feedback of your company on social media will have a major influence on search engine rankings. The more engagement you can generate through social media, the greater the level of trustworthiness search engines give your brand.
Conclusions for SERM
Getting started with SERM is easy when you take cognisance of a few key things. First, it’s important that you monitor your online and offline presence – this helps you protect your reputation. Additionally, it’s essential that you foster a good online presence through active social media, helping you build and maintain relationships with your customers. Finally, don’t forget to pay attention to customer feedback – responding to both positive and negative comments can win you trust and respect. If you need extra support, the Search Engine Reputation Management experts at our networks of agencies have worked on projects in more than 30 countries and counting.
