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.
Search engine reputation management (SERM) provides businesses and websites with the tools to track activities that could potentially affect their reputations, as well as techniques to promote a positive image. To achieve these objectives, SERM encompasses Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search Marketing, Press Optimization, Blogging and Social Media.
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 Trois-Rivières (Quebec)
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 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 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
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
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 a valuable tool to boost your audience, leadership and trust. Not only does it provide a platform to connect with your customers, but it can also substantially improve your presence on SERPs. Generating positive mentions and feedback of your business on social media will have a large-scale impact on search engine rankings. The more engagement you are able to gain through social media, the more trustworthiness search engines can assign to your brand.
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
To get started with SERM, keep a watchful eye over your online reputation, as this helps protect your business. Enhance this through active use of social media, helping you build and retain an audience. Pay attention to customer responses – both positive and negative – as this makes you more transparent, building trust. Our network of SERM experts have worked on over 500 projects worldwide and can help you to achieve the best possible results.
