Despite recent changes in Google algorithms, keyword research still plays a major role in determining how much money and time you will have to spend on your content marketing campaign and how well your business can deal with the competition in a certain niche.

Here are a few aspects worthy of taking into account when it comes to the importance of keyword research in improving your brand’s online recognition:

• The task involved with researching certain keywords has to be an ongoing process due to the fact that the keyword field is constantly changing, and many new entrants appear that try to rank high for any given keyword you may choose.
• The changes in search engine algorithms and in the behavior of search engine users can greatly impact your keywords at any given time. If you wish to defend your reputation, therefore, you will have to avoid focusing all your attention on mainstream keyword research strategies and consider including social media strategies and social signals as part of your reputation defense plan.
• Researching keyword variants and geographic signifiers, as well as keywords such as “complaints” and “reviews” can also improve the reputation defense improvement value of the content you want to post.
• Also, you will want to continually monitor your competitors’ and potential customers’ interest in the keywords you want to use.

The task of choosing the right keywords and integrating them into useful articles and content that can reflect positively on your company’s services; most importantly, you can devise a strategy that will bring you better results with the use of fewer articles, cutting your budget considerably in the long run.

Maximize the Effectiveness of Your Strategy

For the improvement of a brand’s online reputation, it is essential to know exactly what, where and when to publish. Apart from finding the keywords that will work best for this purpose, additional research will also be necessary in order to know exactly when to post your content on various blogs or directories and whether or not a different tone or approach might be necessary to spark the readers’ interest.

The best way to achieve this is through a carefully thought out editorial calendar. By following the online “trend” related to certain subjects and the interest that users and other brands take in them in certain key moments, you can find out precisely which type of content to post on blogs or social media sites and when to use them for targeting the best positive impact.

Obtaining Targeted Traffic

The purpose of posting content is ultimately linked to the idea of getting the attention of those who would be genuinely interested in what your business has to offer. For the purpose of online reputation management, this translates into the promotion of a more positive view that these users can be convinced to adopt. The better you can do this, the easier it will be to achieve better results with lower content creation expenses.

Sending your content to local resources, for instance, such as blogs and newspapers, will greatly improve the chance of local customers to see your business in a different light. On the other hand, if you need to target a specific branch of online users, posting your content on social media sites can be the best answer.

Targeted traffic may be difficult to obtain – however, it can significantly reduce the costs of your content creation strategy by attracting a larger number of interested visitors with the help of fewer posts and articles.

• Videos are increasingly sought after by internet users and given higher rankings in search engine results. The fact that Youtube has become the second largest search engine on the web is incontrovertible proof of this fact.
• Online videos have a high tendency of attracting the younger generation. This can prove to be a great advantage, seeing as younger people have a higher tendency in sharing videos over the internet, mainly on social media sites.
• By promoting a useful video, you can improve viewers’ opinions of your brand and gain a larger number of followers who may be less interested in written content.

An Original Approach

Originality is what attracts people to viewing a video posted online. If you want to gain more supporters for your online business, you have to consider creating a video campaign that offers something different and, at the same time, incorporates a useful, entertaining, humorous or inspirational approach.

Instead of simply mentioning the type of problem that your services may offer the solution to, you can find links between what they have to offer and some of the major world events and issues that internet users are interested in at the moment.

By shedding a new light on some of these aspects and presenting a viable solution to a well-known problem, you can get the attention of numerous viewers who might otherwise just watch your video passively and then move on.

Staying on Target

A single video or a poorly designed strategy will not lead to any results. Instead, a carefully thought out video campaign with constant updates and a viewer-oriented approach can do wonders for your online reputation defense.

While strictly keeping into account all the rules and suggestions of the video site you want to post your video on, also consider a steady presentation of the solutions your brand has to offer, keep your production expenses at a minimum, and keep track of all the goals you want to achieve; use a solid promotional strategy both for the production and deployment of your online video.

How to Promote Your Videos

Internet videos may get thousands of views on the sites they were posted on; however, their promotional potential can be greatly improved with the help of a more comprehensive deployment plan.

The answer is social media marketing. Social networking sites can be extremely useful when promoting viral videos, as users who are interested in them tend to share them with their friends and family, who, in turn, share them with the people they know. The popularity of your video and the positive reputation of your company will, therefore, grow exponentially, and you can expect your online business to thrive as a result.

Combined with methods such as blogging, SEO and keyword research, this strategy will bring your video to the attention of a large number of different people who may all be interested in what your company has to offer and end up being captivated by the options you can offer them.

With a carefully designed campaign based on all of these aspects, the chance of quickly improving a brand’s reputation on the internet can increase exponentially in a short amount of time. Today, a carefully planned video marketing strategy will easily bring you numerous new supporters and customers.

One of the easiest ways of monitoring your business’ online reputation is by setting up a Google alert to notify your staff whenever someone posts a review or writes an article about your company, services or products.

Other websites can also provide you with similar possibilities and allow you to monitor the activity of those who use various platforms. Twitter, for instance, is used by many people who own iPhones, and many of your customers are likely to use the service, since it is easy to access on a short notice.

Tools and services that allow for email alerts are also popular among business owners. With their help, you can get several useful emails periodically and monitor new statistics, reviews, comments and opinions as soon as they appear.

Also, these activities need to be backed up by an active role in countering the negative opinions of others. Whenever you notice that someone posted a bad review with lower ratings, you have to contact them and try to convince them to change their opinion. Ultimately, just posting some helpful feedback on the site where the review was posted should also improve the situation.

Effective Methods for Creating Positive Content

Studies show that constantly observing your online reputation and intervening when necessary is only a part of what must be done. Instead, one must take up an active role in continually improving and creating new online reputation defenses, so that when a threat presents itself, it can be swiftly dealt with.

Creating positive, original, and trustworthy content associated with your company is the best course of action in this regard. While there are many ways of achieving this, there are a number of methods that stand out:

• Blogs: A number of free major blogging platforms that can be used to post regular content may help you improve your image. By regularly adding interesting new articles that will place your company in a better light, you can become noticed on Google and other important search engines, while improving your online reputation and drawing more customers to your business.
• Social media: Sharing and providing links to positive content on high PR social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter can also get your site listed higher in Google, while improving your followers’ opinion about your business.
• Profile creation: Both free and paid profile sites can be used to post useful information and link to various relevant sites. By posting helpful comments in forums and engaging in discussions, the useful content provided will reflect positively on your company’s online reputation.
• User-created content: Sites that allow businesses and individuals to post photos, videos and written content can also be extremely useful – these can include websites such as Youtube or Flickr. You can add relevant content and include your brand in the short profiles and descriptions in order to gain better thought leadership.

The positive content you will regularly place on various websites will not erase the negative or misleading reviews and posts that others have associated with your brand; however, it will give you a better fighting chance by overshadowing that content and convincing your readers that your business is trustworthy and genuine.

Combined with tasks such as actively monitoring your online reputation and responding to negative reviews in order to counter the threat of a bad rating, it will effectively diminish the influence that those posts can have on your future customers and notably enhance your online reputation defense tactics.

The benefits of using social media for reputation management

The advantages of social media as a reputation managing instrument go beyond the obvious small costs it implies. Social media does not only help companies become visible and active in the eyes of their clients, by publishing interesting and useful content frequently, but is also an efficient way of gaining insight into the needs and expectations of clients. Through social media, companies learn more about customer needs, and this could translate into product improvement or better marketing strategies.

Furthermore, thanks to social media, businesses acquire profound, varied and updated information on their competition, the industry and the place they occupy in it. However, the most valuable benefit brought by social media is the ability to find out what customers say about a brand in real time, and manage the comments as soon as they appear.

How to use social media for online reputation management wisely

Considering the power and potential of social media, it is of utmost importance to handle social media reputation management with the greatest care, wisdom and flair, or else it can backfire.
The first aspect of a wise reputation management strategy is choosing the right social media platforms. Platforms that rank well in Google, have a professional feel and offer features that simplify communication with customers, members and followers should be preferred.

Second, constantly updating the social media profile does not only improve a company’s reputation and visibility, but also facilitates access to high search engine rankings for the profile. Google values updated, active and compelling content, and thus pushes forward social media profiles that publish new content frequently.

Third, besides publishing content frequently, and important aspect of social media reputation management is publishing content the right way. Here, using appropriate keywords plays a huge role. Both the profile and the published content must be keyword-embedded so that users can find the information they are searching for easily and search engines can list the profile among the first results for the relevant keyword.

Fourth, companies should not use social media platforms one-sidedly. Content publishing is not enough for an intelligent online reputation management strategy. Companies should take advantage of the communication potential of social media in order to learn more about their clients and interact with them, in real time. Consequently, an important aspect of social media reputation management is social listening. On social media platforms, feedback from customers is extremely easy to gather. Thus, the company can manage potentially damaging comments before it is too late.

By building a well thought-out social profile, paying close attention to what is said about the company on social media platforms, and taking firm and quick measures as soon as negative content appears, your online reputation can be easily defended and even improved.

These potential PR nightmares happened in the span of just a week recently, and similar examples will continue happening.

But what is the right way to handle a crisis so that it ends up being a positive or neutral event instead of a negative?

1. Stay Calm and Mind the Reaction

As quickly as possible, you need to assess the situation to understand exactly what is going on. Work to understand your/your company’s direct and indirect roles in the crisis as well as how the public is likely to perceive the situation.

Work internally to identify the ultimate path to resolving the crisis. Do customers need to be satisfied personally? Would a strong policy change ease any issues? Does the public need to be made aware of what is going on? Do not be defensive internally as you come up with a plan of attack and don’t be defensive when dealing with media and/or customers.

2. Make a Sincere Statement
As quickly as possible you need to address the issue(s). You should express sincere regret for the event (ship crash, food mishap, beating your spouse, etc.) and clearly explain what you plan to do to make things right (full refund, fire employees and institute policy changes, anger management counseling).

The goal of making a statement is to clearly explain the situation and set an end point for the crisis. If people believe and trust you, then the statement and follow on actions will go miles to rebuilding credibility.

Your message should always be about the victim(s), why you regret what happened, and how you’re going to fix things going forward.

3. Prepare for the Social Media Onslaught
Online reputation management is critical during a crisis event. Not only do you need to monitor your Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other social channels, but you should also set up alerts to monitor the blogosphere and web at large.

You need your messaging to be laser focused and participate in the conversations wherever they may be. Don’t try to control the conversation – that won’t work. Instead, participate in it.

4. Follow Through
Since you’ve established how you’re going to fix the problem, keep your word. Resolving the problem effectively will not only show that you are able to keep your word, but will also help in establishing credibility again.

If you fail to keep your word, the backlash can be even more severe than if you did nothing at all.

Consider the incident a few years ago with JetBlue where passengers were stranded on board for over 12 hours during an ice storm. They issued a ‘Passengers Bill of Rights’ that was meant as a policy change next time passengers were stranded, thus accepting fault and making a go-forward plan. Unfortunately, soon after another incident happened where passengers were stuck and JetBlue didn’t live up to their end of the bargain. The resulting media coverage of that more minor incident was overly severe.

Of course, getting a plan in place first is important, so…

0. Create a Response Team and Process
Of course the best course of action is to have a plan in place well before a crisis happens. Have a team already in place that is ready to address issues as they arise. Know who the decision makers will be, and how statements need to be issued.

Online reputation management isn’t something you can control quickly, and in the case of a crisis, decisions need to be made at lightning speed.

It also makes sense to strengthen your online presence well before a problem occurs. Have profiles established at several sites (YouTube, Facebook, business directories) where you can control the content. Publish press releases on a regular basis to fill up the web with positive content. Ultimately the goal is to own the first couple of pages of the major search engines so when people search they get a positive impression of you.

If you don’t have the ability and experience to handle this in-house, then you should have an agency on retainer that’ll navigate the PR minefield with you. When a crisis happens, all eyes are on you. How you respond determines whether people stick with you or abandon the sinking ship. And you don’t often get a second chance.

Unfortunately for restaurant owners, business listings on popular sites like Google and Yelp don’t always yield the best results. In fact, not long ago, Yelp has introduced a type of automatic “review filter” that completely hides reviews considered to be fake and even obscures their ratings from search engines.

Many positive reviews are hidden as well, and, to make matters worse, Yelp hasn’t disclosed the criteria upon which the filter operates; so, basically, you never know why your positive reviews disappear.

Similarly, despite Google’s attempt to include reviews on their Places pages from a wider variety of sources (not just review sites), the algorithms they had set in place have been hiding almost 90% of the reviews associated to restaurants in the past few months. This goes particularly for positive reviews, so basically a lot of “reputation points” are lost in the process.

How Destructive Can Negative Reviews Be?

Now, many don’t realize just how debilitating negative reviews can be. In 2010, about 67% of the people who have read a negative review on Yelp changed their mind about visiting the restaurant in question. Today, the number has reached more than 80%.

Also, according to a detailed Harvard study, up to 9% of a restaurant’s revenue can be lost as a result of a single bad review. To make matters worse, many restaurants simply ignore these reviews, even though many of those who posted them can be convinced to change their minds.

A New Answer for Independent Restaurants: ORM

This is where the difference between smart and unsuccessful independent restaurants is made. Restaurant owners who are truly dedicated to their work and don’t want a few threats to stand in the way of their spotless online reputation have found a new method to deal with the problem: ORM (online reputation management).

This is a technique that involves monitoring your company’s reputation on the web and taking measures to ensure that any negative feedback is properly dealt with.

It involves publishing content on a variety of websites to increase popularity, monitoring your reviews and ratings on as many review sites as possible, getting multiple listings on the first page of popular search engines such as Google and Bing, as well as responding to negative reviews as fast as possible.

Of course, changing a customer’s negative opinion can be quite easy at times. In some cases, reviews are based on a single visit to your restaurant, so all you have to do is call the person back and have them visit the restaurant again for an improved experience. Often, however, finding the bad review in the first place can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Many restaurant owners who are unable to cope with all these activities on their own or simply don’t have the time for them have hired online reputation management firms, such as Spotless Rep, to deal with the problem. With their help, it is easy to keep track of numerous review and citation sites, follow your customer outreach progress and keep track of your competitors.

The bottom line is that, nowadays, if you own a restaurant, building a strong online reputation is the only real way to keep your customers rolling in the front door. Online reputation management provides you with a quick and easy way of doing this, and, if you do it right, the results will be nothing short of astonishing.

Online reputation management (ORM) is basically a service that places at a company’s disposal all the tools and resources necessary for it to gain a significantly higher degree of control on how well it is presented on the internet.

Various methods are used to emphasize the positive aspects of the products, services, policy and customer service of the company, while also ensuring that defamatory and negative reviews are effectively suppressed.

Essentially, therefore, the goal is to improve your brand’s image online, so that, if new customers look for you, they will only find positive reviews that will gain their trust and place your business in a better light.

The Importance of ORM for Active Internet Businesses

These days, the importance of ORM is undeniable. Virtually all businesses that have some form of online presence need a clean reputation if they hope to attract new clients and increase their profits.

As you may have suspected, however, even the companies that offer the best services and manufacture products that work almost perfectly have a difficult time getting spotless reviews and 5 star ratings. There will always be someone who posts a review to point out various deficiencies (real or not) or to simply exaggerate some mildly negative aspects of a business’ approach that are often of little or no consequence.

A recent study conducted by professor Michael Luca at the Harvard Business School has shown how high ratings on the famous review site, Yelp, often leads to increases in revenue of over 8% in the case of independent restaurants operating in Seattle. The study also showed how, in only one month, more than 63 million people have used Yelp to find information about companies before spending their money on their products and how, in more than 80% of the cases, a single negative review was enough to change their minds.

All this shows that companies need online reputation management in order to get better ratings, improve their relationships with their clients and reduce the effects of any type of crisis that may arise as a result of negative content posted on blogs, review sites or any other noteworthy online location.

Effective ORM Methods

Simply being aware that ORM is needed will, of course, not solve anything. A proactive approach is needed if you want to effectively keep track of your company’s online reputation and use any countermeasures necessary to diminish the effect of a threat.

Apart from this, publishing quality online content, broadening your horizon to a variety of high PR sites (social network, social bookmarking, consumer review sites, blogging communities etc.), as well as curating your business profile to highlight and present the best aspects regarding your company’s history and policy are your best chances for improving your online reputation.

You can also gain a lot by contracting one of the ORM businesses that have emerged lately, such as Spotless Rep, which can show you all you need to know about improving your online reputation and give you the tools required to get the job done properly.

ORM may not solve all your problems, of course, but it will considerably improve your chances of building a solid reputation for your business and becoming the leading brand in your niche. The profit potential alone would be worth taking into account, not to mention that the more people start trusting your company, the less you have to worry about negative reviews in the long run.

How Important Is ORM for Your Business’ Success?

Now, as a business owner, you have to be prepared at all times to deal with a potential crisis that may be caused by negative reviews. The question is: how much of a problem can the lack of an online reputation management plan be, and would it justify hiring an ORM service?

To answer this question, we have to look at a few crucial facts:

• First of all, according recent studies, more than 90% of consumers trust the recommendation of others and regularly visit review sites for information before buying products or hiring service providers.
• 87% of a company’s potential customers believe that the CEO’s reputation is closely linked to the company’s reputation.
• During a period of 5 years, on average, 83% of all companies face at least one reputation crisis that ends up impacting more than 20% of their share price.
• A single bad customer review can end up impacting 9% of a company’s total revenue.

Based on these facts, we can safely state not only that most companies rely heavily on customer reviews and a clean online reputation in order to avoid stagnation or significant revenue losses, but that basically none of them are safe from the potentially devastating effects that bad reputation can bring.

Keeping an eye on your reputation is, therefore, a critical requirement regardless of your experience or of the type of business you own. However, for business owners, it is extremely difficult to keep track of every piece of information posted about their company, and it can be a real challenge to find the time to cover all the demanding needs that a successful ORM plan would involve.

This is why hiring an ORM service would be the best course of action. An ORM company’s ability to monitor and counteract the many potential threats that an internet business may face can provide online business owners with the great opportunity of eliminating a crisis before it even happens.

Matt Cutts, Google’s anti-spam and SEO spokesman, has said numerous times that Google bots (spiders) look at over 200 different criteria to identify which site is most relevant for the given search phrase. This mega software uses these factors and scores each web page from 0-10. This is often referred to as ‘page rank’.

Exactly what Google looks for on your web page is purposefully unclear, but it can be narrowed down to the two most important factors to: content and inbound links.

Google’s job is to show search results for any keyword you search. It is true that Google looks at your web page as a whole, but Google is mainly only interested in the content of your site (text, videos, images). As long as the back-end code is not interfering with the spiders crawling your site, then most everything else except the text becomes irrelevant.

Then we should ask, “What should I do to make Google recognize my content”? The simplified answer is to have lots of original, relevant, fresh content without any grammatical mistakes (for your readers!).

Original Content
When it comes to Google, content that is copied from other sites can be a big no-no. Many sites get flagged and penalized by Google for simply having duplicate content. Keep your content as original as possible.

Updating the Site with Fresh Content
Google likes new, fresh stuff! Press releases, news articles and blogs are good examples of fresh content updated on a regular basis. The more often a page is updated, the more often Google comes back to index it. This is a good thing!

Keyword-Rich Content
Placing buying keywords in your content is critical. If your web site is ‘selling jewelry’, make sure you mention ‘selling jewelry’ or ‘jewelry store’ or ‘discount jewelry’ or similar keywords. Try not to repeat your keywords too many times.

Clean Copy
If your web site has grammatical or spelling mistakes it can negatively effect your site’s ranking due to de creased visit times and high bounce rates, so clean it up! If you stink at clean copy, hire a copywriter or editor to ‘smooth out’ your site.

In the future we’ll talk about about the other important factor – linking strategies.

What about your company’s website? Is it mobile optimized? And how does this affect your online reputation? It is often the case that mobile users leave a company’s official website because it is not mobile friendly enough, and click on another website where they can find interesting information on the company much more easily. Unfortunately, the latter could be a forum where a frustrated customer or employee expresses their anger or dissatisfaction concerning the company. If they want to avoid such situations, website owners should become aware of the importance of optimizing their website for mobile access, taking into account the differences between mobile users and traditional desktop users.

“Internet users are the same, just their devices differ” – is it really so?

The fact that mobile internet users and desktop users have the same characteristics is a big misconception. Mobile internet access is, in fact, a different experience than traditional internet access. First, the needs of mobile internet users are influenced by the fact that they are on the move, and they have to find useful information extremely fast. Second, mobile search results might be considerably different from PC search results, and one factor that has a major say in this is the user’s location. Depending on where they are, the browsing experience of mobile users can be extremely different. If they do not take these differences into consideration when optimizing their websites, companies risks receiving a serious blow to their online reputation.

Mobile reputation defense solutions

Adapting a website to the demands of mobile internet users is crucial for online reputation management. One of the simplest solutions available would be designing a whole new mobile website for the company and attracting mobile users to this one, instead of the traditional landing page. This solution is simple, but not very elegant. A better alternative would be separating HTML depending on the type of device used to access the company’s page. However, managing two websites could be a difficult thing to do. Google’s preferred solution is redesigning the whole website so that CSS changes the look of the pages depending on the size of the screen.

Optimizing a website for mobile experience is a basic and critical step in defending your online reputation. A mobile friendly site prevents users from leaving the website in a manner of seconds and also increases a company’s trustworthiness by improving the communication with mobile users, taking into consideration their needs and expectations. Unfortunately, few companies really understand the importance of mobile optimization.

If you do not want to lag behind in the fast moving world of mobile internet access, taking care of the mobile compatibility of your website is the first step you must make.