The Importance of On-Line Reputation Management and Reputation Building
By Thomas R. Reich PhD
For years so called “SEO experts” have touted SEO methods as the soul methods for growing a website, and therefore according to them, a company’s on-line reputation. At one time in the very recent past, this was partially true. Those “SEO Tricks” could bring high traffic to a website, even get a websites name high on a search engine listing. But ask yourself, when you are searching for a product or a solution to a problem, do you know what you are looking for? Those old “SEO” protocol methods and “tricks” assume that the searcher is tech savvy enough to search the vast internet using keywords, as if SEO type keywords were as easy to use for a search as the local phone book directory use to be, good luck with that!
Here is the truth, fame is in the mention of a name, not how it is mentioned, not so much where or why it is mentioned, just the repetitive mention of that name over a long period of time. Now to some, that may seem like marketing basics of the 1950’s and 60’s, guess what, they would be right. Todays SEO or Search Engine Optimization is much closer to the marketing of “Mad Men” than that of the hocus pokus of yesterdays SEO. To “optimize the search engine” for your business website today you must do three things:
First – Properly represent your company and all aspects of that company and it’s products and services in a home base, the company website. In this company website it is important to highlight the company history, achievements, stature and awards in the industry and community as well as all pertinent information such as address, certifications, organizations and associations etc..
Second – Make the company website an information resource for the products and services it represents without actually directly “selling” those products and services on the website. Videos on how a product is made or how a service is preformed close up interviews with customers, reviews of successful projects and job site examples. Have a network of social media connected to the company website that is branded to the website and the company and used as a backlink system to bring eyes to the website, press releases and other non-commercial advertising all leading to this hub of information which is your company website. These forms of outreach build credibility and reputation in the community.
Third – Build On-Line Reputation: This is the tricky part, this is what is new and this is what the Trump Organization did so masterfully. A reputation can not be bought it must be built over time, but no matter how bad things may seem, a good marketing company like Cheetah Marketing Group of Orlando and Central Florida can make thing better. Poor outdated websites, bad or nonexistent articles about products, even bad reviews can all be dealt with, when you know what you are doing.
How to Build On-Line Reputation?
First, remember the old adage there is no bad publicity, well to some degree in many cases, this is now more in effect than ever. Watch Donald Trump and his army of marketing geniuses, for 30 years Trump was in the news. Good, bad, silly or straight, Trump was a fixture, “in a name is power”, in a name is on-line ranking, in a name over time a business website can become powerful in a niche, a narrow market slice.
For example, a company is involved in auto repair, what can they do to build an online reputation and what can they learn from the Trump Campaign? Here is a quick outline of what can be done over time to begin to build an online reputation for a specific name and own a portion of the market that looks for that name as the defacto standard for that service no matter what.
For this example of on-line reputation building, the name of our auto repair company is “Widget Auto” in Orlando Florida.
- Get a proper marketing team (one like Cheetah Marketing Group) to build an interactive and constantly growing website that both represents Widget Auto and becomes an information resource for Widget Auto’s auto repair specialties in the community they serve.
- Have a marketing team that develops a social media and social sharing network, branded to the company website, that can be visited and updated by the company, customers, interested visitors as well as the the marketing team. Encourage shearing of links to articles and blogs on the company website both to the social media from the company website and then from the social media network to others social media and blogs.
- Work with the marketing team to create events that are worthy of press releases, get involved in community events that tie Widget Auto name to publicity and signage and improve the company’s actual signage and logo to match the overall new drive towards on-line relevance. In other words bring the company’s face into the modern age. CLICK HERE TO UNDERSTAND FACE RANK
- Get employees evolved in community organizations; donate prizes to local Rotary or Mason events, anything that gets Widget Auto mentioned.
The more the name and uniquely attractive logo of “Widget Auto” is mentioned on line, whether or not it is specifically about automotive repair, “Widget Auto” becomes a more powerful online magnet for search engine traffic. As search engines are helping searchers find information on how an auto AC works, and even better, if this searcher is located in Central Florida, Google and other search engines look for not only articles about AC, but articles that are not selling anything, and if possible from a local source. If that local source has been mentioned by local news, charities, reviewed positively and has an active social media network also related to auto maintenance, that organization will get to the top of the search results every time for those keyword niches.
Conclusion, there are very few potential new customers that will search for “Widget Auto” as a search term out of the blue when looking for auto repair, that is just a fact. But increased name recognition will help in that regard over time. When search results bring up 6 good results, the familiar name on the page 1 list is “Widget Auto” so that is what the searcher clicks on. This is on-line reputation, this is Face Rank.
However, in the internet economy, it can be referred to as the reputation economy, because potential customers search by need of service or product not by name of the supplier. Local phone books no longer exist, so the way a monster search engine like Google handles searches to better satisfy their user/customers (the searcher), is by finding the most relevant article on the most local website. They usually give 40,000 or so results but all that matters is the first and second page, as the listing progress down the list and onto the second and third page, the articles become more important and location irrelevant. By the middle of the second page a Florida searcher is finding information from a California website.
To be part of the relevant local search (page 1), it takes much more than that old style SEO, it takes Targeted Content Marketing, Targeted Location Marketing, a great online reputation and Proper Execution over time.
At Cheetah Marketing Group, we developed DDD or Deep Rich Data Marketing Program for small and midsized businesses that have been frustrated by non-performing on line websites. Even firms that use PPC will find our methods will increase the success rate of PPC activity 2 fold or more over time. Now we have introduced Deep Rich Data II to rate your website, suggest changes and additions to increase organic traffic. Then measure results and progress with Deep Rich Data II and Google Analytics to optimize for stellar results with Google’s RankBrain
At Cheetah Marketing Group we realize the internet did not re-invent the wheel, it just took it 20 years to get back around to good old fashioned fact based marketing.
When you decide Deep Content Marketing might be a direction you wish to investigate, contact Cheetah Marketing Group. For over 30 years, we have created marketing programs for large companies and small alike. Our content creation is supervised by PhDs and MBAs, and our results are stellar.
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