Driving Down a Search Result

Recently, a client of the agency received bad press from a blogger.  The blogger took a photo from a wire release we conducted and blasted the pictured executives.  The blog post was malicious and flat out juvenile.  There was no basis in the claims and after further review of the blog, it seems that the entire blog is dedicated to similar nonsense: poking fun of different businesses based on photography taken from wire releases.

Our agency is challenged with dealing with the blog post.  The minor crisis was compounded.  After being notified of this malicious blog, the client decided to visit the blog several times and one can assume, pass the link on to others who subsequently clicked the link.  Well, the more visits and relevancy accredited to the post does one thing... drives it up search engine result pages (SERPs).  Previously, the blog post was buried in the hundreds of Google result pages.  Now, the blog post appears as the #5 result!!

When your business faces a similar situation, maybe in the form of a bad restaurant review or a complaint by a disgruntled customer, utilize the following tips to drive negative links into the depths of SERPs.

1. Do not click the link!  As silly as this may sound, some people do not realize what a few clicks can do for a link.
2. Avoid publicizing the negative press.  This means within in your company as well.  Imagine if you tell one or two employees, who may share it with the rest of the staff.  Google and other search engines are logging in the number of IP addresses and moving the link up the ranks with every new click.
3. Have your staff work for you.  A silly concept, I know.  Send an e-mail to your employees with a link to a positive article about your business encouraging them to click it.  Keep in mind, in order to drive down the less desirable link, make sure you send a link that appears beneath it.
4. Regularly click links found under the result you are trying to drive down in the result pages.  To increase the relevancy of your links, feed search engine spiders.  Do that by clicking the link to your own website within positive articles.

Has your business or company had to deal with negative press?  What avenues to did you take to boost positive press?

Posted via email from Flack This