People have asked me, “how do I deal with negative comments about my business online?” More businesses are now concerned about Negative complaints on forum sites or somewhere else on the Internet. SEO or Reputation Management companies may claim to be able to hide them. I want to warn you that hiring an SEO company to “hide” or “bury” your online complaints may be one of the worst mistakes you can make. I was at a business event engaging in a conversation with a fellow business owner addressing her concerns with me, while I was providing her with solutions she and her team could do to address the negative exposure a SEO consultant aggressively claimed he could hide it and not bother running a social campaign to address it. It inspired me to write this post to warn business owners the reality of using this strategy.
This strategy usually involves creating positive profiles on social networking and other sites to rank high in search engines such as Google (NOTE – you can do this yourself for free). These companies may even claim that for a $995 up-front fee and $100-500 or more per month they can “remove” negative information from the Google search results.
SEO or “reputation management” companies create positive web pages that will show up before the negative ones, this pushes the negative results lower on Google’s search results. The negative pages are never removed, they are just a little harder to find. This is a temporary band aid effect—a negative complaint can be shown on perhaps the third or fourth page of Google results for a few days or weeks, but can pop back up to the top of the results putting you back at square one.
The best solution is to deal with the complaints online. Create a social media campaign in response to what has been said about your company. After all, this is what social media is all about a two way conversation between consumers and businesses. The days of one way marketing communication are over. So step up to the plate, write PR articles, make YouTube videos, FB/Blog posts, tweets etc… stating what you have done to address the negative complaint, and if it was not valid compliant then address it and try reaching out to the person who made the. You may be pleasantly surprised that person may turn out to be a raving fan of your business in the end. Clear communication and improvement processes are key. The public knows no one is perfect, if you admit that you are human and care enough to take actions to ensure the problem does not happen again, people will respect you more for it. I am a firm believer that all publicity is good. It’s all about your reactions that matter.
Integrity is Key! It’s all about Progress- Love how Social Media is a reflection of human progress! If you think this will help your fellow peers and friends, please share this on your Facebook, and Twitter! Also, let me know your thoughts on this and your experiences and observations! 🙂
Hello there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found that it is truly informative. I’m going to watch out for updates. I’ll be grateful if you continue this in future. A lot of people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
Thanks Anna! Love hearing that my blog is informative! Love hearing from blog readers like you! Hope you are putting to action the suggestions you are learning from my blog! Keep me updated on your progress, experience or any questions you have. Comment away, I am always here to help. Ensure you subscribe via email in the Subscribe box above, to ensure you get notified of upcoming blog posts. Cheers to your online success! 🙂
Yay google is my world beater helped me to attain this admirable web tangle situate ! .
I love reading your blog, I always get more clarity on building a online presence and managing my online reputation from your blog. Thanks
Wow, wonderful blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your web site is excellent, let alone the content!. Thanks For Your article about Warning Using SEO to Hide Negative Comments about your BIZ is not the solution! | Social Media With Rita .
Hi, I am Lisa. I am a teacher. There is an old saying from China. Never too late to learn. I learned a lot from your blog. like your article so much. Earrings
the information you showed us is very reliable. Thank You.
I like your blog. One thing I noticed, it was very hard to find really good blogs that offer great, easy and fun to read solutions about online marketing. Thank you, Rita. 🙂
Hey There. I found your blog using msn. This is a really
well written article. I will make sure to bookmark it and come
back to read more of your useful info. Thanks for the post.
I’ll certainly comeback.
Very rapidly this web site will be famous among all bblog visitors, due to it’s pleasant posts
Hey! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone 4!
Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward
to all your posts! Keep up the great work!
garcinia cambogia I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own blog and was curious what all is required to get setup?
I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny?
I’m not very internet smart so I’m not 100% certain.
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers garcinia cambogia reviews
I’ve been surfing online more than 3 hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours.
It’s pretty worth enough for me. In my opinion, if all website owners
and bloggers made good content as you did, the net will be a lot
more useful than evera before.
Wonderful article! We are linking too thgis particularly great post onn our website.
Keep up the great writing.
Good day I am so thrilled I found your site, I really found you by error,
while I was looking on Askjeeve for something else, Nonetheless I
am here now and would just like to say kudos for a tremendous post and a
all round enjoyable blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to browse it all at the moment but
I have saved it and also included your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a lot more, Please do keep up the great job.
Sweet blog! I found it while browsing on Yahoo News. Do you have any tips on how
to get listed in Yahoo News? I’ve been trying for a while but
I never seem to get there! Many thanks
Greetings! Very helpful advice within this article!
It’s the little changes that produce the greatest changes.
Many thanks for sharing!