SoloSEO

Online Reputation Strategies

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on July 16th, 2008

In the evolution of all things online, we have come to a place where individuals can now employ some online strategies to really hammer at a firm’s or individual’s reputation. And if these dipsticks are good at what they do, they can have a disastrous influence on potential clients and partners. Michael and I have had the opportunity to meet with a number of large firms, even Fortune 500 companies, to discuss online strategies and systems, including online reputation management.

Yesterday we sat down with a company we are quite familiar with. We have had discussions with them over the years on a number of different technological systems to improve aspects of their business. We first discussed SEO strategies with them starting back in March of 2007. But at that time, due to some management changes and architecture issues, we didn’t have the opportunity to help them much. Yesterday their online situation had changed a bit, in that they are now facing some online reputation challenges, and they know something needs to be done, and the sooner the better.

No doubt about it, we will see more and more of these sorts of online attacks in the future, there seems to be something very empowering about a keyboard and a screen. Words and comments people would never say in public or audibly, get thrown up on blogs and as comments every day, with little consequence to the mud slinger. So what can we do about protecting our firm, and our firm’s reputation. Here are a few words of advice.

Michael made a great comment yesterday about openness in business, which has become so more important in this online revolution. We as business owners and managers of firms need to be more open to the public, even if it is uncomfortable or unnerving. I personally was raised in a family where we kept our “problems” “in house” so to speak. I mean we felt like “why should we share our dirt with the neighborhood?” It was none of their business, and we didn’t want to look any less perfect than we already did. In corporate America, this type of “keep the dirty laundry in-house” attitude has been prominent. Large firms used to be very good at ignoring what others were saying, they would just pretend to look the other way, refuse to comment and they hoped, with time, the problem would eventually go away. And to a degree I think this strategy worked and had merit. But that won’t work anymore. If we aren’t willing to get in the discussion, especially a negative one, then we risk appearing out of touch, and most importantly we risk letting others present our firm’s image in a light which may not be representative, nor fair.

This type of corporate openness can also have sort of a self-policing aspect to it. If we are open about what is going on inside the company, freely discussing issues head on, there will be more internal effort to make sure nothing actually does goes too wrong internally, as people are being held responsible for their actions, and frankly dealing with problems is a royal pain. I wonder if the stories of Tyco and MCI might have been a bit different if openness from top to bottom was a policy in those organizations? Perhaps.

So, how can we get involved in the online clammer? One method is to pay attention to what others are saying about your company. There are many ways to do this. Michael shared the example of how Comcast monitors Twitter for comments about their company, then quickly responds to these comments, positive or negative, to make sure they are heading off any potential problems. What a wonderfully proactive way to interact, and to be apart of the online social conversation. Obviously watching the Twitter feed to perhaps find something about your firm would be time consuming, and maybe impractical if it is a small firm, but it is also possible to go back and search the archives of Twitter. Then, when we have the time, we can write a blog post using keywords that might associate our firm with the past comments, and deal with the issue head on. I also would suggest contacting the person who made the comment directly, just to see if there isn’t anything that can be done to improve their attitude toward the company. You might find them pretty surprised you cared, and possibly shocked you knew they had commented in the first place.

I personally use Google Alerts to watch for keywords which are important to me. I use it for my name and each firm name, just to keep any eye on things online. If anyone uses these tagged words online, Google alerts me, and we can then go and check it out and deal with it. It is a very helpful, and frankly reassuring system. When a hot topic comes up, and our firm is put in the discussion, we make sure to get some content out there, on a new web page, or in a blog to address the issue, making sure we use the very keywords used in the attack. We all need to make sure that when someone puts across a potentially negative view, that we have provided our own narrative of the situation to buffer a searcher’s reaction. If we are open and honest to the problem, potential clients will give us the well-deserved benefit of the doubt , which we essentially earned by responding directly. I don’t think individuals are naive enough to believe everything they read, but they are more likely to believe when no opposing view is offered.

When considering future pages or blog post, perhaps we should discuss items that might be problems in the future… If you are an injury attorney, I would have a page discussing the term “ambulance chaser.” A used car salesman should discuss the whole sales process and perhaps offer steps on how to avoid buying a lemon. Helpful content like this is not only beneficial in reputation management, but also assists in building a group of loyal readers who appreciate your unique view of your market. We each know our individual markets better than most our clients will, and they might as well learn it from us. Then when shots are taking at our reputations, we have a trusting readership to come to our aide, and participate in the conversation. So the online noise will not only be from some delusional competitor or a disgruntled client, but also from us directly, and others that have learned to trust us over time.

The bigger the firm, the bigger the challenge to manage online reputations. Fortunately there are more complex and technologically advanced methods for larger companies, with more online real estate to protect, but these strategies take a new mindset, a great deal of money and usually new internal and technological architecture to fully implement. Most of us will never have to worry about this extreme level of reputation protection, but if there is a time when your large firm or you yourself do need some help, let us know, we have learned a great deal on how to deal with these challenges, even on the largest of scales.

In short, as a buddy of mine likes to say, “just keep it real,” and online that advice is good as good as any, especially when managing what others can find out about you through search.

1 comment Visited 3065 times July 16th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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Should I Use Local Keywords in Content?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on July 7th, 2008

Small business owners going online need to consider just how local their keywords need to be when creating their content. If I was a business owner who had a brick and mortar location, with items for sale to the public, I would be including all kinds of local terms in as much content as possible, to drive new traffic to the location, and to find clients willing to support local business, even online. When I personally search online for a product, I not only look for the best price, the best guarantee, and if the product is in stock, but I also check to see how close the business is to my location. I like to support local business, (and online local to me is within the state). it is better for our local economy, and that makes sense to me. (Sorry, you can’t take the Economics degree out of my thought processes). I am sure there are others who think like this, and if there isn’t, there should be…

If I were only an online business, and my sales were not at least partially reliant on customers dropping by the shop. I would first spend most my content creation time on the product lines, each product individually, the business, the history, vision, etc. Being very careful to use all possible keywords I think searchers might use to find my business within this content. Unfortunately there is still a degree of distrust when dealing online, there are a lot of scammers out there, and most of us kind of want to get the product we pay for, so a cautious evaluation process is a good idea. By spending some time to write thoughtfully about your business, the history, your goals, your vision, you can humanize your online business and put others at ease. If you can get them to take ownership in your business pursuit and feel like they are contributing to it, then you are a step closer to the sell. I love to read customer reviews of sites and stores, many do, so a small business owner needs to create and manage their online reputation. One great way to get started is to sign up for LeaveFeedback.org. LeaveFeedback.org was created by my partner, Michael Jensen, to help small businesses build and grow their online feedback. Once you have established yourself as a trustworthy online business, more qualified buyers will feel comfortable buying from you when they find you. In fact even businesses looking to improve their local traffic should sign up for LeaveFeedback.org, I read about local businesses too, before I will take the time to drive over there and check them out.

Once a local-centric or an online-centric business has established themselves with some good solid content, then they can branch out and become more creative with their content creation. Dabble with video, attempt to use more interesting keywords, try some Pay-Per-Click, I even have seen some online business using local keywords outside their geographical area in an attempt to hijack local business traffic,. This is a perfectly legal practice, and I guess could bring a few extra clients, as long as you have taken careful steps to establish your business as trustworthy and reliable online. But I must say this sort of online marketing kind of ticks me off, as does much of the black hat SEO tricks discussed at SMX Advanced. When I search, I just want to find what I am looking for, I don’t want to come across some spammed out site just trying to slime any traffic possible. Some use their despicable, silly tricks to get a higher ranking. When folks use tricks to game the search engines, they are just making the rest of us suffer for very greedy and selfish reasons. I have talked about this spamming mess in the past… My opinion, just run a good business, satisfy your clients, sell good products, and have your site reflect your values and you will do well online, just as you can in the real world. Don’t buy the hype that some whiz-kid has a few SEO tricks up his sleeve, and for a few bucks he can take a site to online Nirvana, its crap.

The differences between content for a local/online and only online business are subtle, but important. Those business looking for local traffic, need to add local keywords. Those firms that are solely online really don’t. But in all cases, make sure the content is unique, a good read, and sincere and good things will happen. Shoppers prefer businesses which care enough to communicate a message and take the time to address potential concerns, if our sites do this, we will be in good shape.

Add comment Visited 1859 times July 7th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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Is Blogging For You? Heck, Is Blogging For Me?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on July 3rd, 2008

I have blogged here regularly in the past, I could easily see blogging was a pretty great idea, especially to generate new content for a site you want to start ranking well. I still think blogging is an excellent method to add content to a site, we have seen the benefit of content with SoloSEO.com, and our rankings. However, I was also pretty shocked to discover some unexpected results from blogging, which I kind of feel need to be addressed.

Others have discussed the time commitment required to keep a good blog going, such as adding a good post once a week, well written, and contributing something worth reading. This is definitely the case, and I personally think blogging is even more difficult for the small business owner. Owning your own business, let alone two or three, means you have a number of hats you need to wear to keep the business running. Small business owners have to be the marketing, HR, accounting, sales and maintenance departments all at once. Allocating time to manage a blog, although important, may not be the best use of your time. It really depends on the type of business being run, and just how much revenue is hope to be gained from online leads and sales. If online sales will never contribute more than 25% of total revenue, I would suggest not spending to much time on it. If more then 25% is or hopefully will be from online leads and sales, then working on content is a good strategic use of time. In this case, my suggestion would be to keep posts pretty short, a paragraph or two, and focus them on the company, products, policies, and vision of the company, etc. I good history of the company and how it came to be, can also be good reading and provide clients with a good feeling about the business. Blogging like this makes it pretty easy to write something quickly, as business owners are well versed in these areas, and are virtually assured to use keywords which relate well to what a business is and does, which in turn helps rankings for keywords potential clients are using when the search.

There are other results of blogging which I never imagined. Over the last few years I have attended PubCon and SMX. They are great shows, and I have a great time learning, but the last show kind of freaked me out. I was just moving along through the show, headed to another session, when I was stopped by a few people who kindly informed me they liked some of the stuff I had put up on our blog. I had never been stopped abruptly like that before, expect maybe a Highway Patrolman. It was very nice of these folks to stop, it was very nice of them to be nice, whether they really felt this way about our blog or not, but I was kind of mystified by it all… Everyone needs to understand before they start a blog that putting your stuff online, and attaching your name to it means your content will be there for a very long time, if not forever, and you might actually become “known” in the industry are attempting to succeed within. There are those on this earth who crave attention, and desire to be in the public eye. I am sure you know a few, there are some obvious examples in the SEO industry. However, I am not one of these people. For me personally, any notoriety at all is not a good thing, positive or negative. I would rather sneak through life leaving as little a mark as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be educated, successful in business, I want to be a good dad and husband, but I would rather accomplish these things without anyone else outside of my close circle really knowing or caring.

My personal goals include contributing to the public good, help as many people as I can, through business, through sharing expertise, through any method possible, but I want to be able to do it as anonymously as possible. The thought of being recognized out on the street, by anyone, for any reason, is very, very unsettling, I want no part of it. So, if you are like me, and are attempting to go through life as quietly as possible, I would suggest not blogging, or at least not blogging with your name attached to it. Instead blog as a company staff member, or use a stage name, “SEO Stan,” “Golfing Joe,” or something like that, so you can remain nameless.

The experience at the show has really reduced my desire to blog, which is too bad… I want to share stuff I have learned, I want our site to grow and continue to rank better, and blogging is an excellent way to get that done, but I don’t want any notoriety for it. Kind of a weird place to be… When was the last time you listened to a nameless face offering advice? I am not sure how to get that done at this point, but I am working on figuring it out, when I do, I will let you know, until then I guess I blog as me.

All this being said, content really is king for sites attempting to rank well for a long period of time, and blogging is a great way to get the content up there, it just isn’t as painless as I had originally thought, or hoped it would be. To avoid the spotlight, perhaps we could just spend time on improving or expounding on the products pages and descriptions, as well as on pages about the company, product quality, guarantee policies, new products, goals for the company, etc., rather than just blogging this new content. The topics for new pages to add to a business site are endless.

Ultimately, if you want to get your name out there and be recognized as an expert in the field, then blogging is a great way to do it. If you don’t, that’s fine too, but content still needs to be created for your site, either don’t attach your name to it, or just focus on pimping out your web pages, with superior, unique content as no author’s name is required.

Oh, one last thing… If our paths happen to cross in the future at any of the upcoming shows, just ignore me completely. I would really appreciate it.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th of July holiday.

Add comment Visited 1767 times July 3rd, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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6 Signs Your Website Has Been SEO’d

Posted by Michael D Jensen on July 2nd, 2008

If you have hired an SEO firm, you may not know what to look for to check and see if your SEO firm is working hard at doing the SEO. Here are 6 signs to look for to know if they are making progress in SEO. If you don’t see most of these, call them on it and probably find a new SEO firm.

1) Title, URLs and Meta tags

You should see your main keyword in the title of your homepage and unique titles for each of your pages (with keywords in them). You may see your URL structure change, but your old URLs should still redirect somewhere relevant.

Your meta tags (description especially) should be well-written and concise, and unique for most pages of your site.

2) Analytics code

When you “view source” you should see some type of Javascript code for an Analytics program, like Google, Omniture, or IndexTools. If you don’t see this, you should have been given a link to view them because they are using a log based analytics tool (like AWstats).

3) Image Alt Text

When you “view source” your images (not all, but relevant ones like product/service related images) will have an “alt” or “title” attribute, preferably an “alt” attribute according to some.

4) New Links

Go to Yahoo’s SiteExplorer, type in your website URL, and then look at the “Inlinks”. You should have links from other websites you didn’t get links from already, and this number should grow month after month. You should get unique links, from more than just one website, so don’t just look at the number of inlinks.

5) New Content

You (or your SEO firm) should be continually adding content to your site. Whether you add and maintain a blog, develop something for user-generated content, or just add articles to your site each week/month, new content helps keep you in good terms with Google. You can check the number of pages from the Pages link in Yahoo’s SiteExplorer or by using the “site:” operator in Google.

6) Reports

Your SEO company should also be sending you periodic reports and rankings, covering the above items. Most SEO companies send out ranking reports, but be sure to ask for reports on new link strategies, data from your analytics (popular keywords, referrals, goal conversion, etc.) and competitive analysis.

For most of these you should be able to see changes within the first few weeks of starting with an SEO company. Links and content can sometimes take a little longer to see come through, especially if your site is newer. If you don’t see any progress, call up your SEO firm and ask about it. If they give you the “wait 6+ months line” then run away. You can always try do-it-yourself SEO too!

Add comment Visited 3189 times July 2nd, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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