What is Search Engine Reputation Management?
SERM is a strategy focused on monitoring and managing the reputation of a company or individual on the web. It involves tracking and analyzing what people say about a business online, such as on search engines, social media sites, and other websites. This is done to help organizations to reduce or remove negative content and create a positive online presence, so that their customers don’t encounter any unwanted content. SERM is a way to actively manage what people view when they search for a business or individual in order to preserve a positive impression.
Search engine reputation management (SERM) provides businesses and websites with the tools to track activities that could potentially affect their reputations, as well as techniques to promote a positive image. To achieve these objectives, SERM encompasses Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search Marketing, Press Optimization, Blogging and Social Media.
Why is SERM important?
94% of customers won’t do business with an organization that has a bad online reputation, which is why it’s so important to monitor and protect your company’s image. Here are three key reasons why that matters:
– Your company’s value can be drastically improved or negatively impacted by the quality of its online reputation.
– Consumers often make decisions about whether to engage with an individual or a business based solely on what comes up when they search for it online.
– Online review sites are increasingly popular, and people read customer reviews when deciding whether to contact a company.
Search Engine Reputation Management in Baltimore (Maryland)
Our reputation team specializes in monitoring and repairing your online presence. You owe it to both yourself and your business to be aware of how you’re perceived online. Ignorance can potentially cost you quite a bit – something you don’t want to risk. So stay informed and take action where necessary.
How does SERM Work?
Once a brand has faced reputation issues, the next step is restoring their online profile. At our company, we help brands influence a positive view of their brand through online reputation strategies. We use search engine reputation management (SERM) to manipulate the public reputation in a positive direction. SERM combines SEO, social media, and content marketing plus PR to enhance the overall online reputation of the brand. We take the following steps:
- Implement strategic content marketing and promotion on the website and various social media platforms.
- Enhance SEO tactics to encourage visibility of positive content.
- Eliminate any negative posts or content with negative sentiment.
1.- Proactive Monitoring
To ensure the highest level of protection and improved reputation on the Web, proactively monitor your presence online. Utilize search engines to keep track of how your company is perceived, review blogs, read feedback and ratings from other various platforms. Over time, make sure you are present wherever your customers are engaging online. This approach will enable you to pick up and quickly address any pressing questions or concerns of customers – this can help to eliminate potential negative feedback.
2.- SERP Cleansing
SERP Cleansing is the practice of removing negative search engine results from the top pages. To optimize the top ten search results for your business, create new, impactful content such as customer reviews, media coverage, guest posts and other positive content about your company. Aggressively publishing this type of content can have a huge impact on your search engine results.
3.- Improve SEO
To improve SEO, you need to:
- Assess your website content, identifying weak points and opportunities to improve;
- Monitor your competition, track what strategies they are using and figure out how to beat them;
- Research the most relevant keywords for your industry, including long-tail phrases;
- Optimize content so that it’s seen as relevant to the search engine algorithms;
- Utilize backlinks, making sure they come from reliable sources;
- Periodically review and analyze your website performance to see if your efforts are paying off.
To enhance SEO, you should assess the content of your website, monitor your competition, research keywords relevant to your industry, optimize your content to appear more relevant to search engine algorithms, build up backlinks from credible sources, and analyze & review website performance regularly. Doing so will allow you to identify weak points, explore opportunities to improve, gain insights into competitors’ strategies, and track the efficacy of your efforts.
4.- Respond to Negative Content
When dealing with negative feedback on consumer forums or review platforms, it’s important to reach out to the unsatisfied customer in order to address their concerns and rectify the situation. Let them know their voice has been heard and apologize for any negative experience they may have had. Responding promptly and courteously to negative customer feedback can help to win back the goodwill of those unsatisfied, potentially promoting customer loyalty and a positive opinion of the company. Proactive monitoring of consumer forums and reviews can help to ensure any negative opinions are heard and addressed, and can ultimately save your brand’s reputation.
5.- Social Media Presence
Social media is a valuable tool to boost your audience, leadership and trust. Not only does it provide a platform to connect with your customers, but it can also substantially improve your presence on SERPs. Generating positive mentions and feedback of your business on social media will have a large-scale impact on search engine rankings. The more engagement you are able to gain through social media, the more trustworthiness search engines can assign to your brand.
6.- Push Positive Content
Social media is an effective mechanism to increase reach, build leadership, and increase trust. It facilitates connecting with customers and carries huge potential for improving SERP rankings. Generating beneficial sentiment and customer reviews for your business through social media contributes to greater trust placed in you by search engines. The more engagement you can earn on social media, the more trustworthiness search engines attribute to you.
Conclusions for SERM
Getting started with SERM is easy when you take cognisance of a few key things. First, it’s important that you monitor your online and offline presence – this helps you protect your reputation. Additionally, it’s essential that you foster a good online presence through active social media, helping you build and maintain relationships with your customers. Finally, don’t forget to pay attention to customer feedback – responding to both positive and negative comments can win you trust and respect. If you need extra support, the Search Engine Reputation Management experts at our networks of agencies have worked on projects in more than 30 countries and counting.
