An online user’s first experience with your brand mostly happens when they search about a product, service, or information you’re offering and you come up in Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages). No, not your website directly. This is the reason why in SEO, it’s important to be able to influence an online user’s organic first impression. Successfully doing so goes a long way toward enhancing conversion rates and building a good customer perception around your Salt Lake City business.
Needless to say, you need to be on the first page of Google’s SERPs when a user searches for keywords related to your brand. However, it’s not enough that you’re ranking. It’s also important that you’re ranking for good reasons. This is where reputation management or reverse SEO comes in.
The Impact of SERPs
The content of search results pages can impact the following:
A brand’s conversion rate. If an online user likes what they see about your brand judging from the information that SERPs give them, their visit might convert. However, if they see negative things related to your brand, the opposite may happen.
Customer impression and satisfaction. When online users and customers see positive things about your brand, it becomes easier for them to form a positive impression. If they’re already a customer, they might remember only the positive things they got from their experience interacting with your brand. However, if they see something negative written about you, they might agree with that negative comment and worse, leave negative feedback, too.
Amplification. When people see something negative about your brand, they are less likely to share or link to your pages.
The Role of Reputation Management
Reverse SEO is a method commonly used by SEO specialists to improve and manage a brand’s online reputation. This strategy is done to manage and counter any negative and unhelpful search engine results that may come up related to your brand.
Having a bad reputation can happen to anyone, regardless of how big or small your company or brand is. A customer who might have had even the slightest negative experience interacting with your brand can easily leave a bad comment about you. Even if you’ve already resolved their issue, they might forget to change the negative feedback they left previously. Moreover, some businesses complain that they get negative comments from people they know they haven’t interacted with or done business with yet.
The role of reputation management is to counter these negative search results by creating content that will hide, bury, and override them. Reputation management and reverse SEO are white hat SEO techniques as they are done following Google’s guidelines.
How Reputation Management and Reverse SEO Is Done
There are several methods that an SEO specialist can apply when doing reverse SEO. These include creating and posting a number of high-ranking content that will appear in the first pages of search results and hide the negative ones far away from the first few SERPs. It’s also recommended that brands utilize a real-time customer service support system, so that when customers have a concern, they can easily get in touch with you. This way, you can help resolve their issues before they get the chance to leave negative feedback.
Key Takeaway
Whether you have negative things said and posted about your brand online, it’s best to apply reputation management techniques to ensure that your brand is always known positively. Ultimately, you should work with an SEO specialist who knows their way around reputation management and reverse SEO to ensure the best results.