I’m too sick to blog today, so I’ve been doing some scraping because apparently it’s really important that I update regularly because if I don’t, all my readers viewers will move on to the next new media marketing blog even if that blogger is a talentless hack next to me because we’re the internet generation, and we make the MTV generation look focused to the point of being stoic. I get cranky when I feel like this. Anyways, the Search Engine Tigers have another example of why SEO is such an integral part of reputation management:

Back in the pre-web days, when someone was unsatisfied about a service or a product, the most they’d do would be to write a letter, tell their friends, and in some extreme cases stand outside the business telling anyone going in about their issue. All of which could dissuade someone from purchasing from your business. These days, all it takes is someone with a blog to put up a post about how they didn’t like your business, and literally within minutes there’s a listing showing up against your name when someone searches for your business. […]

For example, of you do a site: search on the URL for the Virginia State Sexual Offenders Registry, you’ll see that there are over 20,000 pages indexed. That’s ~20,000 pages of Sex Offenders and Violent Sex Offenders, all with their place of employment listed in lovely spiderable text, and yes, they can rank for a business name.

Whether you like it or not, Google is the new front page and blogs have made every consumer a journalist. Since Google loves blogs, then, reputation management requires SEO. If you don’t want to take my word for it, then you should ask CBC tech-columnist Tod Maffin or SEO guru Aaron Wall because they’re both with me on this one.

Share This

A little while back I got to blogging about how the advent of universal search is really going to simplify online reputation management. It now seems, though, that aside from simplifying online reputations management, it’ll actually force a lot of companies and people to pay attention to just how multi-faceted it is.

Basically, universal search is a coming feature of Google that will provide a search results page with a bit of everything: websites, video, images, blogs, etc… The reason that I think this might simplify online reputation management is that it, if universal search becomes the most popular choice amongst the average user, it’s going to seriously reduce the number of first page results there are to compete for. As I said before:

Think about it, if a blog gets you one step closer to owning the first page, then universal search is a good thing for managing your reputation. If I Google your company name, I’m probably going to get your site, your blog, your forum, and (if you follow Loren’s advice) your video.

In other words, instead of having to compete to dominate ten spots on each kind of search (image, video, blog, etc…), companies will only really have to compete on a couple for each. If most users gravitate toward universal search (and I think they will), just like the first page of results is all that really matters now, universal search will be all that will matter in the future. If you get the top two spots for image, video, and blog searches for your company name, then you’ll probably dominate an universal search for the same query.

If you can’t see the import of this, just consider a current image search for “Jet Blue.” As Michael Gray illustrates, it turns up some embarrassing history:

So I was doing an image search and came across something interesting. Looking for [Jet Blue] showed some interesting results. What caught my eye was the pictures of the failed landing gear incident. Not what I would consider an ideal image SERP. What does your an image SERP for your company, your product or your name yield? Remember what starts on facebook, doesn’t always stay on facebook, just ask Rummer Willis

If the PR people over at Jet Blue were more forward thinking, they might be planning for universal search. Were they doing that, they’d be effectively optimizing multiple media for search engine ranking. If they were doing that, each of the SERPs for each of the media would undoubtedly be more favorable. In other words, the advent of universal search may not only simplify online reputation management, but coax more people to actually take it to its logical conclusion and cover all their bases.

Share This