by You might not realize the importance of a brand’s reputation, until your company is suffering from the impacts of negative reviews and poor search results. If this is the case for you, a poor reputation can be a scary thing; it could mean the end of your business as you know it if you don’t take measures fast.
Luckily, there are indeed measures you can take, specifically by investing in online reputation repair. You can either hire a service to help you – which is the route we recommend – or try out reputation repair practices on your own. Whatever route you take, there are a few essential steps to help you along the way of rebuilding the company’s reputation.
Step 1: Identity the root cause of the negative reputation
Before any action can be taken, you first need to identify the problem. What is the reason for the public seeing your company in a negative way? Is it poor reviews, a defective product, or a lack of presence altogether. Whatever it is, you need to determine the specifics before all else. This might involve gathering and analyzing data, something that a reputation repair agency can help you with.
Step 2: Remove negative Google results if possible
If there are negative Google reviews or other content circulating on the internet about your company, do whatever you can to get these take down. Try not to assume this is impossible; there are ways. For example, if there is a poor TripAdvisor review, make a dispute to TripAdvisor first to see if it can be removed. You can also reach out to Google itself.
Step 3: If the negative content can’t be removed, try something else
The above step doesn’t always work, there is some content that is meant to stay on the internet forever. If this is the case, there is still something you can do. Reputation repair agents know about strategies to get negative content lower down on search results. This essentially means that nobody will find it – let’s be honest, who looks at results past the 1st or 2nd page of Google?
Step 4: Replace the negative with positive
Once Steps 2 and 3 have been completed, you’ll need to replace that content you removed or ranked lower on the list. This is crucial – if internet users can’t find you on the internet, they might not ever know you exist. To get on their radar, you’ll need some content, preferably content that is positive.
Step 5: Reach out to customers for positive reviews
Some people see this practice as sneaky, but there is no reason you can’t reach out to your past customers and ask for their support in leaving reviews. As long as you don’t ask for a positive review or bribe them with free products, it is perfectly fine to reach out to your client base.
It is common to only leave a review if you have a negative experience. Customers with a positive outlook on you might not even think about reviewing, so let them think about it by reaching out and asking for this small favor.
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