How online reputation management helps SEO: Beginner's Guide 2021

How online reputation management helps SEO: Beginner's Guide 2021

Online reputation management is vital to ensure consumers have, and maintain, a positive perception of your business.

You don’t want prospects to research your brand and hit a wall of negative reviews from disgruntled buyers. That could inspire doubt in your credibility and encourage them to try a competitor instead.

This is a real issue when an amazing 91 percent of consumers read online reviews, and 84 percent trust these as much as personal recommendations.

Effective online reputation management controls the way in which your brand appears on search engine result pages, and encourages prospects to trust you.

But online reputation management can also aid your SEO campaign and boost your visibility. How?

Create valuable content to build credibility and authority

One of the most important elements of an effective online reputation management strategy is publishing quality content. This encompasses blog posts, articles, press releases, how-to guides/tutorials, interviews, and more.

And this is a key aspect of a good SEO strategy too. Why?

For several reasons, including:

Generating backlinks

high-quality backlinks suggest to Google that your site is credible and trustworthy, so the more backlinks you can create through content, the better.

Boosting visibility through strategic keywords

Well-researched, carefully-selected keywords are crucial to boosting your visibility through valuable content. Implementing various keywords relevant to your products, services, and customer needs will help prospects find the right content to capture their interest.

Establish thought leadership

Thought leadership is a powerful addition to your online reputation management strategy, especially for B2B brands. More than 60 percent of decision-makers are willing to pay premium prices to do business with a company demonstrating thought leadership.

Thought leadership content helps to establish you as an authority in your industry/niche, and can make your online reputation more positive over time.

So, focus on publishing more high-quality content to increase your visibility across various formats (blog posts, how-to guides, etc.). Just make sure you prioritize relevance: use customer/buyer personas to understand the type of topics you need to cover to appeal to target specific audience segments.

Spread your brand across reputable sites to increase visibility and expand your audience

Another way to improve your online reputation and SEO at the same time is to make a presence across different credible websites.

Ideally, this should be a site related to your industry, products/services, or customers in some way. But, obviously, never a competitor.

For example, publishing guest blog posts on industry news sites or a respected blog is a fantastic option. This will introduce your brand to the site’s established audience and include at least one valuable link back to your website.

Anyone who enjoys your post may click through to explore your products or services — and potentially support you with a purchase, subscription, etc.

Readers might also take advantage of social buttons to share the post with their friends/followers on one or more networks. This would put your brand in front of users who might never have been aware of it otherwise, and lead to further shares across Facebook, Twitter, etc. You could reach a whole new audience all from a single post.

When people search for your business online, they’ll be likely to form a positive perception if they find it connected to well-written content on reputable websites. Good feedback from readers in the comments section and visible social shares will only add to your credibility further.

The same is true if they search for your brand on social networks and encounter praise-packed posts discussing your content. Which leads us neatly to the next point …

Expand your social presence to reach new audience segments and earn trust

While Google doesn’t take social media followers or shares into consideration when ranking web properties, social networks can still make a huge impact on your online reputation and SEO.

Why? Because a strong social presence adds to your credibility when users head straight to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to research your brand. Consumers connecting with companies on social networks are often loyal customers, with around 90 percent buying from them. 

People want to see that your brand interacts with followers frequently, responds to queries/comments, and has positive reviews from existing/previous customers. Prospects may see the amount of quality feedback your brand has received and think if other people have trusted these guys, why shouldn’t I?

The best way to build a library of glowing reviews is to deliver the best consumer experience you can, throughout the entire customer journey. But even if you do receive negative feedback from time to time, do your best to control this.

Comment on posts, apologize, and invite the reviewer to contact your business via another channel so you can understand why they’re dissatisfied. This demonstrates that your company takes customer feedback seriously and wants to provide a quality experience.

Also, make sure your social profiles are consistent with your branding in all respects, from the language and tone to visuals and keywords. This helps you to develop a cohesive, consistent online presence, and enables search engines to return the most relevant results when users look for information on your brand.

Another essential rule of using social media for online reputation management and SEO is to share all of your content with visually-striking posts to boost engagement. If you can encourage people to click through to the content and link to it on their own sites, blog posts, or videos, the more visible it will become.

How can you build an online reputation management strategy that achieves the results you need?

Reducing the visibility of negative press or feedback with an effective online reputation management strategy is easier said than done — especially for startups or businesses with little experience in the mechanics of search engines.

That’s why it’s so important to work with an experienced team offering bespoke online reputation management for businesses in diverse industries/niches.

What advantages can you expect when you trust specialists to handle your online reputation management? Get in touch with Reputation Mart’s experts today to find out!