SMX West Session Notes: Search & Reputation Management

Search & Reputation Management – What do people find when they search for you by name? Is it negative? If so, what do you do? What can you do? Depending on the situation, there are a range of tactics that may help. This session explores the issue. Moderator: Barry Smyth, Director, Search Strategies Speakers: Chris Bennett, President, 97th Floor Leslie Carruthers, CEO and President, The Search Guru Noah Elkin, Managing Partner, Steak Bill Hartzer, Search Engine Marketing Manager, Vizion Interactive NOTES:

Chris Bennett, President, 97th Floor Topic: How to Put Fires Out ASAP You need to put fires out ASAP and the best way to respond is to get something out there on the web immediately.  Something such as: We are looking into this and working to resolve these issues in an appropriate manner.”  Chris states that you need to be transparent and recommended an excellent article called “The Transparent CEO.” Recommendation is: monitor your reputation on a daily basis and start working to fix any problems ASAP.  Do all you can to get positive info out regarding the situation at the earliest potential time. Understand Your Foes:

1. Why do they rank?
2. # of inbound links?
3. Quality of links?
4. # of internal links?
5. How recent is it getting cached?
6. Title tag and on page factors?

Once you have this information you can then go to work to rebuild your reputation from a search level, because now you know the formula you are working against. What not to do:

1. Don’t use the same links for all social profiles.
2. Make sure your content is rich and there is a lot of it.
3. Get the fluff out of your social profiles.
4. Don’t go out paying for false reviews.
5. Get the Buzz flowing like crazy.

Bonus Info:

1. Use interviews as a way to get stuff out there about your company and then link to it.
2. Social Media Poaching.
   1. Grab as many urls as you can from social profiles.
3. Build social power accounts.

END Chris Bennett Noah Elkin, Managing Partner, Steak

Topic: 7 Rules for Reputation Management There are number of strategies to apply to when considering reputation management.  Of the which, Noah summarized these in 7 easy to follow steps:

1. Be Proactive.
2. Be Relevant.
3. Be Tactical.
4. Be Authentic and Honest.
5. Be Accountable and Humble.
6. Be Engaging.
7. Be Responsible.

Seeing these steps seems pretty basic, but the reality is there is a lot of work that takes place accounting for each of these steps.