Potential employers, business partners, customers, and clients often turn to search engines to learn more about you before making any decisions. If the first page of Google doesn’t highlight your achievements and showcase vital trust signals, you’re in the right place.
The easiest route is working with a reputation management specialist like BetterReputation, Reputation Defense Network, or Rhino Reviews.
Prefer to do it yourself? Here’s what to do.
#1 — Increase Your Online Presence
Your website, social channels, and business directories are your best friends. They tend to rank really well in search results, making it hard for anything else (like negative reviews or news articles) to take their place on page one.
We strongly suggest that individuals, personal brands, and businesses have their own website. Even if you don’t sell anything there or do much to it, it’s the only piece of the internet you own.
Website builders make it really easy to set up a website if you don’t yet have one.
Social media comes next. It’s not enough to just have social media profiles. You need to actually use them if you want them to show up in search.
The best place to start is a handful of channels that’ll resonate most with the people looking for you. Businesses do well on LinkedIn and YouTube, for example. Your business may also be great for TikTok and Instagram, too.
Whether you’re an individual or a business, optimize every profile you have to make it clear who you are.
Then, start regularly posting new content. It doesn’t have to be perfect but you do need to be active for a while–search engines prioritize up-to-date content, so this is a key element.
You can also engage with your community to give your new profiles a boost and show there’s a real person (or brand) behind it.
Even Taco Bell uses this strategy–they are active on X, Facebook, and Instagram, all of which show up when you Google “Taco Bell”.
If you’re a business, establishing profiles on Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Lawyer.com, or any other niche-specific platforms goes a long way, too.
Taking the time to establish and expand your online presence not only shows you’re legit, but it also gives search engines plenty of content to show when people search for you. It may even help push negative content to page two or beyond, where no one will see it.
#2 — Identify the Root Cause of Your Negative Reputation
Rather than applying a band aid, the best thing to do is understand where the negativity is coming from.
As your new profiles begin to surface on search engines, we recommend taking the time to truly understand why people are saying bad things.
Is it a customer service issue? Did you fail to deliver on a promise? Did a competitor release a comparison painting you in a negative light?
Maybe you (or someone at your company) said something that sparked some keyboard warrior rage.
No matter what it is, put measures in place to keep it from happening again. This could mean updating your website, providing additional training, updating your policies and procedures, rolling out a new product update, taking a break from social media, re-evaluating your values, or even firing people who can’t follow the rules.
There’s very little point in doing all of this work to repair your online reputation if the same mistake is going to happen again.
#3 — Respond to Negativity in an Authentic Way
Now that you’ve stopped more damage, it’s time to address what already exists. Ignoring negative comments, bad reviews, an online attack, or unfair press isn’t the way to go.
The key is being genuine in your response. Yes, it’s important to do it quickly.
But it’s even more vital that you do it correctly. The internet is great at spotting fake or forced apologies, so be sure you take time to think through how you’re going to handle the situation. When done well, you can turn bad sentiment into a positive outcome for everyone.
Say someone published a genuine, but scalding review of your product. Instead of responding with more negativity, work to make it right.
Reach out to them, understand what went wrong, fix it, and ask for a second chance. They may update their review and end up being a happy lifelong customer.
If there’s negative press about you, you can reach out and ask them to update their article if you have your own commentary to add. This is a great way to add your side of the story to provide context if it’s needed.
No matter what form the negativity is in, take the time to figure out a thoughtful and authentic response.
Then execute it.
#4 — Remove Negative Results from Google
In some cases, you may be able to remove negative search results from Google. Especially if they break the law, publicize your personal information, or break Google’s content policies.
However, that’s not always a guarantee. Even if something is blatantly illegal, Google isn’t perfect.
If that fails, you can try reaching out to the person who owns the website or published the news article. They may update it or take it down for you.
In the meantime, the best thing you can do is publish more content to push those results out of sight. That way, even if your removal efforts fail, the new content you’ve published will have a chance to gain traction while you wait.
You can create new blog posts, guest post on relevant websites, add value in forums, or even try to get mentioned in positive news articles.
#5 — For Businesses, Review Management is Vital
This includes generating positive reviews, removing fake or defamatory reviews, monitoring them, and responding in a timely manner.
The best way to counter negative reviews is an influx of those that highlight the positive.
This will also bolster your business against any future negativity as you’ll have so many five or four-star reviews that a lone one-star won’t make much of an impact.
Not sure how to do that? It’s pretty simple–ask.
In most cases, customers or clients don’t even think about leaving a review. It’s not that they don’t want to support you or help you out, they just don’t realize how important reviews can be.
When you do get reviews, respond to them. Thank them for their time, let them know you appreciate it, and highlight the positives again. While responding to good reviews helps, responding to negative reviews matters even more.
This gives you a chance to add context, explain the situation, and show future customers how you handle negative feedback.
Why Repairing Your Online Reputation Is Worth It
From low star ratings on Google Business or Yelp to negative comments on Twitter, a lot of elements can impact your online brand’s reputation in a bad way.
If you don’t take active measures to handle these quickly and effectively—even for things that appear small or inconsequential—they can snowball into larger problems before getting completely out of hand.
Before you know it, your brand reputation will be defined by low-quality reviews and bad customer experiences.
93% of customers say they read online reviews before making purchase decisions. This means if your company has negative reviews—or worse, no reviews—you’re likely to only get seven customers for every 100 that look up your brand.
On the other hand, if you proactively work on building a positive online presence, you’ll experience several benefits. People trust a brand with a good online reputation, which will help you attract more business and eventually increase your profits.
In fact, every additional star on your Yelp rating can boost your business’s revenue by up to 9%, according to a Harvard Business School Working Paper.
Besides customers and profits, repairing your online reputation is also helpful for attracting top talent. Only one in five job seekers will consider working for a company with a one-star rating. Before accepting or even applying to jobs, applicants also check workplace reviews on platforms like Glassdoor, which is another venue to monitor your reputation on.
The Investment Needed to Repair Your Online Reputation
We’re sure you agree with us on the importance of repairing your company’s online reputation. But, to do this right, you need a solid strategy and an investment of time and/or money.
Don’t get us wrong; you can take matters into your own hands and repair your reputation DIY style, but there are a few elements to doing that where you’d fare better by enlisting expert help.
The chief concern is time if you do this on your own. You might be able to wrangle your Google Business profiles and social media pages without negatively affecting the other work you have to concentrate on. That’s where a prebuilt strategy comes in handy. You’ll need to prioritize how to attack this endeavor, in terms of whether you’re focusing on building up positive sentiment or suppressing negative reviews.
But if you want to fully establish or repair your reputation across all the channels and venues on the web where your company is being appraised, that quickly becomes a full-time job in itself.
In this case, we recommend using an online management reputation management service, like BetterReputation, Reputation Defense Network, or Rhino Reviews, to repair your brand perception online, gain more positive reviews, and eradicate negative reviews and sentiment.
Since every business is unique, you won’t find reputation management services that offer fixed pricing. Costs can range anywhere between $400 per month and $8,000 per month. There are also contract terms to consider with providers (you may need to commit to a year of service or more) and additional fees that may be incurred, such as paying for monitoring and repairing your reputation on more niche platforms.
Next Steps
After following the above steps to repair your online reputation, you must monitor your brand name.
Chances are, there will be new mentions of your brand being posted online all the time. While keeping tabs might be difficult if you do it manually, you can use tools like Google Alerts and SparkToro to monitor what people say about your company. This will help you respond to negative sentiments faster and collect insights into your target audience.
Here are a few more posts from us to help you rank higher in the SERPs and get more positive items to show up higher than the negative ones:
