Whoever Said, “There’s No Such Thing As Bad Press” Was An Idiot!: Reputation Management

 

YOU'RE AN IDIOT!!!

Whoever said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” was certainly not talking about the world wide web. Today, more than ever, disgruntled consumers can trash your product and/or your site using blogs, forums and on-site reviews! That’s right, take a look at Amazon’s product pages. You buy something, don’t like it, you can write a review that will appear on that product page. Now that’s useful information.

 

Of course, you can also write a rave of some product but either way, Amazon leads in customer reviews – a good thing when the reviews are good, the death knell when they’re bad.

What many site owners don’t realize is that bad press can hurt you with lower search engine rankings so it’s not something you want to ignore.

What happens if a dissatisfied customer is talking trash about your site all over the w3? Or worse, what can you do about a competitor who posts slams and slander on blogs about your horrible customer service and overblown prices. Well, it isn’t easy (a good reason to always keep the customer satisfied) but there are things you can do to make a bad situation better.

Ask Nice
Let’s say someone’s posted a slam of your site on another site’s blog. One thing you can do is contact the site owner, explain your side of things and ask that the blog entry be removed. The site owner may take pity and do you favor. On the other hand, if that site owner is your #1 competitor, chances are he’ll rub his hands with glee at your misfortune. But it’s worth a shot.

Tell It Like It Is
Make positive posts about your site to counteract bad press. There are plenty of sites today that let you tell the world about who you are, what you do and why you’re the best choice. Checkout aboutus.org and post the positive. There are other sites that give you a chance to show your best side.

Social Book Marking
Not only is this a great way to spread the word to counteract bad press, it’s a great way to increase site traffic for zero dollars. Sites like del.icio.us enable you to create an account after which you can post pretty much anything you want – a great way to counteract bad press from other sources. Social book marking is a significant aspect of the new Web 2.0 drive to build a more interconnected online community and every webmaster should take advantage of social book marking sites, like craigslist, to tell the world just how great his or her site is.

Build Your Own Blog
Blogs help sites rank better in the SERPs. It’s fresh content and it’s easy to add a blog to your site. First, see if your web host offers blogging software as part of the toolbox some hosts provide to their clients. The better ones do. If not, visit squidoo.com. Here, you can create your own site blog. Make entries, acquire free content from sites like goarticles.com, upload product pixs and make a name for yourself – a good name!

Your online reputation can be crushed by a few negative comments posted on blogs and forums. The w3 is partially driven by the gossip factor so counteract the bad gossip with positive, helpful entries on your site blog. It’ll make a difference.

Become an expert
Yahoo and Google both have features that allow people to post questions which “experts” then answer. Experts are volunteers willing to share their knowledge and experience with the world.

Do you have a specialty? One related to your web site? If so, sign on as an expert in that area and establish your creds.

Write, right?
If you can write a few articles about aspects of your business, industry, services or products, you can syndicate those articles, each of which will have an arrow pointing right back to your site. This is a great way to build links. Even more, if you write enough of these articles, you come to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

So, how do you go about syndicating? There are websites that provide free, downloadable content to websites with the stipulation that the link back to your site must appear along with the article. Get a few dozen articles out there and you’ll soon discover that you have a lot more inbound links than you had previously.

Add your site to directories
Google has a directory (based primarily on the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org). Yahoo maintains a site directory. Even Microsoft maintains a small business directory. Once you’ve launched your site and it’s been indexed, you’re eligible to seek inclusion in one or more of these directories. It’s a good move to boost web site credibility.

Track your reputation
This is so cool. Google offers a free Alerts service that notifies you every time your site’s name comes up – anywhere on the world wide web. Blogs, forums, press releases – Google covers the entire digital landscape and reports back to you each time your site is mentioned. The free service covers the top 50, most relevant results. If you want to go deeper, you can subscribe to Google’s Alert services which will deliver the top 200 most relevant mentions of your site (or you or your competition). It’s the easiest way to keep track of your on-line reputation – and what the competition is saying about you.

The Power of SEO
Search engines like Yahoo and Google rule the web – at least the commercial aspects of the web. If you have a commercial, on-line business, the better optimized your site is for search engines the better you’re going to rank on the search engine results pages.

There are about a million books that’ll tell you how to improve your site’s SEO and lots of free articles to show you how to improve your page rank (PR). If you have the time and the inclination, read as much as you can about current SEO practices and tactics to discover ways of improving your site’s page rank.

If SEO isn’t your cup of tea (too many numbers) hire an SEO professional to optimize your site for search engine spiders. This involves a number of factors and may also cost a few bucks. Additionally, it may take up to six months to actually see any significant results. But, if all else has failed, hiring an SEO expert may be the only way to go to regain your search engine status.

Fast Track to Good Press?
Sorry, there is no fast track to undo negative press in search engine results pages, whether it’s deserved or not. It’s a process but a worthwhile one, especially if you’ve spent a great deal of time and money to build up your e-biz.

However, the faster you get to work on article syndication or getting your site listed in a directory, the quicker your reputation will improve.

Things move quickly across the web and a bad reputation – whether true or not – is not going to help your site or your business. No, you can’t eliminate the problem of bad press but you can go proactive and generate some good press to counteract the negative.

The key is to move quickly and decisively to protect your hard-earned reputation.

RSS: Keep Your Readers Fed

Keep your readers up to date with RSS

Feeds come in several formats – RSS (remote site syndication), XML, Atom and other links to news relevant to your viewership – the people who visit your site in search of the latest news.

 

 

Remote Site Syndication (RSS) Links

And there are plenty of great reasons to post and broadcast feeds:

 

• The software to collect feeds (aggregator), reader and broadcaster are free and free is always good.

• You’re the editor. You choose which feeds to gather, which feeds to display on your web site and which features you’ll broadcast, spreading the attraction of your site far across the web.

• Feeds can be delivered by way of a web portal site, via an RSS reader (free, and built into newer browsers so users don’t have to download a separate feed reader) and email. This means that your latest news feed can be accessed by anyone with a pulse.

• If your feeds are brilliantly constructed and professionally designed, you can create a subscriber list. Some feeds charge a small subscription fee. Others only want the visitor to opt in. Cool. You get the email address and the opt-in gets your daily thoughts on…on whatever.

• You can package your feeds to display on any digital communications device including cell phones, PDAs, laptops, desk tops – you can broadcast your words and podcast your podcasts any time, anywhere. That puts you in control.

Whether you’re a site owner or web surfer, RSS feeds enable you to gather information of interest one time for display on your site, or for your own education. These icons indicate a site, a section
of a site, a blog, podcast or other digitally-formatted data that can be
broadcast by you (just add the icon to the piece so other RSS
gatherers know its useable).

Who Benefits from Feeds?
Everyone, once you have the software set up and configured. Here’s how the site players all gain from your feeds.

You gain by eliminating the need for a publisher – an entity willing to put your words out there. The traditional publishing model, popular since Johan Guttenburg created moveable type, is dead. You don’t have to submit your article to 20 periodicals and suffer through those rejection notices.

You don’t have to truck your treatise on hyperspace travel from one publisher to another and you certainly don’t need an agent. (Talk about a dying profession!). You decide what gets published and what doesn’t. Writers will quickly start coming to you to see if you’ll carry their latest blog post and syndicate through your feed.

You gain again. Once you start broadcasting your own content, you start to build a following. Readers like what you write. Podders like what you say. Broadcasting your own RSS feeds makes you an instant authority – especially if what your writing is accurate and on topic.

Your visitors gain. They gain time, they become more productive and best of all, they come back everyday to see what’s new in your site’s newsroom. This kind of site stickiness is invaluable. Instead of searching 10 or 12 sites for the latest in stock analysis, a trader can simply log on to your financial news section and discover dozens of feeds from around the world.

Yes, this cuts down on web ambling, but when you need it fast, RSS delivers it like yesterday. Your visitors can amble about when there’s time. Speed and conveneince – that’s what RSS feeders want.

Advertisers gain. Advertising your message via feed simplifies distribution of the message and eleiminates many of the challenegs of traditional online marketing channels. Advertisers that use feeds don’t have to sneak past spam filters (everyone’s got one), they don’t have to worry about delayed distribution, especially critical when the item or sevice is time-sensitive.

Search engine page rank is no longer a concern. Used to be the higher the PR, the more the site owner could charge for advertising space on his or her website. With advertising delivered via feed, you get the same exposure to the same demographic – free.

So Who Uses RSS Feeds?
The better question is who doesn’t? Virtually every 24-hour news channel – CNN, MSNBC and Fox all broadcast by way of a feed. This allows viewers to get the latest news while riding home on the bus.

Other feed broadcasters include USATODAY.com, CNET.com, Yahoo and Google. Visit Google News for everything from the latest American Idol losers to the weather out where the folks live. And what’s great is you pick the news you want to read or hear in whatever order you choose.

How Do I Broadcast My Feeds?
First, it helps to have something to say or see. Otherwise, no one is going to pick you up except your mom – and chances are she won’t understand what you’ve done!

It doesn’t matter the format – HTML web site, audio and/or video content (pod and webcasts), a blog and even pictures of the newest member of the family. Whatever the format, you can create a feed and send it to the world or just the family.

There are lots of free blogging software available. Basic feedware is free. If you want to soup up the looks of your feeds, you can purchase feed software at reasonable prices – especially when compared to your ROI on the software.

Some of the more popular publishing tools include Blogger, TypePad and WordPress. These software packs publish your feed automatically. Simply type in your words of wisdom, click the “SEND” button and you’ve just gone global.

Another way to get your ideas out there for the world to share is through non-blogging social sites like Flickr and FaceBook. These social sharing sites are adding RSS technology to enable their members to broadcast anything – from their latest tune, rant, screed, picture or lesson. There are also tools to convert older, traditional content to make it feed-worthy. That’s good if you have a substantial site archive loaded with good information that just happens to be in a .wps format.

Does This Mean the End of Search Engines?
The fact is, feeds won’t eliminate the need for search engines but it will change the purpose of Google, Yahoo and Inktomi. Right now, in the early stages of RSS aggregation and broadcast, most web users still rely on search engines to find what they’re looking for. But that’s going to change thanks to RSS feeds.

Here’s why. RSS is totally interdependent of search engine rankings. Many RSS users are setting aside their browsers to use feed readers to deliver all the news of interest to that site visitor. So, instead of the web surfer searching high and low for the latest in hobby news, in 30 minutes that same, one-time Google-user can collect RSS feeds on topics of interest and skip using a browser altogether.

This may explain why Google is doing double-time to, not only be the web’s address book, but a major content provider, as well. It could also explain the $1.8 billion price tag for YouTube. Google is a cash machine but now it needs content to keep up with RSS technology.

So, if you don’t bring the news to your site visitors, they may or may not be back. And, if you don’t broadcast your own feeds, you’re missing the best marketing opportunity since AdWords.

Go RSS. Become your own publisher, make your site convenient for repeat visitors and stop worrying about your site’s PR. With RSS, page rank has no value any longer. Simply broadcast your advert and your done.

So, no matter how you use this interactive technology – as a reader or broadcaster, RSS is changing the face of the web. And, if your site isn’t in the RSS race, that site will out of business before you reach the finish line.

Top Five Negative Ranking Factors

Okay, I admit it. No one can agree with absolute certainty that these negative ranking factors are the worst Google can deal out but according to a survey conducted by SEOmoz.org, the negatives are sure to drag down your site and your client sites. 

 

What do Google bots hate most?

So what do the cyber-pros identify as the most negative ranking factors within Google’s current algorithm? They’re listed below but note, take these Google negatives with a grain of salt.

 

It could all change tonight while you sleep.

Negative Ranking Factor #1: Googlebots can’t access your server.
If the site is down for more than 48 hours, which is often the case with low-rent web hosts located half-way around the world, a site’s Google ranking drops like a stone.

If your host server is down a lot, search engines don’t want to recommend the site to visitors who will see a 404 error message that the site is unavailable and can’t be accessed.

The solution? Find a host that delivers not only a 99.9% uptime but also has local tech support, backup emergency generators and multiple layers of server side security. You’ll spend about $7.00 a month for quality shared hosting. Double that amount for quality dedicated service if cross-server attacks are a concern. Don’t let a few bucks a month keep your site from higher rankings. It’s just not cost effective.

Note: Server availability as a ranking factor is one of the most contended topics among SEO professionals who spend much of their time trying to out-think Googlebots, so even the experts can’t agree on this one.

Negative Ranking Factor #2: Duplicate or Similar Content.
Most experts do agree on this one.

Repetitious content is a stone-cold killer. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t pick up a useful piece of syndicated content of interest to your readers. The warning, here, has to do with site text. A programmer can always upload a syndicated article. However, body text should change from page to page, providing a more useful visitor experience.

Of course, duplicate content can be tagged with a designation, but too many of these “do not enter” signs is also a negative ranking factor. Bots want to be able to crawl pages and when you keep them off of critical content pages, it’ll have a negative impact on your SERPs ranking on Google.

Negative Ranking Factor #3: Links to low-quality sites.
SEO survey contributor, Lucas Ng, sums it up nicely: “Linking out to a low quality neighborhood flags you as a resident of the same neighborhood.”

It’s not just about links and plenty of them. It’s more about the quality of the links on a site. So, link up to sites in nice neighborhoods. On the web, Googlebots know you by the company you keep.

Negative Ranking Factor #4: Links Schemes and Links Selling.
Google’s algorithm employs probability modeling in determining bought-and-paid-for links, which doesn’t always equate to an accurate view of a site’s actual linking activity. Even so, Googlebots make assumptions programmed into the algorithm.

A site with a broad menu of links to diverse sites won’t fare well come spidering time. These links farms are easy for bots to spot. The key to avoiding being mis-indexed by Googlebots is to avoid too many links, try to link to higher-quality-more-visited sites and never buy or sell links. It could mean another web site fatality.

Negative Ranking Factor #5: Duplicate Title/Meta Tags.
Search engine algorithms employ numerous filters to identify everything from questionable links to duplicate content that appears on numerous site pages. The same thing is true of a site’s HTML code. Too many duplicate title tags and duplicate meta data can hurt you.

Survey participant, Aaron Wall, stated, “If a site does not have much content and has excessive duplication, it not only suppresses rankings, but it may also get many pages thrown in the supplemental results.”

Bots read code and if the same title tags show up on page after page, if title tags don’t match page text, or if meta data is cut and pasted into every site page, these crawlers take offense according to some experts.

However, there’s another whole school of thought, here. Many SEO pros and site designers believe just the opposite is true – that title tags on each page create numerous entry points to a site, and because each page is indexed separately, the site maintains a larger presence on SERPs.

The key appears to be in the duplication of inserting repetitive title and meta tags. If the content doesn’t change on a particular page, that page doesn’t call for yet another title tag. However, when topics and functions do change from page to page within a site, title tags do help spiders identify the page’s purpose and do provide greater site access to potential visitors.

What NOT To Do With This Information
The wheels are spinning, aren’t they?

You and a million other site owners are weighing negative ranking factors and the impact these factors have on their SERPs position on Google.

Forget it. Let it go. The time you spend trying to reverse engineer your site to appeal to the perceptions of a collection of 31 SEO professionals (teh survey takers) would be better spent on search engine marketing – promoting to humans.

Getting Slammed By Google: It’s Easy

It doesn’t take much to make a Googlebot angry. And it certainly doesn’t take much to confuse one of these script-bits that swarm the web like those killer ants. And while there is no absolute consensus on the negative ranking factors employed by Google, there is general agreement on how to avoid getting slammed by the search engine that controls 46% of ALL web searches – the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. 

So here are some common, agreed-upon slams Google can give you.

1. Lack of site access. If your host server is down, your site is down and if your site is down, visitors can’t reach you. Google won’t send its users to an inaccessible site. To avoid trouble: (1) go with a reputable host and (2) avoid launching until the site is complete.

2. All text appears in a graphics format like gif, jpg or bmp. Spiders are as dumb as a box of rocks. They can’t read anything in a graphics format. To avoid the problem, keep critical information in HTML format and provide description tags for all graphics.

3. You’re living in a bad neighborhood. You’re known by the company you keep on the web – in two ways. First, by your inbound and outbound links. Too many low-quality links gives you a bad name.

Further, though contestable, if you’re using a shared hosting account, your site is on the same server as 1,264 other client sites. A server that’s stuffed with porn and overseas drug company sites doesn’t exactly make your site shine, does it?

4. Keyword stuffing is bad for site health. You can overstuff an HTML keyword tag, you can overstuff on-site text (keep keyword density at no more than 3%), HTML meta data, headers and headlines. Any overuse of keywords is a bad sign to spiders.

5. Redirects raise suspicions. Not all redirects are bad. Some serve useful purposes. For example, when you submit an information form online, you might immediately be redirected to a confirmation page with a short note stating that “If this page doesn’t redirect you click here” message.

That’s fine. This isn’t: a site page is designed for one purpose only, to appeal to spiders. It’s a perfectly optimized, single site page buried deep within the site. Because the page is hyper-optimized for crawling, there are no graphics, there is no useful information – it’s simply a highly-optimized page of site code.

Because the page is highly optimized, it ranks highly on Google SERPs. That means it pulls in a great deal of organic traffic. However, as soon as a visitor clicks on the SERP link, s/he is immediately redirected to a page designed for humans. It happens so fast, you won’t even notice. This kind of redirect is bad form to spiders. It’s not nice to fool with Google.

There are lots of other missteps Googlebots look for: invisible text, too much cross-linking within one site, dynamic pages – the list goes on and on. The fact is, it’s easy to get slammed – and not even know why!

To learn more, visit Google’s Webmaster Central and get the information straight from the source.

editor@webwordslinger.com