The official statistics of "Yandex" monthly records millions of requests for reviews on various products and services, the audience of this search engine for the same period is also estimated at millions of users. They are all your potential customers - so help them make the right choice. Do these statistics surprise you? Most likely no. After all, with a high degree of probability, you are also looking for information about companies, employees, partners, products using search engines.

In this article you will read:

• Why company reviews decide the fate of its reputation
• How to manage a company's online reputation

Company reputation on the Internet plays an important role for its successful existence. We are more and more focused on the recommendations of people than on unfounded statements from official sites: “ highest quality"," Lowest prices "," guarantees ". And we ourselves often leave comments. What are the main nuances of online reputation management? Let's talk about this in more detail.

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Company Reputation on the Internet: Network Image Increases Trust and Sales

Agree that the feedback that customers, partners, investors, employees, journalists, and any other interested person find about you affects the opinion of your company. This information serves, if not the main, then a rather important criterion when choosing your company as a performer, all other advantages being equal to competitors. And statistics confirm this: according to research by Reevoo, product reviews increase sales by an average of 18%. And the level of trust in customer reviews is 12 times higher than in product descriptions (according to eMarketer).

Even a child's review can tarnish the company's reputation

Enter the name of your company in Yandex - what will you see? Unfortunately, the picture is often far from rosy; moreover, reviews of a recently dismissed employee, the intrigues of competitors, responses from dissatisfied customers with negative information about you on a third-party website, black PR are likely.

• Company image and reputation: 4 principles to avoid scandals

If the movement of negative information on the network is allowed to take its course, then your potential partners and customers will definitely see it, and the trust in your company will be greatly shaken, if not completely disappeared.

One is enough dissatisfied buyer or, even worse, inadequate, who will write everything that you did not please him, and even more. It is worth considering that many large review sites pay a small fee for writing reviews and thus attract an army of "writers" of all ages who are ready to write about anything, in any volume, without even knowing what it is about. But this is the business model of revocable sites: the more content users generate, the more traffic they will attract from search engines.

In these realities, even a child does not cost anything to tarnish the company's reputation on the Internet. Therefore, when you start promoting a product or service, do not forget that any Internet user can express an opinion about your product or company. It does not matter which advertising platform you use - outdoor advertising, TV, radio or print media. Reviews are decisive, if not everything, then almost everything, and the network will equalize everyone. Consider this when managing your online reputation.

Through the eyes of customers: exploring experiences

Let's see how the company's reputation on the Internet is changing using the example of the sale of apartments in a new residential complex.

Standard situation: on the radio, I heard about the start of sales of apartments in a new residential complex in the south of Moscow. I remember the beautiful name of the residential complex - "New Suliko" (the name has been changed) and start searching for information about the complex on the Internet.

I'm typing "New Suliko" in Yandex.

Impression 1. The first thing I see is the word "Lottery": this is the title of the ad in Yandex.Direct. It does not encourage buying. And this is deposited in my mind in the context of the search for information about "New Suliko".

Impression 2... In second place is the official website of the residential complex - this is a good signal. But, of course, I need to form my opinion based on independent information, and I go to other sites.

Impression 3... The next site is a separate topic "New Suliko" on the independent forum about real estate. The information here, of course, is not controlled by the developer, and after reading the reviews on the forum, nothing strengthens my desire to buy real estate in this particular complex, on the contrary, some comments are negative. Moreover, there are a lot of questions from people who have little information about the advantages of buying a home in Novy Suliko, and they are clearly indignant. This is a bad signal. At the same time, the forum counter records that during the day the portal is visited by 86 people who view 680 pages!

Impression 5. Then Wikipedia appeared in the search results - this is a good signal. However, it is easy to notice the discrepancy between the information published in the text and in the table (different data on the estimated number of residents, the remoteness of the microdistrict from the center of Moscow, etc.). As a result, this also negatively affects the reputation of the developer.

Impression 6. Next comes the vkontakte.ru group, but it is not official and does not belong to the developer, this is a group created by the new-suliko social network in order to attract users from vkontakte.ru. Inquiring messages are striking: “Where are the photos of the apartments?”, “We are interested in buying real estate in Novy Suliko. Please tell us who has already bought a cottage there: they are interested in the conditions, the real price. So far we have information only at the level of the official website. " There are no answers to these questions - another bad signal.

Impression 7. The next site has a decent layout of content. But it's embarrassing that all the photos are unprofessional. It seems that they were made by the builders on mobile phone... Disappointingly ...

Impression 8. And finally, at the end of the search engine page, I see a positive signal - under the heading "Object news" there is a note "The satellite city" New Suliko "has become a contender for the" Record "award, which says that the microdistrict is presented in three nominations at once, including in the category "Record of the lowest price per square meter". Hurray! You don't even need to open this news to get the idea that "there is a record low price, maybe there is no point in looking for something cheaper ...". Remember that users do not re-read all the pages - they look at them.

Impression 9. Tired of searching, in 11th place in Yandex, I see an entry on the Novostroim.ru forum: “Re: Residential complex“ New Suliko ”. We, like all buyers, were promised to hand over the house on May 31, and construction is only at the stage of laying the foundation. They threw us! "

Point. The search for information is over. My opinion about this residential complex is formed on the basis of reviews, and it is far from positive.

Obviously, due to the spontaneously formed information space on the Internet, many factors can play in favor of refusal to purchase. Moreover, among them, there should not necessarily be sharply negative reviews. Conflicting or insufficient information, as well as unanswered questions, can also create a negative impression, especially when it comes to expensive goods or services.

• Scribing: how to present a complex product simply and vividly

At the same time, we do not know how this or that negative appeared on the network. Were these reviews from real people or banal trolling 1?

What to do when even a schoolboy can ruin your reputation? The answer is simple - to create an information field and control it. Below we will consider the ways of forming this field, its protection and control.

1 Trolling (from the English trolling - trolling) is a type of virtual communication: the manifestation of various forms of aggressive, bullying and abusive behavior.

Image under control: change minus to plus

To effectively manage your online reputation, in particular, to work with negative reviews, you need to consolidate all possible options for online promotion and engage in daily monitoring of this process, starting with the publication of news about the company and ending with the creation and development of your own social networks.

Suppose the search engine spontaneously formed the search results by the name of the company, and, as luck would have it, the first page of the search engine is replete with negative (as it was in our example with the "New Suliko" complex). Your employees and you have already used rapid response tools: posted responses to negative comments, removed contradictions, tried to negotiate with the owners of an unwanted site, and even threatened to sue, but all to no avail.

There is only one sure way: to displace such portals from the first page of search results. This is possible by saturating the network space with positive information about the company. But here, too, there are rules of the game that should not be neglected.

Initiate news... You or your PR people have come up with an excellent news item, moreover, worthwhile ideas appear weekly. To give a press release a chance to reach a customer, there are a few guidelines to follow.

First, in the title of your press release, use key phrases by which you can be searched for in search engines. This can be the name of the company or product plus the word "reviews". For example: “Apartments in the eco-city“ New Suliko ”received excellent reviews from residents”; “The district administration received more than 50 positive reviews about the“ New Suliko ”complex; "The mayor of the city spoke on TV with a positive response about the New Suliko complex."

Secondly, in the text of the press release, it is also necessary to succinctly use the word "reviews" and the name of the company several times. These are the keywords that will help increase the visibility of the news in search engines.

Thirdly, it is not recommended to place the same press release on dozens of release sites, since search engines do not like duplicate content. It is desirable that the texts be different, adapted to one or another content of the portal. In addition, you should try to use industry and information sites more often.

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Fourth, to cut down on time and effort, determine which sites will be your top priorities. To do this, place one press release, taking into account the first two recommendations, on those portals on which you usually publish news, and after 2-3 weeks, see which sites with your release are higher in the search results for your company name with the word "reviews" ... It is these sites that must be used for subsequent placements, taking into account the third recommendation.

Post articles. Another option for saturating the Internet space with positive information is posting articles. It can be expensive as the price depends on the quantity. unique visitors on the site where you want to post the material. Will anyone read it to the end is the second question. In order to manage reputation in the search engine, we are not interested in the size of the daily audience, we just need to find a beautiful site (information portal), but without a large audience of readers, and then the publication will cost ten times less.

Such portals 2 can be found through article posting systems (they are also easy to find through a search engine). Links are allowed on all sites in these systems. Take advantage of this, put a link to your official site, not only for the reader of your material, but also to increase the citation of your site. Also at the end of the article, you can put links to any additional publications, for example, to press releases, or place an advertising banner, the files of which will be based on your server, and by changing the banner once, it will be updated on all portals where you posted it. Thus, the banner will always be relevant.

Do not forget about optimizing article texts, use the recommendations listed above for press releases. After all, we need users to find these articles in search engines.

Attract partners. Connect with reputable partners in your industry. Agree to exchange information or banners. Ask partners to write thank you letters to your company. Imagine how this will inspire confidence in someone who is looking for information about your product or service and sees publicly expressed gratitude to your company on the websites of various companies.

Write to directories. Register your company in thematic catalogs. Most The best way to calculate the ones suitable for you is to search for information on the names of the companies of your successful competitors. This way, you will find sites that are highly trusted by search engines and rank high.

Socialize. Search engines are good about social media. Create your company page on the most suitable sites for you. Also, have your employees include the name of the company they work for in their accounts. Such a move will help to understand that the company is living and developing. In addition, do not neglect creating your own social networks so that your current and potential consumers can freely, but at the same time in a controlled manner, share opinions and assumptions.

• Guerrilla Marketing: 20 Simple But Effective Ideas

The more you create all sorts of pages about your company, the less likely negative pages will get into the top 10 search results.

Let's go back to our example with the promotion of the residential complex "New Suliko". The image of the complex in my imagination could have formed differently if I saw links to sites with positive reviews on the first page of a search engine.

The layout shows how the contextual advertising: She reports on all the latest news, referring to authoritative resources. Plus, in addition to the official website, this is the most quick way notify the user about something.

In organic search results, you see headlines and short descriptions that generate positive signals. Including there is a site with reviews, a social network, news resources, a photo site, a rating site. And most importantly, these search results are formed deliberately and methodically, the developer has taken control of the information field and maintains it.

Vitaly Shendrik,

Head, SEReputation.ru

Information about the author and company

Vitaly Shendrik Graduated from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology (MIET). Since 2007, he has been professionally engaged in search engine optimization. In 2011 he started working at SEReputation.ru.

SEReputation.ru is a search engine marketing agency specializing in reputation management in search engines. SEReputation.ru ranks 1st in the independent American TopSEOs rating among the best reputation management companies in Russia. Among the clients are companies (including foreign ones), politicians, show business stars and even the city.

In order to understand exactly how reputation management works on the Internet, you must first understand what the positions of sites in search results depend on. And here we are faced with SEO or search engine optimization.

Building a company's reputation with SEO

At the dawn of the development of the Internet, it was quite easy to position a site for a specific word or key phrase. All that was needed for this was just to mention this word many times in the text of the page. Another way to achieve a similar result was to create inbound links to the site with the required word or phrase in the link text.

None of these methods are relevant today, moreover, the abuse of these methods may even entail sanctions for the site from the search engines. This is why it is so important, regardless of whether it is a company, a brand or an individual, to understand why, where and how mentions about you appear in search results on request.

It doesn't matter who you are - an individual, a blogger, a user of social networks or a company representative, in any case, the main criterion for visibility on the network will be content. And while most companies and brands invest money and time in writing content, not all of them are doing it right.

MarketingLand I recently released a great article, relevant for both companies and ordinary users, telling about 9 ways to promote on the Internet, allowing you to improve the position of your content and any other positive information and displace the negative from the search results.

1. Use your company name in positive articles and materials

The main factor in the relevance of content is still the correct use of keywords and phrases within the content. Focus on things like readability and targeting site visitors rather than search engine crawlers.

2. Make sure positive articles contain the name of the company in the headline

In addition to using keywords in the content itself, it is important to know how to format it correctly. The latter implies the presence of a keyword in the title of the article, and possibly in the headings of its sections.

3. Make sure positive articles include the name of the company in the URL

Each article has a URL, which is the page address of the site where the article is located. You can increase your chances of ranking higher in search results for a given word by including that word in the URL string.

4. Register and deploy a domain containing the name of the company

With the help of domain names, people can find sites. After the domain is registered, it becomes unavailable for ordering and the second one cannot be registered any more. Everyone should try registering a domain with their company name or name before anyone else does.

V social networks over 2 billion people are currently registered. If you still don't have one of them, now is the time to fix it. Social profiles rank well in search results. Just like with domains, you should hurry up and take your name before someone else takes over.

6. Post images related to your company

Content will of course take the lead, but images and videos can also affect your rankings. At Google help Images you can find millions of images on the net. Try to use positive images next to the mention of the company or your name, as they can increase the weight of the article itself in the eyes of search engines.

As already mentioned, links are the main factor influencing the position of the promoted content. This means that you must link in articles to reliable sources and get links to your sites, social profiles and positive mentions on other sites.

8. Create a video about your company

Youtube is the largest video hosting and search engine at the same time. Making videos dedicated to the company or to you personally is a great way to stand out from the crowd and reserve the first positions in the SERPs.

9. Try again

Internet reputation- This is a special segment of reputation regulation, which is achieved through special methods used by so-called SEO-optimizers and a number of programs. As a rule, the purpose of promoting the reputation, image and brand of a company via the Internet is to promote sites to the top list of search engines. Today, about 80% of all business leaders resort to this method of positioning their own services, products and goods; this trend is dictated by the success of colleagues from the West.

Online reputation management, causes

Reputation on the Internet is a relatively new phenomenon, the purposeful increase of reputation through the network began in the United States with the advent of Microsoft. In fact, reputation management used to be related to the concept of service delivery and customer relations, but now it touches more on the virtual aspects of adjustment and promotion.

In general, the term internet reputation and its management implies a system of complex methods aimed at identifying significant factors that form the business reputation of a business or individual (most often politicians, artists, managers). Successful reputation management through the network involves bringing the site by search engines with positioning and demonstration to the first lines. Such positions in the ratings enable users to first of all refer to these resources, avoiding the rest.

Online reputation and online reputation gains are actively monitored by analysts. So, in 2010, Microsoft recorded that 70% of those applicants who applied to the company, obtained information about it exclusively by accessing the Internet. Also, the statistics directly affected the attitude of managers and the frequency of their access to the network. Approximately 1 out of 4 managers of large companies initially applied to the Internet to be informed about the applicant. Moreover, every 10th manager turned to social networks to get acquainted with the personal profile of the applicant.

In view of such trends, reputation on the Internet is an effective set of measures to track the factors that influence its formation, the factors that contribute to its increase, as well as methods that in a practical way can improve the reputation on the Internet.

Online reputation building techniques

Reputation management via the Internet has the key goals of increasing reputation by promoting a website with information about services, goods and methods of obtaining these services. This goal is realized by a number of tasks. First of all, reputation on the Internet involves reducing the level of negative information about a particular company and replacing it with positive information, including consumer reviews, authoritative opinion, confirming objective data, etc.

Methods that are used to adjust the reputation ratio across the network:

Why is it worth raising your reputation on the Internet?

The reputation on the Internet is highly regulated, which is why an increasing number of businesses and individuals are using this tool. Online reputation management has the following benefits:

Thus, the reputation on the Internet is well objectively regulated and is the most effective method of raising the reputation of individuals and legal entities today.

Online reputation

Modern mass media, which are gaining enormous distribution and high popularity, which is growing every day, have become a kind of substitute for the transmission of information through person to person directly. The capabilities of these media are limited only by the set of factors that must be observed in order to have access to them. It is logical that TV and the Internet are much more popular than newspapers, since you don't even need to leave your home to pay and conduct them. The information provided on the network is so diverse that it allows a person to almost completely abstract from other data sources For this reason online reputation has become very important for companies and individuals who are worried about what partners and customers (both existing and potential) think of them

What affects your online reputation?

Reviews are the main factor influencing the "online reputation" indicator, since, both according to the dictionary wording and guided by logic, people tend to believe that customer reviews are written by customers, and partner comments are genuine. It is this psychological property of a person to simplify his life and not think about details that has become a powerful weapon in the hands of marketers and sales psychologists, who have developed hundreds of techniques for raising the online reputation indicator and the sales indicators themselves by writing fictitious reviews.

The ability to create reviews and publications with any information is provided by several factors. First of all, the legislation of many countries, in particular the CIS countries, does not take into account the courts of the Internet data, they are not only evidence for administrative and civil courts, but also are not always a reason for considering claims. At the same time, information that affects the "online reputation" indicator can be disseminated completely anonymously, and the lion's share of hosting hosts stores data forever, which makes it a serious threat to the work of a company or a person if the information is negative, as well as a wonderful engine of trade if the data have a positive coloration.

How does the online reputation impact?

Due to the use of all kinds of technologies, which start with the elementary psychology of sales and end with a scrupulous analysis of the text and the impact on it, data on the Internet, affecting the factor "reputation in the network", can be positioned both higher as a result of the search engine, and lower, away from the eyes of potential partners, employers or clients. Considering the influence of online reputation on sales, it should be noted that, according to analysts, there is an increase in sales in cases where online reputation is regulated by specialists. At the same time, such specialists often include "in the cost" of their services monitoring of new information about a company or a person, so that you can track the development of reputation and establish how certain variables affect reviews and their appearance.

The use of factors that belong to the cognitive group of psychological aspects and induce a person to contact a particular company or a particular specialist is another important point that is necessary to create good indicators of the aspect of "reputation in the network". At the same time, not only the market on the Internet is taken into account, the sites of competitors are analyzed, the advantages and weaknesses of which can serve not only as an excellent reason to highlight your company, but also as a wonderful tool for redirecting the flow of visitors from the competitors' website to your own.

Considering that human psychology, as well as its influence on the purchase of goods and services, is a complex concept that requires constant measures and attention, reputation in the network is exactly the area in which it is better to turn to specialists who have time, and most importantly - skills in order to monitor and influence the Internet in general and potential customers in particular.

Site reputation

While the attention of the masses was riveted to the usual methods of obtaining information, abroad, and now in the territory of the CIS countries, the Internet has become one of the most trusted and popular sources of information. The Internet is so trusted as a source of diverse data, a huge assortment of products and manuals that there are cases of purposeful visits to friends, even by the age group over 40, in order to "sit and look for reviews or recipes." All this is complemented by the widespread creation of online stores and electronic money systems, which allow not only sharing information and watching TV series on the network, but also buying something for real money, which is not available in local stores. Naturally, in order to attract the attention of consumers, an important factor is site reputation.

How to improve the reputation of the site?

In order to understand the methods of raising consumer confidence in the site, it is worth reminding yourself once again that the Internet is still considered a free and little moderated base in which many or even everyone can freely leave a review or opinion about a product that was purchased in the same network, about the nuances of delivery and pricing. This makes it possible to promote the site itself, as well as to influence the concept of "site reputation" by optimizing two types of factors - real and fictional.

Among the real factors that form an opinion about the site, one can single out those that the site can influence on its own. For convenience, we will give an example of a Rozetka store, which sells thousands of items of goods, from computers to tents or vacuum cleaners online (the so-called online store). The factors influenced by the Rosette itself are the speed of delivery, the pricing policy of goods, especially in relation to other stores, the speed of communication with the client upon request, the convenience of the latter, as well as promotions and bonuses that allow you to get more benefits for the same funds. The site should regulate these factors independently, since they are included in the concept of the site's reputation and are a segment of its competence.

What factors should not be regulated by the site, so as not to spoil the reputation

Among fans of online shopping, a popular method of evaluating a product and its quality is to read reviews on the supplier's website. People who are far from online shopping may be surprised, but 80% of people believe what the site is posting on itself. This is approximately the same as the reviews about a deputy or a presidential candidate that the president himself leaves (self-PR). So that such reviews do not "cut the eye" and raise such a factor as the reputation of the site, it is worth entrusting their writing to companies that can analyze how people distinguish real reviews buyers from a fake, which is made by the site itself.

In addition, there is a segment of that information about the site that is not located on it itself, being controlled by other sites or companies. To work with such reviews, it is not even worth involving the specialists of the site itself or the management of the latter, polemics and disputes on "foreign" territory can only damage the reputation. For such needs, there are analytics companies that have people on their staff who can do the following things:

• Completely delete a negative review, using links with the leadership of the forum or site, or mark it as "unreal, unreasonable", which, in fact, is tantamount to deletion.

• By influencing the mechanics of the work of search engines, make sure that the reputation of the site and the site itself, as well as the positive aspects of its work, are higher in the search result than the rest, which will prevent 90% of people from reaching them (this is how many people do not read further first search engine pages).

• At the forum itself, using facts, arguments and preliminary rhetorical preparation, enter the discussion and prove to the client that he is wrong, the product he wanted was bought for the money it costs. A client's admission that he was wrong is many times better than deleting a review, since a link to such a controversy can convince everyone once and for all that the site's reputation is really good and justified.

Working with review texts, search engines and social opinion is an area that not only requires special training, but also almost daily tracking of the reviews themselves, the work of search engines and the psychological tendencies of the masses. It is for this reason that it is worth trusting this work to specialists.

When people on the Internet are looking for a product or service of interest, ideally they should find the site of your company, your page on a social network and positive reviews about you on other sites.

These 9 tips will help you achieve such a noble goal. Online reputation is one of the most important assets in terms of managing your company's reputation. If it gets tarnished, you will lose customers, sales, employees, and partners.

Of course, this is not news to anyone, but it is worth touching on such a topic. Many firms do not pay enough attention to building a reputation for their business on the Internet - how well they are spoken about in Yandex and Google search.

The main points in protecting your brand, according to experts in “virtual” reputation management, are active work in this area, proper content optimization, constant monitoring of results, readiness to respond to negative messages and, above all, a realistic assessment of your efforts.

9 tips for managing and building a reputation for an online business and protecting your brand.

1. Optimization of your company website.

Optimize multiple pages on your site using basic search keywords for your business name. What for? Search engines will see your company's website as the most authoritative source for providing information about you. Authority on a topic is one of the main factors that search engines look to when selecting appropriate search results to display. under the name of your company, you will help maintain the position of these pages in or near the top in search results. This will not only help your site appear more often in search results, but it will also lower negative content about the company that you cannot control.

It is best to use your business name in important areas of the site such as HTML title tags and URLs (where possible), particularly on pages that talk about your business, such as About Us or Contact Us.

In addition, on their websites, some companies talk about themselves in the first person. For example: "We make the most modern widgets", instead of: "<Компания>makes state-of-the-art widgets. " However, using a third-party description is better as it allows you to insert the company name, which will be reflected in the search results.

2. Diversify your online presence.

Your goal should be - to actively occupy all niches in all 10 search results in Yandex, Google for keywords of interest, on the one hand, this will show the superiority of your company in this area. On the other hand, you will have a better chance that negative content about a company or product will not appear in the top 10.

You can never get rid of negative information that you cannot control, citing negative reviews and publications in newspapers as an example. "But you can still balance this information by posting positive content you can control."

To reach a level in the top 10, your reputation on the Internet must be spread in addition to the company's website, in such thematic blogs and social networks as Vkontakte, Google+, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. So far, social media promotion is low. Google's crawlers crawl these social networks as authoritative sources they can trust; these will all be important factors in order for the ranking of these sites to be more successful.

Anchor text is a word or phrase with a hyperlink, for example, advice on managing your reputation on the Internet for those who are looking for a job, clicking on which will take you to another page. Search engines are used to determine the relevance of the page being linked to. If multiple pages from reputable sites link to a given article, it will increase the ranking of that article.

Of course, creating quality anchor text hyperlinks from other sites is not an easy task. Those sites are beyond your control and influence.

The best way is to simply ask someone to insert an anchor text link that is relevant to your business. However, don't ask everyone to link with the same anchor text. Google monitors all attempts by people to influence the crawl system and may lower the page position, considering that aggressive promotion methods are used.

If 60 percent of your links have the same anchor text, that's too much. Try to create a variety of. Get links from multiple quality sites using a variety of relevant anchor text to your links.

4. Constantly track your positions in search engines at least once a month.

Google your company name at least once a month, Beal advises. Do this more often if you have a large company that is often talked about in the news. Use for important keywords so you know when new content about you appears on the internet.

Don't just look at the first page of Google search results.Even though most users don't scroll further, always check for negative reputation reviews on two or three pages of search results. Due to the rapidly changing ranking results, such content can appear at any time.

Take a close look at the content on pages three and four of the search results for negativity, as it may soon make it to the first page. Write down what you find in the table: URL, page title, page status (whether you can influence it) and its rating (positive, negative or neutral content).

5. To manage negative reputation, contact its creator.

Even if you are constantly monitoring your reputation on the Internet, one morning you may find an unpleasant surprise. The larger your company, the more you will find articles with negative content about it in the top search results.

When this happens, immediately contact the blogger, site owner, or other person who created and posted the content. Ask him if there is anything you can do to transform a negative opinion into a positive one. If that doesn't work, leave a comment (if possible), telling the story from your side. Explain what you are doing or trying to do to remedy the situation.

6. Also take care of your offline reputation.

If a bad reputation on the Internet is becoming the norm for you, you need to think about why this is happening. Your reputation in the offline world is carried over to the world of the internet. Treat your customers and customers well, reward those who are supportive of you and leave a positive comment. Focus on your reputation in the offline world, your online reputation will depend on it.

7. Send out optimized press releases regularly.

Believe it or not, they can rank high on Google for relevant keywords, giving your business the opportunity to take another position in the SERPs. Press releases are like leverage to artificially fix bad reputation online.

8. Pay attention to your Wikipedia page.

A Wikipedia entry for your company will almost always rank in the top 5 search results for your company name, says Beale. To see how this works, search Google for the names of well-known companies such as Microsoft, Sberbank, McDonald's. In most cases, you won't have to look further than the first three search results to find a related Wikipedia article.

You will not be able to control the entries in Wikipedia, as anyone can edit them. You must not interfere with the development of this Wikipedia article, as it would be against the rules of the public encyclopedia. If an article about your company on Wikipedia contains negative or false information, contact the Wiki Community to find out how to fix it.

9. Constant monitoring of online reputation

It is very important to track all or at least some of the posts from the top search queries. The sooner you notice them, the more chances you will have to neutralize it. "One of our clients had seven negative reviews on the first page of a Google search", "It took me a year and a half to have only positive information on the first page of the search."

The reputation of your company is formed on the Internet, regardless of whether you have a website or Official page in social networks, whether you like it or not. Users are actively discussing various products and services on the forums, looking for reviews from real buyers in order to decide whether to become your client or give preference to another organization. What if they are constantly faced with negative information? The answer is obvious - they will go to competitors.

4 reasons to monitor your online reputation

You will find out what customers don't like. For example, they are completely satisfied with the product, but at the same time they are not satisfied with the service. Delivery is constantly delayed or there are some other problems. It will be useful for a business owner to know this in order to influence the service or delivery department and thereby improve the reputation of their company.

You will get to know the needs of the customers. Monitoring reviews will allow you to see points of growth. Clients leave not only information about what they liked or disliked, but also what is missing. This may prompt you to think about improving the quality of service or introducing new service... For example, you only accept cash payments, but customers would like to be able to pay for the product by card.

You will find out if competitors are attacking your company, deliberately spreading false information with a negative connotation, and, accordingly, you will be able to influence it. How? Real customers will be able to confirm the appeal to your company with a check, order number and other data, fake ones - no. And you will be able to bring them to clean water and thus render harmless.

Find out how effective your current online reputation management campaign is. If you have already taken care of your image on the Web, then you will be able to assess what results the SERM specialists have already achieved.

The results of a survey of TNS among buyers in Russia showed that the majority read reviews before concluding a deal and are guided by them. To ignore what they write about you on the Internet means to let the formation of your reputation take its course and lose a huge part of your potential audience. Regular monitoring, on the contrary, will make it possible to promptly respond to negativity, thereby attracting new customers and increasing the loyalty of existing ones.

How is reputation monitoring carried out?

• Study of the monitoring object, its activities, target audience.

• Drafting semantic core to find information.

• Analysis of search results for queries, information on social networks, catalogs, online media, blogs, forums and other web sites.

• Reporting the results
  analysis.

• Formation of a strategy to improve the company's reputation.

To conduct high-quality monitoring of the customer's reputation on the Internet, we use automated (using special programs) and manual methods. This allows you to collect the most complete picture and correctly interpret the analysis results.

Assessment of monitoring results

1. The negative prevails. If there are mostly negative reviews on the Internet, then you are losing a significant part of your customers. But don't despair. Even this situation can be beneficial. If you do not ignore negative reviews, give official answers on behalf of the company and at the same time work on your "weak" sides, this will inspire confidence on the part of your audience.
2. Positive prevails. Positive reviews are definitely good. You are heading in the right direction. But you shouldn't relax. It is necessary to continue in the same spirit and look for new ways of development.
3. Information is absent. This often happens with new companies. It is difficult to call this situation positive, because if they do not write about you, they simply do not know about you. But in any case, starting from scratch is easier than displacing and working out the negative.

We not only know how to conduct high-quality monitoring of the image on the Internet, but we also know what to do with the information received.