Ask An SEO: How To Repair & Recover Negative Brand Mentions In SERPs via @sejournal, @MordyOberstein

5 months ago 108

ARTICLE AD BOX

This clip connected Ask An SEO, we’re diving into a branding question from idiosyncratic dealing with antagonistic SERP results:

I person a lawsuit that precocious had immoderate fiscal issues and the SERP for their marque has galore antagonistic listings.

Do you person immoderate ideas for a strategy that could assistance to region those listings and amended their marque status?

There are 2 ways to attack this. There’s the applicable things successful your contiguous power and there’s the wider brand relationship that needs mending. I’ve precise overmuch been present before.

Folks volition thin to thin into the changes you tin marque that are successful your contiguous locus of control.

For example, commencement posting connected X (Twitter), and you’ll get a carousel for your posts connected the hunt motor results pages (SERPs). This carousel tin propulsion “negative” results disconnected leafage one.

The occupation with this benignant of attack is that it’s not wholly effective.

For starters, it has constricted scope (yes, your posts volition look successful a carousel, but not connected each SERP related to your brand).

Also, it doesn’t woody with the precise apical of the SERP, and who knows what existent effect you’re pushing to leafage 2 – possibly it’s 1 that is favorable to your brand?

While I’m not saying you should not bash immoderate you tin bash successful the immediate, I would caution you astir getting excessively caught up successful it.

What you request to beryllium doing is reasoning astir however you repair your narration with your niche.

Brands neglect present each the time. I’ve seen it firsthand. So, I person a fewer pieces of cardinal proposal you request to travel if you privation to hole your brand’s SERP for real.

1. You Have To Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

The main crushed brands neglect astatine this is due to the fact that it’s uncomfortable.

The biggest portion of proposal I tin connection you is to beryllium acceptable and consenting to get retired of your comfortableness zone.

You’re going to person to devour crow successful immoderate way, shape, oregon form. You can’t incorrect idiosyncratic and past not apologize. You whitethorn consciousness you did thing incorrect oregon that it was retired of your power oregon whatever.

I pass you not to get hung up connected this. Your assemblage feels wounded – that is each that matters.

You request to someway repair that hurt, and it’s going to mean eating immoderate signifier of humble pie. And everyone loves pie, truthful it’s OK.

2. You Have To Diagnose The Root Cause Of The Negative Sentiment

Often, the knee-jerk absorption brands person is to “market their way” retired of a problem. They motorboat campaigns oregon initiatives that purpose to make caller buzz and caller chatter that is much positive. This doesn’t work.

You can’t bash immoderate of that until you diagnose the basal cause. What you’re looking for present is (among different things):

What lawsuit (or bid of happenings) triggered the antagonistic response?
How did this trigger interaction the audience? (You request to beryllium highly circumstantial and explicit here. Generalizations are not helpful).
Why did this trigger the manufacture to specified an extent? (Again, beryllium explicit here).
How toxic is the relationship? You request to cognize however damaged the narration is, and you person to beryllium consciously alert of it.

3. You Have To Be Transparent

This speaks a spot to my earlier constituent astir getting retired of your comfortableness zone. You are rebuilding trust. That’s hard. It takes time, and it takes substance (so my 4th extremity would be: really change, conscionable don’t accidental you did). It’s a process.

You request to reenforce to your assemblage that you are perpetually engaging successful that process and that you don’t instrumentality their spot for granted.

If this sounds similar immoderate benignant of Dr. Phil episode, it’s due to the fact that it is. Humans are humans. The relationships that brands person with their assemblage enactment conscionable the mode our idiosyncratic relationships do.

If you violated someone’s spot connected a idiosyncratic level, you would request to amusement you’re doing the enactment to gain their spot back.

That means a caller level of transparency and vulnerability is needed.

Same for your brand. There is zero difference.

Changing The Narrative Sets Everything Else In Motion

The extremity effect of this process, if you bash the enactment to make engagement and assemblage involvement (which is simply a full different speech astir however you bash that), is precisely what you’re looking for.

What you truly privation is not to person a effect alteration oregon an nonfiction rewritten. What you privation is for the communicative to shift.

Once the communicative shifts, the remainder falls into place. People commencement talking astir you successful a affirmative mode (even referencing however astonishing it is you turned it each around). They’ll adjacent commencement penning articles astir you oregon mentioning you, etc.

At that point, erstwhile the communicative has shifted and the manufacture has intelligibly reassociated however they deliberation and consciousness astir you, you tin prime up the stragglers.

Then, you tin scope retired to those sites that inactive person not updated their contented to bespeak the “new you.”

You present person the superior and the inertia to enactment an unspoken unit connected sites to alteration their content.

If everyone other is reasoning astir you a definite mode and talking astir you a definite way, and if you’ve gained a spot of popularity, those stragglers are not going to privation to beryllium near down (or, astatine a minimum, moving against the atom and consensus).

Now, you person the existent powerfulness to alteration the listings connected the SERP, nary substance who is ranking oregon what the query is.

Change narratives, not organic listings.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal